Centerfield

Excellent article, except that Samuelson forgot to capitalize "True Believers" in the last sentence. [g]

This article, along with Tutakai's blogpost that I referenced yesterday, really hit home for me. As election season warms up, I see these forces at play in the campaigns I'm working on. Ghu spare us from the wing-nuts!

Also worth a look today is this op/ed by Nicholas Kristoff in today's New York Times, along much the same lines as Samuelson's piece. I think it's even more interesting that both op/eds came from papers known for their liberal slant.

I agree with the hypothesis wholeheartedly. However, we need to be very aware that this hypothesis is quite prone to being co-opted by either wing. The first step is to state this hypothesis that the parties are partisan and not representative of the more moderate GenPub in the middle. THEN, you do everything you can to define that moderate middle in a way that makes it look like your side's take on things. Usually this is best achieved via platitudes like a vague laundry of things described in such a way that no one disagrees with them. No one is pro-taxes, no one is pro-crime, no one is anti-education. Hilarity ensues as candidates debate who is more strongly in favor of education or more strongly against crime.

So for these NYT articles, the question is, is an article about the moderate GP summed up with or followed up with "and here are a few democrats who agree?" Same thing for the GOP, where they are putting on their moderate face at the convention. The race for the middle is underway.

BTW, I want to repeat how much I like Tutaki.

I wonder how much of this polarization is a function of the way Congressional districts are drawn. Gerrymandering results in many districts which candidates need to be acceptable to the most partisan voters, instead of the independents.

IIRC, Iowa is the only state where an independent commission draws up boundaries, instead of a political party.

I've been reading a lot lately about the fact that gerrymandering is increasingly a cause of this problem. There was some good news today, as far as I'm concerned from the Supreme Court. They upheld a Georgia court decision that opens the door for challenging some gerrymandering in court. Previously the SC had been reluctant to get involved in this.

I would like to learn more about the voting habits of those who identify themselves as either Republican or Democrat. Although they may be centrists in reality (even though they don't know it), I would guess that they consistently vote their party on election day, from the president all the way down to the local sheriff.

The real challenge to any centrist running for office (if redistricting weren't supporting the two-party system) is convincing these Republicans and Democrats that their party affiliation no longer serves their day-to-day needs. Education is the real battle in politics, but few have the stomach for substantive discussion.

There are of course party-liners. Not much thought required there. Party-liners can be found in both parties and in the undeclared "independents" as well. (By which I mean "un-affiliated" voters who vote either straight R or D.)

I'm a centrist registered as a Republican. I vote and work for the candidates I consider best suited. I work on an average of three campaigns a year for various local and state candidates, as senior staff. Once again, I work for the candidates I think are the better choice, without regard to party. Even when I'm getting paid for it. I simply won't work for a candidate I can't support.

This season I'm working for two Democrats and two Republicans (which causes great cognitive dissonance and angst in both party's county offices). I do voter demographics and message/platform targeting and shaping. Ever get three mailers and a drop-by from a local candidate, while your neighbor who's registered but never votes gets nothing? That means someone like me is working for the candidate, parsing out the voter databases so the message money and effort gets used on real voters, and not wasted on the 50+% who register and don't vote.

(The parties are lousy about this. They give candidates mailing lists of everyone registered, or registered to thier party plus maybe unaffiliateds, but they don't weed out the non-voters. Hard-raised funding down the tubes.)

Educating voters about local candidates is a mainstay of local elections. It's often what decides the race. And it's your only hope for electing moderates and centrists instead of partisan hacks and chair-warmers with ambition. You won't change the minds of reflexive party-liners, but you can change the minds of people who would pull the lever for the other side if they knew their side's candidate was a good ol' boy hack, and other side's candidate a dedicated community worker.