Independents Will Determine Bush's Fate
By Jim Mangia

In my travels as a convener of the "Choosing an Independent President" (ChIP) process, many Democrats have raised concerns that mobilizing the independent voter to participate in the presidential selection process could undermine the Democratic Party's efforts to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. All efforts must be focused on bringing the Democratic Party to victory over one of our most conservative presidents in a quarter of a century.

To be sure Bush has governed from the far right, both in his foreign policy, social and domestic agendas. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Ashcroft clearly prevail, while moderate voices like Colin Powell have been forced from the administration. The neo-conservative movement (neo-cons) have set strong anti-democratic policy goals on the domestic and foreign policy fronts. The situation is clearly dangerous.

While I agree that Bush must be defeated, I disagree with the Democratic Party establishment's myopic vision about how to do that. If we learned anything from the 2000 presidential election debacle, we learned that millions of Americans are sick and tired of the partisan gridlock, "us-versus-them" mentality of the two major parties. Whether you are happy or sad about Nader's 3.5% of the vote, it clearly had an impact on preventing Gore's electoral vote victory. Are the Democrats doomed to repeat the same mistakes?

George Bush won the election in 2000 because he did a better job of getting right-leaning independents to vote for him than Gore did of getting left-leaning independents to support the Democrats. Compare the vote totals for Ralph Nader for example to Pat Buchanan, who barely squeaked out 4/10s of one percent of the vote. Bush successfully won more independent votes than Gore. His disingenuous claims that he would calm the "partisan rancor" in Washington were believed by large numbers of independent voters. Independents long for collective solutions to America's problems not increased division and hostility.

Thus, the Choosing an Independent President process is designed to force the Democratic Party to pay attention to the concerns of independent voters with the goal of presenting a unified front to defeat Bush in 2004. Already, Howard Dean, John Edwards and Rev. Al Sharpton have agreed that issues of concern to independent voters must be key in any general election campaign against Bush. In responses to the ChIP presidential questionnaire, all have come out strongly in favor of political reform issues and nonpartisan solutions to our country's growing economic and social problems.

Failure on the part of independents to win concessions from the Democratic Party establishment on the political reform front, will only further alienate independent voters from a broad-based coalition to defeat Bush. If the Democratic Party does not address itself seriously to the cutting-edge democracy issues of the 21st century - in domestic policy, foreign policy and social policy - what incentive will the 35% of Americans who call themselves independent have in supporting them? If the choice boils down to Bush or Bush-lite, independent voters will either stay home or split down the middle depending on their ideological bent. But if the Democratic nominee offers serious political reform solutions to the crisis in American democracy, we could see a voter rebellion at the polls that could sweep away the last vestiges of the neo-con shift.

Independent voters are becoming increasingly savvy in their political tastes. They have seen the failure of quixotic third party candidacies that raise great issues but go nowhere. Unfortunately, the Republican Party, however dishonestly, has spoken more to the yearning for political reform among the independent electorate. The key aspects of the "Contract with America" that swept the Republicans to victory in the 1994 congressional elections were concessions around reforming the political process. Interestingly enough, those were the first parts of the contract that the Republicans threw out after getting elected.

Independents, independent Democrats and independent Republicans from across the state of California will convene in San Francisco on September 20 to make decisions on their position on the California recall election as well as the presidential nominating process. Presidential and gubernatorial candidates have been invited to address the gathering.

The Democratic Party has a unique opportunity to support political reform and democratic process issues that will mobilize independent voters in the 2004 presidential election. Support for increased direct democracy techniques and voter participation, decreasing the power of special interests, campaign finance reform, national initiative and referendum and less partisanship are issues that could easily be embraced by the Democratic presidential nominee. The question is though, will the establishment allow it? And will the Democratic Party see fit to appeal to the 35% of the electorate who are registered independent and have the power to defeat George Bush? There is a progressive populist independent movement. If they want to win, the Democratic candidates will have to pay attention to it!

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Jim Mangia is the President of the Coalition for Political Reform and the former national secretary of the Reform Party.