Where are the independents?

California held its primary last Tuesday and as expected, the event was irrelevant to the presidential election. Nothing remarkable or newsworthy about it. But, the San Diego mayoral race was interesting. Unfortunately, it was discouraging if you want fundamental change in politics. If you want status quo two-party politics, it was reassuring.

 Caudiforms, one of which is blooming

These bizarre plants sometimes look more like rocks than plants

Context

California now has open primary elections where candidates from all parties are on the ballot. The only office that requires a party ballot is the presidential vote. The two candidates with the most votes move on to the general election and it is pretty much over for everyone else. Third parties hate the top two vote rule because they believe it will make them go extinct. They may be right, but that's a different issue.

The mayor race

Presidential politics aside, the San Diego mayoral race showed what is essentially an absolute grip on power that the two parties have. In that race, Nathan Fletcher ran as an independent after the local republican party refused to endorse him in preference to another, more hard core republican candidate Carl DeMaio. Fletcher was endorsed by Movement to the Middle (a group of senior San Diego business executives) and icPurple (billionaire Ted Waitt), which are self-described independent organizations.

The democrat in the race, liberal democratic congressman Bob Filner, ran what was called by most local pundits a lackluster, uninspired campaign. In response to those criticisms, Filner basically said, don't worry, I know what I am doing. I know how to win elections. Filner was right - he didn't have to do much of anything, other than be a democrat. The same was true for DeMaio. Being the endorsed republican was enough. In the campaign, DeMaio campaigned mostly against Fletcher with garden variety negative campaign tactics, but it is unclear how much effect that had compared to simply being the endorsed republican. DeMaio mostly ignored the other republican in the race, district attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

The result:

DeMaio (R) 32%

Filner (D) 30%

Fletcher (I) 24%

Dumanis (R) 13%

The status quo wins . . . . again

Despite independent support, Fletcher came in behind the unconcerned (bored) status quo democrat and the mildly concerned (mostly bored) status quo republican. Fletcher's loss appears to result mostly from a combination of two things. First, a low turnout, with committed party supporters tending to dominate by voting along party lines. Second, according to local political observers (and California Moderates) busy (distracted) voters who are not necessarily committed party supporters who generally vote along party lines as their way of generally/sort of stating their political preferences.

Of course, one can say that Fletcher was really just another republican who ran as an independent to (i) side-step the republican party endorsement of DeMaio and (ii) appeal to independents to replace lost republican votes. Maybe so. But, if independents are to ever gain a foot fold anywhere, they have to start somewhere. Any 1,000 mile journey on foot (or by rocket) starts with the first step on the path (or into the rocket). It has to be recognized that the only place a politician can go to get elected is the democratic and republican parties. No other political engine exists in the U.S. that can drive a person into most political offices. So far, libertarians, socialists, Christian and other parties have elected no one of importance in the last 100 years or so.

What does it mean?

That context suggests that currently there are insufficient independent voters to affect much of anything. Assuming this story can be more or less be extrapolated to the rest of the country, one can argue that under current political conditions third parties and independents are going to remain impotent and ignored. Even without the top two open primary here in California, third parties here and in other states have been around for a long time but have been irrelevant all that time in terms of getting people elected. The third parties' share of the electorate in California has been essentially static at about 5% for the last 12 years or so. The ideology of existing third parties simply isn't appealing to the masses.

 

An Asian Cycad

All of that would seem to argue that the only way to actually change politics is to change the two parties from within. California Moderates opinion is that that cannot be done in the face of powerful forces that are aligned to maintain the status quo. Those forces include (1) special interest money that maintains and co-opts both parties and essentially all politicians, (2) ideology that divides the public into the two party narratives, (3) no credible, respected, powerful voice advocating for anything other than the status quo, (4) the tendencies of voters to vote like they do as described above and (5) the irrelevance of non-voters. Collectively, all of that constitutes a massive bulwark against meaningful change.

What else is there?

If one accepts that version of reality as reasonably accurate, then there arguably is only one thing that has not been tried. Its a non-ideological approach to politics. A framework for that kind of politics can be pretty simple and straightforward. The real questions is whether that kind of reality-based politics is something the American public, including most independents and moderates, can stomach. That's an open question and one can argue that they do not have that kind of courage. If that is true, then there may be nothing that people unhappy with the status quo can do but sit back and watch the bus drive right over the cliff. The question then becomes how far the fall to Earth will be. With some luck, it will be a short, non-lethal fall onto a big pile of fluff.

At the moment, the democratic and republican parties can honestly say all your base are belong to us. That's about as status quo as it can get.