Independent voters are the new black of national politics. The steamrolling momentum of John McCain and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns can be attributed in large part to their support among independents. It says a lot when a guy with two years in the Senate can take on the Clintons and win, and it says even more when a guy can score the GOP nomination while only getting roughly a third of the conservative vote.
Independents have consistently made up 22 percent of the Oregon voting bloc for the last seven years, with little growth or loss one way or the other. As our state’s primaries are closed to those who are not registered party members, we usually stand by during presidential primaries. Oregon’s snug place on the tail end of the season has historically made our state’s choices largely irrelevant.
This year our primaries are May 20, tying us with Kentucky as the sixth-to-last state to vote. Rockin’.
Oregonian independents that lean to the right can assume their usual metaphorical lawn chairs this year, with McCain having all but locked up the GOP nomination. But if you’re a left-leaning independent with a fondness for one of the two Democratic candidates, voting life has the potential to get weird these days.
Periodic whispers echo through The Oregonian’s op-ed page that this year, just maybe, Oregon’s primary might actually matter in the eleventh hour of the nomination process. Obama is poised to sweep the rest of February, and Clinton is set to rake in wins in March. Howard Dean talked about negotiating a deal to avoid a brokered convention, but the likelihood of either camp giving any ground seems doubtful.
As such, May 20 begins to get more and more relevant. Ellen Goodman, syndicated columnist for the Boston Globe, even referred to Oregon as “the big May enchilada,” in an article about the current Democratic tie.
All of this gives independents the sudden opportunity to register as Democrats and get in on this process, bringing up loads of ideological questions along the way. How much does registering with a party betray one’s values? What is a more pragmatic way of letting your voice be heard: decrying partisan politics by refusing to align yourself, or voting for candidates in the closest party you like? And what choice best serves that slippery quality so elusive to the left, unity?
None of these questions, obviously, have any right answers, and it all depends on which values one holds to strongest. After a month of weighing my distaste for partisanship against my Obama-mania, I held my nose and registered as a Democrat last week. But I can’t say I recommend the experience to everyone.
Unity is such a complex and important aspect of today’s politics, and yet it is growing to be a shadowy and twisting one. With Democrats split between Clinton and Obama, the Republican Party experiencing a severe identity crisis in the virtual nomination of John McCain and a fast-growing national bloc of independent voters letting their voices get heard, our country’s long-perceived polarization is becoming less of a classic “us versus them” battle, and more of an ideological mush.
If we are to hold unity as a vital byproduct of a strong and healthy nation, one has to wonder what helps such a cause more: staying an independent, or registering with a party that doesn’t completely line up with one’s beliefs.
The notion of unity dovetails with a much more shifty word that can take on connotations both good and bad:
compromise. If we think of compromise as in, “to compromise one’s principles,” compromising is usually thought of as negative; if we think of compromise as in, “to compromise with another person,” it’s thought of as positive.
So what kind of compromise leads to a more unified America? What does a unified America even look like? Are we looking for a country colored purple, or a country colored nothing at all? And how does that translate to the dilemma that liberal independents are facing before the registration deadline of April 29?
Partial answers lie somewhere in this coming year, one that will undoubtedly change the political landscape of the country. In the meantime, Oregon’s primaries are still May 20. Democrats, I’ll see you at the ballot box.