Obama should have seen to his grandmothers poverty first (years ago) before he tried to clean up Americas back yard.

Why is his grandmother still living in such abject poverty if Obama is the hero he makes out to be?

It would have taken just a few of his American dollars to help her build a better shack.
OBAMA SHAME ON YOU.

While people may actually like to think of themselves as “Independent”, what they do in a voting booth is one hell of a lot more important than what they tell pollsters about how how they label themselves.

When the parties take the measures they have to keep people off the ballot, leaving no other names there but their own we have little choice as to what we do in the voting booth save not voting at all. Looking at the falling numbers of voters, I’d say they have made one hell of a loud statement!

Another:

The way to read this, is that when an “independent” tells a pollster which way they “lean”, they are actually saying “this is how I vote”.

What part of the writers statement didn’t you understand? “nor are we “party-leaning.” The polls you are referring to do not have real questions and a real category for people who are not of one party or the other, in order to give indication of our issues we answer in the manner which will get our points across. It is the pollsters and people like you that push us into a lean, that force us into your mold of leaners.

So here is OUR definition, every person on your census that hasn’t registered yet to vote, every person who has registered and hasn’t recently voted, every person who recently removed themselves from the R or the D party and every single person who votes on issues not party affiliation, THOSE people are your Independents. That is how many, exactly, you need to consider Independent Voters.

“…we represent at least a third of the electorate and as much as 42 percent. Even if you go with the lower percentage, we still outnumber Republicans, and we’re gaining on Democrats.” – mf

While people may actually like to think of themselves as “Independent”, what they do in a voting booth is one hell of a lot more important than what they tell pollsters about how how they label themselves.

This is from Marcia’s blog – and gives us a more accurate picture of these numbers:

“Of the 37% who claim no party identification, 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, and 12% have no leaning either way.” -mf

The way to read this, is that when an “independent” tells a pollster which way they “lean”, they are actually saying “this is how I vote”. So the simple reality, is that the “true independent” , who does not lean, and is equally likely to vote R or D or I , represents closer to the 12% number than the 30%-40% number that Marcia is claiming. Along these same lines. Marcia calls this group a “Voting Block”. It isn’t. A voting block, by definition, votes the same way. This group does not, therefore they aren’t. Even the 12% does not vote as a block, unless they can be organized around some principle or candidate or party or issue. Marcia has not explained what that organizing prnciple might be. If they do not vote as a block, they cancel each other out and are impotent. The major parties understand that, even if Marcia does not. That is why the reality is that the Major parties focus on Get Out The Vote efforts more so than independents. Effective GOTV swamps the independent vote – every single time.

Why is this important? Marcia appears to start with an assumption that is provably false – that independents represent a large voting block. Any logical construct that is built on that foundation, no matter how noble, or pleasant sounding, is built on sand.

Caveat: I have not read her book yet. I am going to read it and I am going to review it. What I have written here is based only on what she has written here and on her blog. Perhaps there iis a different foundation in her book. Stay tuned.

Many of the non-registered citizens I talk with don’t see how politics relates to their lives…or they are so disgusted with the tone and manipulation they’ve turned away.

I’m interested in solutions…anyone have any? :)

I think most independents believe that there’s a political class of some sort — “the sort of people who do politics” — and that the two parties and their elected representatives represent them more than they do us. This is a big part of why independents so often react negatively to the notion of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton alternation: It’s further proof that politics is a game for “them” and not for “us”.

In some cases that reaches the level of conspiracy-theorism, in some cases merely despair. But what it means first and foremost is a distinctly contradictory view of “bipartisan” initiatives. In poll after poll independents want the parties to come together to “solve the problems”. And again and again they poll as at best lukewarm on and often hating the particular measure that the bipartisan wrangling actually produced — a solution that inevitably serves the needs of the political class (momentary bumps in poll numbers, good sound-bites against potential primary challengers) while doing little or nothing for the desires of the electorate.

War just amplifies this effect — while every war has two sides, if the human or monetary cost are high enough then it comes to seem like the two sides are the political elites versus the voters/taxpayers/civilians/soldiers of the participant countries. Look at the profiles of Ron Paul donors for particularly striking evidence on this.