Thanks for this survey. We can hope that some of these ideas and organizations will have impact.
But one thing mentioned seems misguided to me. When they began to be seriously advocated, term limits seems like an obvious good thing to me. Having observed them since, here is what I see as the problem. Without term limits, a legislator can largely ignore their party and respond to their constituents. If they stay popular, they can do this for a long time. So the path to a long career is to attend to the constituents. Under term limits one only has a long political career with the help of one's party, as one moves from one office to the next. In my opinion this has increased the partisan aspect of state politics, especially here in Michigan where I've seen it closely.
Interesting. In Congress, you might get a more beneficial natural retirement of members that mitigates all these crazy primary surges, many driven by attacks on long-term incumbents.
Agree. Term limits will deprive Congress of some of its most knowledgeable and skillful members. It seems intuitively appealing but when you think about it, well not.
As a fellow Marylander, and former active member of a third party, I quit. After every stinkin' election, the MD Dem party decertifies Libertarian and Green parties. Two years later, both need to waste months collecting signatures trying to prove we're real, while burning off emotional and financial capital. As Taylor Swift says, it's EXHAUSTING: https://youtu.be/WA4iX5D9Z64?t=138
Fuck me over once, shame on me. Fuck me over every two years and tell me to thank you for it, you're the MD Democratic party.
I was a poli sci major and used to love this. But this... my goodness. Fuck them, and fuck Maryland. They 100% are disenfranchising many votes, intentionally. "Here: choose the candidates that we have chosen for you." sounds rather Putonian* when said aloud.
* Of or related to Vladamir Putin.
I loathe the political bombast that is everywhere, but Trump is a pox on this country that our ruling elite have wrought. My distain for him is matched only by my distain for those who made him happen.
When I want to blame someone for Trump, I tend to look in the mirror...we've all ignored the economic emergencies that have brought him into office (regardless of whether he'll alleviate those emergencies or not).
There is no election system that will make dishonest people honest. The first thing, the only thing, that will change the course of our political system is for a majority of us to place integrity ahead of political loyalty.
What election system would have filtered Hitler our of the system? There is none. Whatever system there was, Hitler would have perverted it, and too many people would (and did) go along.
Here is an idea that may sound nebulous, but I think it can gain traction, in these days of direct internet communication: Make it about the integrity and character of candidates. Stress that, over and over, and people will start to go that direction. Yes, it's an uphill battle, but good government will never derive from reconstituted elections systems. Whatever election system you come up with. the two parties will find a way to subvert it.
And don't presume that a third party candidate must win in order to matter. We can easily see that unelectable candidates can still swing elections and drive policy. Ross Perot is just one obvious example.
Very good point. People don’t seem to care much much honesty and integrity in their leaders, or maybe they are just resigned to the opposite given the current crop. Would be nice to elevate those traits as voting criteria.
The NY Post may be ideologically conservative but it is certainly not MAGA. Not a day goes by without a piece criticizing Trump.
As for me, I oppose the two main suggestions. I hate the idea of open primaries. I hate primaries altogether. I would like to return to a time when the party insiders chose the candidates at a convention. Nowadays the candidates for national office are chosen after years long processes where they have to raise and spend millions upon millions of dollars and stand up with a dozen or so others at a dog and pony show which has descended into absurdity. All this so a miniscule percentage of the party's members can choose the candidate based on who is the best at insulting. No wonder we got Biden and Trump. In the old days losers like for example "Beto O Rourke" would have never even been in the conversation. Pete Buttigieg? He was mayor of South Bend Indiana. But he was considered a viable candidate for president?
I also oppose proportionate representation. As it is, we are slowly morphing into a parliamentary system with Congressman and Senators more loyal to their party than their constituents. This would make it worse.
The thing I agree with is working to form a third party. I genuinely believe there is a chance a new moderate party could replace one or both of the other two as they trend extremist. But it will take years of hard work and a willingness to lose elections in the short term. We need a party that is unabashedly patriotic and genuinely committed to our Constitutional system with all that entails. No demanding the method of electing presidents be abolished when we don't like the results. No demand for maximum Democracy when our system is designed to balance Democracy and minority protection. No supporting presidential overreach when your party has the office and condemning it when the other party has it. I truly believe that a consistent call for moderation and decency in rhetoric and action will resonate over a period of years. That's what I favor.
Should technically increase it. One-party states won’t be able to disenfranchise voters of the other party, or smaller parties, through aggressive gerrymandering. If the minority party in a two-party election gets 40 percent of the vote, they get proportional number of allocated seats rather than facing the prospect of having no seats after the other party wipes them out through map drawing.
