Let's get us some Independents! Put Lieberman, Bloomberg, and Ventura in charge of the party! [View all]

[DanTex]

(that's a joke)

Seriously, though, this Independent-worship thing is getting a little silly. Yeah, Bernie is an Independent, but on the whole, Independents are not a bunch of democratic socialists. The names listed in the title are much more typical of the label.

There are a lot of Is that consistently vote D or consistently vote R. Effectively, those people are either Ds or Rs already, just didn't bother to register with a party.

But other than that, independents are people who sometimes vote for Ds and sometimes for Rs (hence independent in our two party system). Which pretty much makes them low information voters. Not as bad as Republicans, of course. But still, if you even consider voting for a Republican, given today's Republican party, either you aren't paying attention or there's something wrong with you.

Because, and here's the fundamental truth that can't be gotten away from: the Democrats are better on every single issue than the Republicans. And it's not hard to see that. It's not close. There's no honor, or originality, or wisdom in failing to understand this and being "independent". Being undecided between Dems and Reps is just as stupid as being undecided about climate change, or evolution, or whether the earth is round or flat.

Do we need Independent votes to win elections? Of course. That's the way it works in politics. You can't just win with informed progressive voters. This means making some compromises. But it doesn't we need to pretend that Independents are somehow enlightened free thinkers. Because they aren't.