The Battle to Lose the Independent Vote

October 15, 2013 By Tim Urban

Tim Urban

About Tim Urban

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  • Anonymous

    Wait But Why does it again!

    • TJ

      Meh… Independent just seems to be another way of saying you either a) aren’t smart enough to think about the issues and make a determination of where you stand, or b) don’t give a shit about any of it.

      However, the glaring truth is that there is no material difference between Republicans and Democrats, and probably hasn’t been for over a 100 years.

      – They both are Statist to the core, believing government (all forms – city, state, federal) is the answer to everything.
      – They both (unwaveringly and usually ignorantly) support central banking, inflation, and the Fed’s debasement of our currency
      – They both support the frequent and never-ending military invasion and occupation of other countries (and the murder of lots of people in those countries), when those countries (most recently Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran, but many more in the past 60 years) refuse to play ball with the global central bankers (IMF, World Bank) and the international energy companies.
      – They both are heavily and successfully lobbied by the big war industry companies (death dealers), big banking, big insurance (who do you think wrote the Healthcare Act?), big pharma, big food, big what-did-I-miss?, etc.
      – They both favor mercantilism and crony capitalism over true free markets, and love to pass lots of onerous and oppressive regulations to snuff out competition from small businesses (at both the federal and local government level)
      – They both favor the horribly damaging and horribly ignorant “war on drugs” and the massive federal agencies and prison industry that benefit from it.
      – They both bow down to the ever militarizing Police state and turn a blind eye to the destruction it is reaping on innocent lives across the country.
      – They both support the ever 1984-ish state surveillance of everyone and less personal privacy.
      – They both are through-and-through Keynesian tax-and-spend devotees.
      – They both play the cult of personality game to their favor.

      Independent or “center-center” is still squarely in the middle of the statist camp.

      With Reps and Dems essentially the same, the opposing 2nd party should be a free-market society group, but unfortunately, the ideas of this group have been marginalized and snuffed out of the conversation.

      • jebmak

        “Independent just seems to be another way of saying you either a) aren’t smart enough to think about the issues and make a determination of where you stand, or b) don’t give a shit about any of it.”

        Wow, to think that there are only two sides to the whole of politics…

        That is some ignorant thinking there.

      • R1ckr011

        Dude… Federalism was settled before the turn of not THIS century, not even LAST century, but the 18th CENTURY.

        Regulation and free markets can co-exist. Anyone who says otherwise is a nutjob. Banks have been regulating thmselves essentially, as have Food Companies, of which there is only 4 left. That has got us where we are. Lest you forget: there is no fish you can eat out of the gulf of mexico!

    • Anonymous

      I agree with almost everything you are saying. My only suggestion would be excising from your political philosophy that which requires big secret conspiracies as opposed to people acting in their own selfish interests or according to their beliefs- misguided or otherwise.

  • Anonymous

    I enjoy your posts but not sure what this accomplishes. As someone reasonable from the right I have to say, you just freaked me out. Creeped? Freaked? Its all the same, I feel unheard and marginalized. And my left friends continue to self righteously cut me off. So much for trying to pull us together. Thanks.

    • Anonymous

      I was like you in the 1990’s. Starting in 1996, however, the GOP started shifting. I couldn’t keep rationalizing the things I did disagree with: the anti-abortion (in ALL cases), the anti-historical nonsense, etc. But I held on in the early 2000’s until the irrationality got us into wars.

      In 2009 and 2010, the entire sensible health care debate with within the Democratic party. The conservative positions were articulated by them. We don’t have single payer because of conservative Dems. Republicans opted out of reasonable debate. They COULD have been constructive, but they abdicated all responsibility.

      And it’s getting worse.

      Since then, the GOP has been going down. Either help kick the crazies out, or switch parties, call yourself a conservative Democrat, and help get the anti-government people OUT of the government.

      A pryo shouldn’t he chief of the fire department, and the current GOP shouldn’t hold elected office.

      • R1ckr011

        I’m sad to hear it started in ’96. I thought it was right around the turn of the election. And even at the absolute limit, Neocons were…somewhat ameliorable. They would be two steps above the Tea Party.

        I want the GOP of Eisenhower. Probably the best president since WWII

    • Anonymous

      🙁

    • kathy

      Wait. There’s a reasonable right?