Do you think California, Illinois or New York would go for this? I live in Nebraska, one of two states who are not "winner take all" states (electoral).
Currently? No. But I think there will be more movement on this front after the latest round of aggressive partisan gerrymandering and attempts in one-party states run by both parties to wipe out any representation for the opposition (or smaller parties).
I used to think of Joe Manchin as a Rep in Dem's clothing, derailing every piece of Democratic legislation with his all-powerful tie-breaking vote (and Joe Rogan is just a right-wing goofus, no matter how you slice him). It's great to know that out of office Manchin has decided to do right by independent voters who want nonpartisan solutions. Thanks for this excellent, illuminating post - I'll check out these links and learn more about this movement!
With media, the influence of partisan outlets goes even further than their direct audience.
A small set of major national outlets produce the bulk of original reporting, since they have better access, more resources, and benefit from network effects around sourcing. This group includes papers of record like the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and LAT, as well as broadcast networks like CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, and Fox.
All of their original reporting is conducted through the lens of what will resonate with their audiences, which often leads to some level of partisan alignment. This original reporting then fuels the broader aggregation, interpretation, and commentary that drives social discourse.
It is difficult for independent outlets to reverse the inherent biases in the sources of original reporting for major events, or even find enough source information relevant to the independent voices in America.
Don't get me wrong, independent outlets can produce phenomenal original reporting, but the broader independent media market is significantly under-resourced relative to the mass media outlets.
I appreciate and respect what you do. We need more people like you, and more support for people like you.
Also, I second the shoutout of More in Common, Braver Angels, and Bridge Grades. Great organizations.
High quality roundup of the range of efforts and initiatives to reclaim political power by non-partisan free agents from partisan interests who revel in their mutually beneficial duopoly. Useful to see this all in one place. Nice going, John.
I don't think you get to say "I want nothing to do with the two parties" but also say "I want a voice in deciding the party nominee". Here in Kansas where I live it's a closed primary and I am a registered Democrat, and I vote in the primaries for centrists. I'm from Wisconsin which is open primary, and with Tiffany facing no real challenge, how many votes for Hong were from Republicans trying to give him an easier opponent?
I do like the jungle style primaries, and am all in for ways to break the two party lock on our political system.
I think I understand the mission you set out in the first Free Agent piece: better understand politically unaffiliated Americans, give them more visibility, and explore the organizations and reforms emerging around them.
This new piece feels like it is moving into something more strategic. You identify five emerging approaches that different independent leaders and organizations are pursuing, and you suggest they are worthy of consideration and support. I can see the beginnings of a common strategic direction behind them: weaken two-party gatekeeping, increase political competition and independent leverage, reduce polarization, and make it easier to solve problems across party lines.
What I am still looking for is a more explicit mission or evaluative framework that connects those five approaches tightly enough that we can judge whether they are actually working toward the same end.
When I say “mission,” I do not simply mean “give independents more influence.” That feels more like a means. I mean something concrete enough that, several years from now, we could look at the political system and ask whether the effort had actually succeeded.
For example, I could imagine several different missions:
* Stop-the-bleeding mission: Independents become a force that reduces some of the immediate dysfunction of the two-party system—preventing highly partisan actions that most of the country does not support, reducing destructive polarization, or forcing compromise on a defined set of urgent problems.
* Representation mission: Independents help make elected officials and public policy more closely reflect the views of the broader electorate rather than primarily the most committed Democratic and Republican voters. If that is the mission, we ought eventually to be able to measure whether representation actually became more congruent with what voters across a state or district believe.
* Problem-solving capability mission: Independents create a political capability that the country currently lacks—the ability to evaluate ideas outside party boundaries, build coalitions around workable solutions, and move important issues forward when neither party can do so on its own. Here the measure might be whether independent influence actually produces legislation or governing solutions that otherwise would not have happened.
* Transition mission: Independents help build the capabilities the country needs to move from today’s immediate problems toward a stronger future—better policy development, stronger governing talent, more effective institutions, and better implementation.
* Long-term strategic mission: Independents help create a political space where the country can think more seriously about where it needs to be ten or twenty years from now—economically, technologically, geopolitically, fiscally, educationally—and develop strategies that are not bounded by either party’s existing agenda.
It may be none of these exactly. It may instead be a capability that cuts across all three levels: helping stop immediate deterioration, helping build the capabilities needed for transition, and improving our ability to think and act strategically about the future.
But I think something at this level of concreteness is needed.
