Independent Elders
By John Amato Wednesday Nov 25, 2009 6:00amThe Villagers obsess about the mythical "independent" voters. This time we have Tweety and his crew discussing over and under fifty five year old crowd. And guess where they stand.
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and a progressive.
I'm too young for something at 50!
WOO HOO!
... and a Democrat/Progressive. My conservative streak on the military, law enforcement, and education does not include the pants-wetting War on Terror or teaching religious doctrine as science.
My wife is in her 50's and also a Democrat/Progressive.
Most D/prog's are more conservative than ANY of the republicans these days.
There is nothing conservative about being radical and the GOP is all radical these days.
IMO
Sign O’ The Times
[...]
They oppose Obama policy because pancake rainbow phlogiston wolverines.
lol
I'm 51 years old, and have been a proud, life-long progressive Liberal, I guess I don't fit neatly into the Villagers' demographic, do I? By the way, while the over 55 crowd certainly has more than it's share of the "I got mine, fuck you!" Americans, I happen to know many in that demographic who absolutely loathe the GOP and bluedog Democrats. Similarly, I've know a hell of a lot of 20-30 year olds who just love the GOP. So can we stop with the "everyone in this age group feels this way and everyone in that age group believes that" bullshit?
... how does this break down along lines of education and career?
That they have their own heads up their ass.
This demographic thing. While it does give an inkling to whats out there. I have to agree with Gene214 up above .
my 53-year-old liberal progressive ass. All of my same-age or older friends are progressive and I'd say the bulk of my younger friends are conservative or lean that way.
We wouldn't have a Republican party
Dems and Rethugs both suck.
because I live in a closed primary state
Before I'd register as an indy, I would register as a Puke just so I could vote for the asshole in the primary least likely to to win in the general election. ;)
John Amato
You might want to read about theories on election turnout and voting.
Peripheral Voters are key to explaining American voting behavior.
I am currently working on a study for my Political Analysis class. The study asks the question does greater voter turnout help the Democrats in statewide elections in Missouri.
My literature review found studies by James DeNardo and Bob Martinez that define most voters as "independent" or Peripheral. They change depending on the times. As the distinctions between the parties lessens, the core voters fade away.
Most people are "independents".
LOTSA PPL PROGGGERS - ALL GOODe!!! CONSERVADEMZ IDJITZ LEIK GOP POOPR SCOOPRZ. GOT NO TARMAL! WOOT BAGS REDDY FR BIG TIME CRASHKY MESSS - NO HOEP LOST - ONLY DOOOSHBAG POO! WANG BANG ITT TO THE MAXXX - GETTIN REDDY FOR BIG SLIIDE OIL GOES GOIN DOWN INTO LIVIGN BELCH OF LOST TARMAL. FREE THE PEE! FREE IT ON GRAVES OF OLDE THINKIN RIGHTWINGGERZ. GET YOUR TARMAL!
can understand?
The Capitalists
I think slow and agonizing is more like it.
Time will tell.
And as Einstein noted, it is relative to the position and the speed of the observer that the observed procession of time is perceived.
that the majority of Americans are conservative while at the same time the majority of voters are democrats...........hmmm, seems that the Repugs clearly do not have a coherent understanding of the term conservative.
Repugs are clueless on most issues that work for most Americans.....and Dems are afraid of offending the ultra-wealthy 2%.
So many people here are turning language on its head.
The demographics that need attention are those of class.
For many years, in a effort that is parallel to their unrelenting propaganda in all avenues of communication. The Corporate/Capitalist class has tried to portray the majority of Americans as having risen to the MIDDLE CLASS. This because they had rising incomes which narrowed income inequality.
The Capitalists eliminate the working class from the lexicon, even as they unrelentingly push them back down into the mud. It is done through propaganda and a general destruction of the political language in order to further rob them of their power.
Class SHOULD NOT be described according to income but rather by the power that one has to determine the nature of one's work. If you are supervised and thereby informed on how, what and when you do your work, YOU ARE WORKING CLASS. No matter how well they pay you, you are supervised.
By that metric 62% of the population in the US is working class. Well paid, poorly paid, unpaid (the Capitalist would love to return to slavery if they could), you are working class.