    • Anonymous

      Kathy, you are the problem. This is why we can’t have nice things… because people assume that there can’t be anything gained from listening to the other side.

  • Anonymous

    As someone reasonable from the right, I beg you: find a way to get the keys away from the loons like Bachman and the Tea Party-ers. If we are only going to have two parties, they have to be able to at least communicate on the same wavelength. The GOP as it is right now is ruining our constitutional democracy. America needs to have the GOP to stay on its meds.

    • Anonymous

      Exactly. The US has no rational representation left (pun not intended).

      • Elizabeth

        Signs and signage – road signs, movie marquees, newspaper headlines real and imaginary, municipal signs, electronic message boards, storefronts, etc. – function as important indicators of the shifts, changes, and developments in Angstrom’s consciousness as he grows older throughout the decades chronicled in Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ series. Perhaps I should say Angstrom’s awareness of the signs, or, to be a bit more accurate, Updike’s descriptions of Angstrom’s awareness of the signs, rather than the signs themselves.

        http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2013/12/signs-and-signage-in-updikes-rabbit.html#.UyN2cj9dXxA

    • Anonymous

      Um, it’s a constitutional republic, just FYI.

    • Anonymous

      Actually, it’s a socialist democracy.

  • Anonymous

    What’s with the comment about brown people? Can you please name one, even amongst the crazies on the right, one person who brings up race? The only people even talking about race are the lefties.

    • Anonymous

      http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t924277/

      “With what you just said right there…You seem to imply that white people are better than other people. That’s not really what you’re saying is it?”

      “Of course that’s what I’m saying,” Buchanan replied “Isn’t it obvious? Anything worth doing on this Earth was done first by white people.”

    • Anonymous

      OH SNAP!

    • Anonymous

      The GOP’s singular mission to “get Obama” even to the point of destroying the reputation of the US, and crippling the entire economy doesn’t look just a little bit ‘brown’ to you?

    • ACE

      You should really check your sources. That quote is from a fake interview from a satirical news site. http://dailycurrant.com/2012/11/07/buchanan-white-america-dead/

    • Anonymous

      The entire GOP platform adversely affects minorities/poor people to a significantly greater degree. Of course the politicians aren’t standing at the podium making openly racist statements like “we hate brown people.” Their actions speak for themselves.

    • R1ckr011

      This is a VERY rare example of that most horrible thing: The Invisible Darkie Syndrome or IDS. Actually consider the first epynonymous book.

      Seriously, you don’t think race is a problem? Where the fuck have you been? It took 100 years after the end of slavery for blacks to vote.

      Republicans are vehemently crying for the expulsion of children, CHILDREN that are in political asylum just because america’s racist English only standard of education (never mind at all that this whole SW of USA was originally part of Mexican territory), which is emulated Nowhere else on earth, cannot accommodate them. There’s no reason why there aren’t many more languages popularly spoken in this country. Most of the Founding Fathers spoke multiple languages.

  • Anonymous

    Loved this website. I thought this post was way off though. A slap in the face to anyone who happens to be white and right of center.

    • Anonymous

      I’m both white and right of center and this didn’t bother me. I think the post is just making fun of the extreme far right, i.e. the Tea Party. It’s frustrating that moderate Republicans have been forced to get in bed with the Tea Party because of gerrymandering and that’s the message of this post.

    • Anonymous

      I’m guessing more Republicans than you think are more Tea Party oriented. Almost all of Reagan s work would be considered extreme and Tea Party ish today. I also doubt you’re actually a Republican. What really scares the left and RINOs is a return to Reagan Conservatism. Which is exactly where the right of center will be in the coming years.

    • Anonymous

      Complete fantasy. The way you guys glorify this fictional version of Reagan completely ignores all his policies that would now be considered further left than Obama. The growth of the far right has pulled the center & left along with it in terms of what can be accomplished. Propaganda & sabotaged education system is how this is being accomplished.

  • Anonymous

    Typical leftist view of the Republican party by claiming they are being controlled by white christian racist. Granted the republicans have shot themselves in the foot by harping on gay marriage and abortion but the good ideas they have are drowned out by the leftist media consistently harping on the few bad things and completely ignoring the myriad and plentiful ideas they do have right. And the brainless sheeple follow along like zombies.

    Oh and before the leftist hatred comes spewing out over my post just know that I personally am a Libertarian and think both repubs and democrats are complete morons.