The reason is that the five approaches can then be tested against it. If open primaries are part of the strategy, what outcome are they expected to improve? If a small independent bloc in Congress is successful, what do we expect those members actually to accomplish? If we build independent media, is its purpose mainly to counter partisan distortion, or should it also develop policy ideas and governing capability? If we encourage third parties, how will we know they are increasing useful political competition rather than simply changing which major party wins?
Without that higher-level mission or framework, I can see why each of the five ideas might be useful, and I can infer the common denominator behind them, but I have a harder time determining whether they add up to a coherent strategy.
I may also be asking something slightly different from what you intend. Your closing sentence suggests that Free Agent Politics may primarily be trying to cover and assess the different strategies emerging among independents, rather than create one unified strategy itself. If that is the case, then what I am really looking for is the framework you will use to evaluate them: what problem is each strategy trying to solve, what assumptions does it depend on, what outcome should it produce, and how would we know whether it is working
Astute points, thanks. I'm sympathetic to your desire for a framework, and have thoughts on what needs to be done to better organize independents. But at this stage, I do not want to promote *one* particular strategic framework for independents to pursue or employ to evaluate their political and policy options. Since I'm just getting started covering this community, I don't want to assume too much about people in it. As I've written many times, there are many different types of independents and the only angle I can see so far that unites them involves political changes to strengthen their voice and power (regardless of ideology). But this does not necessarily mean the reforms I have above. I just found them interesting. I'll keep pondering your good observations.
They can do that now with closed primaries. I think the only way to really get rid of “meddling” by members of the other party is to have no party registration or partisan primaries at all. Or else the parties need to be private agents that restrict their primaries to dues paying members or some other scheme not funded by the state. But, the main reason for open primaries would be to give unaffiliated and independent voters a chance to register their preferences, particularly in states where one party dominates and the primary is everything.
"They can do that now with closed primaries" is not technically correct.
There are many ways parties/states actually restrict voting in primaries, including holding both party primaries the same day and most importantly voter lists based on formal affiliation.
Thanks for this survey. We can hope that some of these ideas and organizations will have impact.
But one thing mentioned seems misguided to me. When they began to be seriously advocated, term limits seems like an obvious good thing to me. Having observed them since, here is what I see as the problem. Without term limits, a legislator can largely ignore their party and respond to their constituents. If they stay popular, they can do this for a long time. So the path to a long career is to attend to the constituents. Under term limits one only has a long political career with the help of one's party, as one moves from one office to the next. In my opinion this has increased the partisan aspect of state politics, especially here in Michigan where I've seen it closely.
Interesting. In Congress, you might get a more beneficial natural retirement of members that mitigates all these crazy primary surges, many driven by attacks on long-term incumbents.
Fair point. Might play out differently at the federal level.
Today I think way too many members of Congress are entirely creatures of their party and ignore their constituents.
Yes, except their lobbyists - those are the constituents who get all the attention until the votes must be counted again.
Agree. Term limits will deprive Congress of some of its most knowledgeable and skillful members. It seems intuitively appealing but when you think about it, well not.
As a fellow Marylander, and former active member of a third party, I quit. After every stinkin' election, the MD Dem party decertifies Libertarian and Green parties. Two years later, both need to waste months collecting signatures trying to prove we're real, while burning off emotional and financial capital. As Taylor Swift says, it's EXHAUSTING: https://youtu.be/WA4iX5D9Z64?t=138
Fuck me over once, shame on me. Fuck me over every two years and tell me to thank you for it, you're the MD Democratic party.
I was a poli sci major and used to love this. But this... my goodness. Fuck them, and fuck Maryland. They 100% are disenfranchising many votes, intentionally. "Here: choose the candidates that we have chosen for you." sounds rather Putonian* when said aloud.
* Of or related to Vladamir Putin.
I loathe the political bombast that is everywhere, but Trump is a pox on this country that our ruling elite have wrought. My distain for him is matched only by my distain for those who made him happen.
When I want to blame someone for Trump, I tend to look in the mirror...we've all ignored the economic emergencies that have brought him into office (regardless of whether he'll alleviate those emergencies or not).
Hm. You make a good point. Next time I feel the need to blame someone, I shall heed your words and blame you.
Hello, is this thing on?
My large point was that as a third party voter, as John suggested, the two party system has already found a way to keep my opinion from mattering.
There is no election system that will make dishonest people honest. The first thing, the only thing, that will change the course of our political system is for a majority of us to place integrity ahead of political loyalty.
What election system would have filtered Hitler our of the system? There is none. Whatever system there was, Hitler would have perverted it, and too many people would (and did) go along.
Here is an idea that may sound nebulous, but I think it can gain traction, in these days of direct internet communication: Make it about the integrity and character of candidates. Stress that, over and over, and people will start to go that direction. Yes, it's an uphill battle, but good government will never derive from reconstituted elections systems. Whatever election system you come up with. the two parties will find a way to subvert it.