If you are a mid level supervisor, a professional specialist ie a Doctor, a Lawyer, what have you and you have authority over the nature of your work you are middle class. You are still working for someone, at least their interest and they pay you, but you have power to decide things about your work for yourself.
If you have sufficient financial resources that your income comes from the investment of those resources, you are of the Capitalist class. You are working for no one but yourself.
Strictly speaking, any small business owner is a Capitalist, but I personally prefer to place them in the middle class if they work along side their workers. Typically this happens until there a somewhere around twenty employees.
By my metric the Capitalist class is the top 1% of wealth, I am not using income as the metric because the wealth yields the power. The inequality of income in the US is at near levels, the inequality of wealth is even greater. Many people have absolutely no wealth at all.
Being wealthy does not a Capitalist make. Being wealthy AND GREEDY does.
Capitalists know no bounds of the desires to GROW their capital. That is why as a system it is doomed on a finite piece of rock.
By my metric:
One per cent of the population is of the Capitalist class, the upper class.
Sixty two per cent is of the working class. By some metrics this number could be as high as eighty per cent.
The remainder are of the middle class, depending on the metrics, somewhere between nineteen and thirty seven per cent.
A socialist is concerned with advancing the power of the working class.
A conservative is concerned with maintaining and advancing the power of the Capitalist class.
The power of one class comes at the expense of the others. The Capitalists, it should be noted, have such great individual power that they can act strictly out of interest for themselves. This is precisely the type of language they use to hoodwink working class people into voting against their own interest. They convince them that promoting an ideology of the power of the individual benefits individuals with no power to begin with. This is absurd, but the logic escapes too many people.
Why in American politics do 62% of the people never manage to completely capture the government?
It is the propaganda and push back of the 1% and anyone of the other groups they can co-opt, hoodwink and deceive.
They started with the Creel committee and they have been manufacturing consent every since.
Lumping Independents is impossible. Their growth over the past couple of years has been fueled by disgruntled Republicans for the most part. But even this group is to some extent split by those that believe the GOP isn't conservative enough (the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin group) and those, much smaller,
who are rebelling against the "Fundamentalist" wing of the GOP. Curiously, at the current time both these groups are under the same Independent banner for opposite reasons. This was somewhat played out in the NY23 special election.
Then we have that group of more traditional independents, made up largely by "libertarians" of various
sizes and shapes. Many are conflicted by having to decide which in their minds is the current greatest enemy: too much government or too little individual freedom. They too are scared by the Fundamentalists, but now they're scare by the debt.
Then we have people who just don't really care all that much. They register to vote but don't want to have to take any stand at the time. "Independent/Decline to State" is a convenient way to sort of hang around the fringes.
The one direct consequence I see of the growth of Independents fleeing the GOP is less one of how many voters the GOP will actually lost come election day, but more one of on-going funding of the party. These former Repubs aren't all that likely to make specific donations (exception perhaps for the tea partiers when they're given their instructions).
64 here and strongly progressive/liberal. Wife of 33 years is 60 and a democrat. In a strongly red state...Tx.
who has NEVER voted Republican - NEVER have, NEVER will.
Although I call myself a "Huey Long" Liberal Progressive, that is merely the most conservative mantle that I could bear to label myself as. (In reality, my political beliefs lay somewhere to the left of either Rep. Dennis Kucinich OR Sen. Bernie Sanders.)
I have never missed an opportunity to vote, even if that meant WRITING-IN a candidate when there were only Neo-Con Republicans OR Neo-Liberal Democrats on the ballot. That said, I will admit to voting FOR Obama, and currently experiencing "voter's remorse" for having done so.
Fork the Corporatists! Burn down Wall Street! Roll out the guillotines! Eat the Rich!
And now you know ...
If you have record low numbers of people self-identifying as Republicans, aren't all these recent "independent" analyses over-weighted with ex-Repubes? So, when in Virginia, "Independents" voted for the Repube Gubenatorial candidate 55-45%, they didn't tell you that Repube self-identification had dropped from 35-25%. So 10% of those "independents" stopped calling themselves "Republican" (a la Bill O'Reilly) but still voted for the fascist candidate.
By the way, I made up those percentages for the sake of illustration. I haven't looked at the actual numbers.
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