    • Anonymous

      Plentiful good ideas you say? Let’s do an obvious one. Country is at a standstill because of the fight over Obamacare. Name the big ideas coming from Republicans that would be in place instead the Affordable Care Act?

    • Anonymous

      I don’t think it is “the leftist media harping on the few bad things” that has marginalized the GOP. I think the GOP’s own words and deeds accomplished that feat. That and wacko spokespersons at FOX, etc.

      If we truly had a “leftist media” all news reports would sound much like the Daily Show were we can’t laughing at how unbelievably crazy the GOP has become. And I am a moderate Dem.

  • Anonymous

    I think you missed the part in the beginning where the crazies from the extreme Left had already infiltrated the part of the center spectrum. They had lied to you, apparently.

    What we need is a philosophy of the center. Without it, we will be constantly veering left and right. Here’s a try: let’s weld the best of both and marginalized the worst. The best of the Left. Is the desire to help the downtrodden and as natural owners of creative transgression. The best of the Right is their faith in the US constitution as a design against tyranny (a checked and balanced division of power) and the consequence of the marketplace as a result of freedom. Is it complete impossible to have a small and lean government that helps the truley needy, that kicks the parasites who game the system to the curb?

    Again, I don’t think that the crazy Right have infiltrated the center-Right. You must either be hearing their voices carry down spectrum or you have been conditioned by the extreme Left to be intolerant… As I once was some time ago.

    This is a plea for your reconsideration. I need more comrades/patriots to keep me company here in the center-center.

    • Anonymous

      There’s nothing inherently wrong with veering left and right, as long as both sides are rational, which is not the case in the US. Look at Canada, we regularily swing left-of-centre to right-of-centre and it’s quite effective. When one party is in power too long, it gets bad and it doesn’t matter which wing it is.

    • I am new to politics, so I thought i was independent. Then I got into it, and thought I was Democrat. Then I took a test on esquire today, and found out I am in the center center. You are right, we need government to help the downtrodden. We have democrats to help out the poor. HealthCare needs to be controlled by the government. Without Government control, those with pre-existing conditions would have to pay incredible amounts on insurance so much that they would be put into the poverty level. The answer lies in understanding that we need governmental health-care to take care of pre-existing conditions and health-care for all. We need the Republicans to advocate freedom through capitalism. The basic needs need to be met by government (basic food, some form of lodging, healthcare) Then the luxuries are left to the Republicans. The dream of a luxurious house, and nice cars etc. The Republicans have destroyed their philosophy of checks in balances when they acted outside the scopes of a democratic process. The democratic process through earning votes, and then controlling congress so that you can get your values passed is what Democracy is based on, and many people gave their lives for. This Democratic process of hostage taken is bull-crap. Now any small minority in the congress can force their idealogies down the other 78% of the people’s throats by simply refusing to do their jobs. We need to find a process where the responsibility switches if a certain congressional body fails at its job. Maybe we need 3 speakers of the house (The president, senate leader, and speaker of the house) in order to put forth a clean C.R. The cartoon was good.

      • R1ckr011

        Thank you omg yes. I hate that false equivalency bullshit. It’s fucking retarded.

        But please. Paragraghs.

        No one talks about the Size of the Progressive Caucus being like 3x the Tea Party Caucus…but jesus look at the teeth on those mutant republicans.

        P.S. Intentionally incendiary. Please ignore.

  • Anonymous

    WOOOHOOO FUCK POLITICS!

  • +1 for center-center.
    Not to say that the middle road is always the way of wisdom, only that good things happen when we focus on good and marginalize the bad.
    How about we call ourselves the fiscally conservative, socially liberal party. Our creed, “do whatever you want, just don’t force me to pay for it!” Of course, with all the extra money in our pockets as a result of our resoundingly popular tax cuts and decreased defense spending and frugality in the social programs, individuals might just feel inclined to help one another.
    And without the tax man in the middle of the transaction, maybe the giver might not feel slighted, and the receiver might feel genuine gratitude and a sense of duty to rise up and help others similarly.

    Some might say I’m a dreamer…

    • Anonymous

      Or some might say you’re naive. How can you be fiscally conservative (cut taxes) and socially liberal (spending on social programs like education, welfare, healthcare, social security safety nets for all)?