And don't presume that a third party candidate must win in order to matter. We can easily see that unelectable candidates can still swing elections and drive policy. Ross Perot is just one obvious example.
Very good point. People don’t seem to care much much honesty and integrity in their leaders, or maybe they are just resigned to the opposite given the current crop. Would be nice to elevate those traits as voting criteria.
The NY Post may be ideologically conservative but it is certainly not MAGA. Not a day goes by without a piece criticizing Trump.
As for me, I oppose the two main suggestions. I hate the idea of open primaries. I hate primaries altogether. I would like to return to a time when the party insiders chose the candidates at a convention. Nowadays the candidates for national office are chosen after years long processes where they have to raise and spend millions upon millions of dollars and stand up with a dozen or so others at a dog and pony show which has descended into absurdity. All this so a miniscule percentage of the party's members can choose the candidate based on who is the best at insulting. No wonder we got Biden and Trump. In the old days losers like for example "Beto O Rourke" would have never even been in the conversation. Pete Buttigieg? He was mayor of South Bend Indiana. But he was considered a viable candidate for president?
I also oppose proportionate representation. As it is, we are slowly morphing into a parliamentary system with Congressman and Senators more loyal to their party than their constituents. This would make it worse.
The thing I agree with is working to form a third party. I genuinely believe there is a chance a new moderate party could replace one or both of the other two as they trend extremist. But it will take years of hard work and a willingness to lose elections in the short term. We need a party that is unabashedly patriotic and genuinely committed to our Constitutional system with all that entails. No demanding the method of electing presidents be abolished when we don't like the results. No demand for maximum Democracy when our system is designed to balance Democracy and minority protection. No supporting presidential overreach when your party has the office and condemning it when the other party has it. I truly believe that a consistent call for moderation and decency in rhetoric and action will resonate over a period of years. That's what I favor.
What would proportional representation do to minority representation?
Should technically increase it. One-party states won’t be able to disenfranchise voters of the other party, or smaller parties, through aggressive gerrymandering. If the minority party in a two-party election gets 40 percent of the vote, they get proportional number of allocated seats rather than facing the prospect of having no seats after the other party wipes them out through map drawing.
Do you think California, Illinois or New York would go for this? I live in Nebraska, one of two states who are not "winner take all" states (electoral).
Currently? No. But I think there will be more movement on this front after the latest round of aggressive partisan gerrymandering and attempts in one-party states run by both parties to wipe out any representation for the opposition (or smaller parties).
I used to think of Joe Manchin as a Rep in Dem's clothing, derailing every piece of Democratic legislation with his all-powerful tie-breaking vote (and Joe Rogan is just a right-wing goofus, no matter how you slice him). It's great to know that out of office Manchin has decided to do right by independent voters who want nonpartisan solutions. Thanks for this excellent, illuminating post - I'll check out these links and learn more about this movement!
How about American Promise....an organization trying to draft a constitutional amendment to allow the States to regulate campaign financing ?
We have 25 states on board !
With media, the influence of partisan outlets goes even further than their direct audience.
A small set of major national outlets produce the bulk of original reporting, since they have better access, more resources, and benefit from network effects around sourcing. This group includes papers of record like the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and LAT, as well as broadcast networks like CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, and Fox.
All of their original reporting is conducted through the lens of what will resonate with their audiences, which often leads to some level of partisan alignment. This original reporting then fuels the broader aggregation, interpretation, and commentary that drives social discourse.
It is difficult for independent outlets to reverse the inherent biases in the sources of original reporting for major events, or even find enough source information relevant to the independent voices in America.
Don't get me wrong, independent outlets can produce phenomenal original reporting, but the broader independent media market is significantly under-resourced relative to the mass media outlets.
I appreciate and respect what you do. We need more people like you, and more support for people like you.
Also, I second the shoutout of More in Common, Braver Angels, and Bridge Grades. Great organizations.
Good observations
High quality roundup of the range of efforts and initiatives to reclaim political power by non-partisan free agents from partisan interests who revel in their mutually beneficial duopoly. Useful to see this all in one place. Nice going, John.
I don't think you get to say "I want nothing to do with the two parties" but also say "I want a voice in deciding the party nominee". Here in Kansas where I live it's a closed primary and I am a registered Democrat, and I vote in the primaries for centrists. I'm from Wisconsin which is open primary, and with Tiffany facing no real challenge, how many votes for Hong were from Republicans trying to give him an easier opponent?
