Can Democrats win without Independents?

[Yo_Mama]

67. Tip O'Neill and basic math say "No" - we need a party and candidate slate built from the ground up.

Tip O'Neill's biography, "Man of the House" is a good read still today. Politics is local.

Since Independents are the largest group of voters in many areas, in general elections they rule. But the codicil to that is that a strong campaign platform focused on local interests will inevitably attract Independents.

If we want to reverse the current trend, rather than making every local election a referendum on national politics, we need to start from the local and then integrate local concerns (as expressed by reps) into national platforms.

We're trying to do things almost opposite to the way we did them when we were winning. The make-every-local-election-a-national referendum thing might be good for fund-raising now, but will it produce gains in seats?