    • Bill

      I’m going to guess that by socially liberal he means pro-choice and supportive of same-sex marriage. welfare, healthcare, social security, while having social outcomes, are ultimately fiscal issues because, well… they cost money.

    • Anonymous

      Libertarian.

    • Anonymous

      What Bill said. Social welfare programs are a fiscal issue.

      But note that he also said “cut defense spending”. If we simply curbed our empire-building, we could cut taxes and *still* have plenty left over to fund some social programs *and* start paying off our national debt.

      And as another person pointed out, this is a more Libertarian-leaning viewpoint than Center-Center. It has less in common with either Democrats or Republicans than it has with Libertarians.

    • Anonymous

      You’re a libertarian. Welcome to the club – and yes, we’re dreamers.

    • Anonymous

      Thats called the Libertarian Party, third largest in the US. Although any pol sci can tell you about the theory behind Third Parties, and how there is no “winning”.

    • Anonymous

      No such thing as never in America

  • Anonymous

    Yes, we can have a small government, but not AND ALSO slow down environmental destruction, protect us from food poisoning, keep up with the Chinese on DNA and genetic research, make sure old people don’t starve, educate children out of poverty and help the rest of the world not be so miserable so they have less motivation to attack us. I am baffled about your assertion that the moderate right hasn’t been infiltrated by the crazy right; moderate Republican politicians are saying it daily. Also, I notice strangely absent in your comment about a future lean government is cutting out corporate tax breaks and subsidies. Or are they the parasites to which you were referring?

  • Sadly, that person only represents about a 10% of the voting population. Most self-described independents consistently vote for one party at similar rates that self-described Democrats and Republicans do. But still, there might be a significant portion of that ~10% that are doing this.

    • R1ckr011

      SOURCE?

      Because that’s a frightening fact if true.

  • Bill

    As a fiscal conservative and believer in small government, I feel that the Republican party is broken, possibly beyond hope. They campaign on the promise of reducing spending and shrinking government, but the years of the Republican majority in congress and Bush presidency increased spending (even excluding the cost of the wars) and expanded government power considerably more than during the Clinton years with a Democrat congress. If you’re on the right and mad about the bailout, remember that both Bush & McCain pleaded for it. Meanwhile, they’re so sidetracked by the Christian right that the only thing they’re accomplishing is being at least as arrogant and/or obstructionist as the worst of the Democrats.

    • Anonymous

      There is a civil war happening within the Republican Party. The Tea Party has argued for a return to the principles established at the founding with the constitution. Establishment Republicans are identical to establishment Demicrats in that they’ve been captured by the big business they tried to reign in earlier. Washington has become an insider game where the elites are preoccupied with feathering thier own nests, the country be damned.

      On the other hand, with the current controversy with the debt limit, the government is actually working as designed. Obama used the debt limit to try to restrain Bush’s wars in the Middle East. Today, the Republicans are trying to use the debt limit to try to restrain runaway entitlement spending. Division of power, the check of faction against faction, that was the mechanism the founders envisioned.

    • Oh please don’t call it the “Christian right.” Plenty of us God-fearing folk face-palm over the crazies just like you do!

      • R1ckr011

        There there’s no right to regard terrorists engaging in Jihad Muslims either.

        It’s a matter of degree, not of kind. One burns cars with molotov cocktails, the other is ‘burning’ the country with a stockpile of fissible intellectual nuclear waste.

  • the most financially successful of all the puppet boxes does it again – how do we fire politics and their integrated listed-buildings of deflection?

  • Ok, so you changed it? The version I get via Feedly has four of the panels different: the one that now says “DUDE.” (but previously started “What the hell is wrong with you guys?!” I can understand why you changed it – the first version was a bit more surreal than reality in that panel – but it gets a bit confused. Maybe some of the commenters above saw the version that’s not there now.

  • Tea party backed lawmakers clicked on the turtle and now both of us are here together in this weird nothing space, staring at each other. Lets move on.

  • Anonymous

    Its all a DISTRACTION. social policy, two-party system, whatever else you can bring up is all there to smokescreen the reality of how everything/everyone is FOR SALE to big business. they decide. not you. the bosses and their family/friends/connections fill the leadership. and the foundations that their leaders set up shape public policy opinion for the rest of us. your true mission is to not get ripped off in the process. but you are constantly GUILT-tripped and convinced to be taxed enough to pay for the welfare to prevent the working poor from initiating a true revolution. you, my friend, are paying for big business to shove ideas down your throat, take your money, put on a show at Capitol Hill, and on top of all that you will pay-off the working poor and the working immigrant who cant make it without your dollars and who came to this country because your country bombed theirs. congrats, you idiot, V.