I do like the jungle style primaries, and am all in for ways to break the two party lock on our political system.
I think I understand the mission you set out in the first Free Agent piece: better understand politically unaffiliated Americans, give them more visibility, and explore the organizations and reforms emerging around them.
This new piece feels like it is moving into something more strategic. You identify five emerging approaches that different independent leaders and organizations are pursuing, and you suggest they are worthy of consideration and support. I can see the beginnings of a common strategic direction behind them: weaken two-party gatekeeping, increase political competition and independent leverage, reduce polarization, and make it easier to solve problems across party lines.
What I am still looking for is a more explicit mission or evaluative framework that connects those five approaches tightly enough that we can judge whether they are actually working toward the same end.
When I say “mission,” I do not simply mean “give independents more influence.” That feels more like a means. I mean something concrete enough that, several years from now, we could look at the political system and ask whether the effort had actually succeeded.
For example, I could imagine several different missions:
* Stop-the-bleeding mission: Independents become a force that reduces some of the immediate dysfunction of the two-party system—preventing highly partisan actions that most of the country does not support, reducing destructive polarization, or forcing compromise on a defined set of urgent problems.
* Representation mission: Independents help make elected officials and public policy more closely reflect the views of the broader electorate rather than primarily the most committed Democratic and Republican voters. If that is the mission, we ought eventually to be able to measure whether representation actually became more congruent with what voters across a state or district believe.
* Problem-solving capability mission: Independents create a political capability that the country currently lacks—the ability to evaluate ideas outside party boundaries, build coalitions around workable solutions, and move important issues forward when neither party can do so on its own. Here the measure might be whether independent influence actually produces legislation or governing solutions that otherwise would not have happened.
* Transition mission: Independents help build the capabilities the country needs to move from today’s immediate problems toward a stronger future—better policy development, stronger governing talent, more effective institutions, and better implementation.
* Long-term strategic mission: Independents help create a political space where the country can think more seriously about where it needs to be ten or twenty years from now—economically, technologically, geopolitically, fiscally, educationally—and develop strategies that are not bounded by either party’s existing agenda.
It may be none of these exactly. It may instead be a capability that cuts across all three levels: helping stop immediate deterioration, helping build the capabilities needed for transition, and improving our ability to think and act strategically about the future.
But I think something at this level of concreteness is needed.
The reason is that the five approaches can then be tested against it. If open primaries are part of the strategy, what outcome are they expected to improve? If a small independent bloc in Congress is successful, what do we expect those members actually to accomplish? If we build independent media, is its purpose mainly to counter partisan distortion, or should it also develop policy ideas and governing capability? If we encourage third parties, how will we know they are increasing useful political competition rather than simply changing which major party wins?
Without that higher-level mission or framework, I can see why each of the five ideas might be useful, and I can infer the common denominator behind them, but I have a harder time determining whether they add up to a coherent strategy.
I may also be asking something slightly different from what you intend. Your closing sentence suggests that Free Agent Politics may primarily be trying to cover and assess the different strategies emerging among independents, rather than create one unified strategy itself. If that is the case, then what I am really looking for is the framework you will use to evaluate them: what problem is each strategy trying to solve, what assumptions does it depend on, what outcome should it produce, and how would we know whether it is working
Astute points, thanks. I'm sympathetic to your desire for a framework, and have thoughts on what needs to be done to better organize independents. But at this stage, I do not want to promote *one* particular strategic framework for independents to pursue or employ to evaluate their political and policy options. Since I'm just getting started covering this community, I don't want to assume too much about people in it. As I've written many times, there are many different types of independents and the only angle I can see so far that unites them involves political changes to strengthen their voice and power (regardless of ideology). But this does not necessarily mean the reforms I have above. I just found them interesting. I'll keep pondering your good observations.
That’s fair. I understand your objective.
People who don't vote in primaries are irrelevant in the US political system, specially in the increasingly partisan gerrymandered districts.
Not being part of the two party system ends up making it stronger and more polarized.
That's one reason they should be open to all eligible voters!
Would open primaries increase the shenanigans of Rs voting in D primaries and vice versa?
They can do that now with closed primaries. I think the only way to really get rid of “meddling” by members of the other party is to have no party registration or partisan primaries at all. Or else the parties need to be private agents that restrict their primaries to dues paying members or some other scheme not funded by the state. But, the main reason for open primaries would be to give unaffiliated and independent voters a chance to register their preferences, particularly in states where one party dominates and the primary is everything.
"They can do that now with closed primaries" is not technically correct.
There are many ways parties/states actually restrict voting in primaries, including holding both party primaries the same day and most importantly voter lists based on formal affiliation.