    • Anonymous

      This is truth.

    • Anonymous

      Agreed.

  • Anonymous

    The worst part is that to actually get away from the shithole the states is in, where the top 1% wealthy people hold more than half the wealth, we need to get off that dem/rep/crazies spectrum entirely, and enstate a whole new government. Capitalism, like socialism, works good in theory, but in reality, it ended up screwing over 80% of the people. 80% of the people should be able to live happily and comfortably, not have a completely stressful life, where you work extremely hard, just to make a half decent living.

    • R1ckr011

      We really need to fuse the two things together. Our debt is actually pretty manageable on a global scale. We could undergo massive debt swaps and cancel all that shit out real fast if we wanted to, By say making the Eurozone take all our Chinese trade debt in exchange for their domestic debts.

      If every person could actually Invest, or at the very least make returns on savings, then we’d be home free.
      If every person could go to the doctor without liquidating their home equity and selling all their furniture and turning into crack-houses minus the crack, well hot damn wouldn’t that be an improvement!

      But JESUS MOTHERFUCK. CUT THE GODDAMN MILITARY BUDGET AND INVEST IN *real* EDUCATION!!!

      If we don’t even attempt to do item #4…we might as well shutter the whole country and start selling off assets to the Chinese or whatever the highest bidder is. Because we won’t have a country in 50 years. It’ll degenerate into a vicious recruitment campaign for the Second Civil War.

  • Anonymous

    I would say that the Dems and Reps aren’t polar opposites anymore on military and rights & liberties issues, which are two of the most important issues IMO! Now the two parties seem to just polarize on what pleases which special interest groups of entitlement for their re-election. What if entitlement itself is the problem? What if it’s the ROOT of the problem? Believing that, are we going to just trim the branches on the left or right side of the tree, or are we going to abandon both and go for the root? I think many two-party players misunderstand the intentions of independents. It’s too inconvenient to ask them questions and give them time in the debates when it’s much easier to label them as stupid, extremists, or weirdos and simplify their motivations and move on with continuing to play the red vs. blue game. If critical thinking brings you to conclusions that you are neither red nor blue, then it is remaining true to your principles to divert into a third party regardless of its general acceptance.

  • Anonymous

    I was confused by the rainbow figures–I thought they were gay Republicans coming out. It took me quite a while to figure out that this was not the case. Anyone else?

    • R1ckr011

      Lol, when they first popped out, that happened to me for a sec 😛

  • Anonymous

    I invite WBW to try an more objective perspective on american politics once graphed on a world scale: http://www.politicalcompass.org/

  • Pingback: How democrats get elected - Page 3 - VolNation()

  • politico person

    It’s actually an oligarchy wrapped in a republic tortilla and then called democracy.

    • politico person

      Wow that reply didn’t end up where I expected it to.

  • Marc

    Pretty astute… except the fringe left doesn’t invade the platform, instead it helps indoctrinate our youth such that when they grow up, the fringe doesn’t seem as far left as it used to.

  • LindaJStone

    22222Ultra Income source by waitbutwhy Find Here

  • ANON

    >independants

  • Richard Serlin

    You really have to look in the mirror Tim and ask yourself do you care more about looking cool and above the fray, or about being scientific and accurate and non-misleading. Where is the science in saying that both parties must always be equally bad, and the best way to do good is to do nothing and support neither? Where is the science in saying that the truth must always be smack dab in the middle, even if one side were the Nazis?

    Maybe you’ll listen to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on this. He’s talking about you personally here:

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/fear-of-asymmetry

    But hey, it would look cooler to let the planet fry, and say both parties are equally bad than to be honest and admit that one thinks global warming (and evolution) are myths, and fights tooth and nail to stop the other one from implementing any pollution limits. Because hey, they truth is always 50-50 right in the middle; it’s a law of physics like the speed of light can’t be exceeded. Tim Urban has scientific proof – Oh, that’s right, his proof is he wants to sound cool and above the fray and do nothing to actually try to make things better in inconsequential areas like if we actually stop frying the planet with carbon.

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