Third Party and Independent Daily discontinued

Unfortunately, this news blog has become inactive and I have been unable to get in touch with the Owner/Administrator in order to redo, or simply close it.
Therefore, anyone who ventures on here should be informed that this blog is now defunct and non-operational.

New "Unofficial" Constitution Party Newsletter

Via the Constitution Party discussion forum:

For the last month I have been putting together an unofficial newsletter of the Constitution Party. It's a first issue and is mainly geared as an introduction to our party and I believe future issues would involve more party-insider related subjects. 

The newsletter is entitled The Restoration and is hosted at We Want Liberty. 

Independent Voters, the Media, and the Movement

The Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat continues to reverberate (or is that ricochet?) in the media [for a quick round-up of latest Charlie Cook in National Journal, Robert Reich on Huffington Post, Dan Balz in Washington Post and Kristi Keck on CNN, see today's Hankster] and independent voters remain center stage (the newly elected Senator is that guy who posed nude for Cosmo, right?...) To wit:

• Howard Fineman gets it right with one of the most grounded descriptions of independents in print in Independent Minded (Newsweek).
• Also of note, Elizabeth Benjamin, who took Ben's place at the Daily News when Mr. Smith went to Washington with Politico, gets it right in Bloomberg's Independence (Pay)Day by making the first ever in print distinction between the grassroots NYC Independence Party Organizations and the Upstate-Anything-But-Independent-"We're proud to be the party of business"-MacKay crowd.
• And then there's Thomas Friedman's critique of Obama's first year where Friedman laments the disappearance of the President's "amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected". Mr. Friedman apparently misses the distinction between running for office and governing the country, but hey, 2 outa 3 ain't bad...
• Oh, and be sure to follow the dialog about what exactly the Tea Party movement is and where it came from, latest by Ben McGrath in The New Yorker.

Much (much) more over at The Hankster... Oh, and by the way, The Hankster also blogs at Donklephant. Check it out!

Lessons from Massachusetts from National Organizer of Independents

Jackie Salit, president of IndependentVoting.org issued the following statement about the Massachusetts Senate special election on Tuesday:

"The Obama team needs to learn a lesson from Massachusetts. If you don't attend to the political dynamics in the independent movement, you'll pay the price. That movement is in the early stages of its development and is subject to many pushes and pulls. While the progressive leadership of the movement played the key role in swinging independents to Obama in 2008, the Obama team has turned a blind eye since then, choosing instead to focus only on the Democratic Party base.  But if you do that, instead of finding ways to cultivate the progressive voices in independent politics, you're going to lose elections like the one yesterday. And, you might even lose the White House if you don't wake up to the fact that there is an emerging political universe - the independent movement - that you know nothing about.”

Apparently at least ONE Dem agrees. From CNN Analysis by Marc Preston: Brown's win changes political narrative for 2010: One of the biggest challenges for Democrats is wooing back independent voters, who broke Brown's way Tuesday to help him beat Coakley. "If we don't figure out a way to talk to independent voters, we are done," lamented another high-level Democratic staffer, speaking freely on the condition of anonymity.

Independent Voters: Let's Get This UNparty Started!

Jackie Salit's analysis of independents' support of Obama, health care and the current state of the independent movement... Mass independents are lining up behind Brown in the upcoming special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat in the US Senate -- ignore the independents at your own peril! ...More and more elected officials are leaving the parties... Why are California minor parties SOOOOO negative on open primaries? Not sure where Green Party gov candidate Laura Wells stands on the issue (let me know, otherwise, we'll call her to find out.....) Mike Bloomberg invested $400K in the NYC Independence Party -- is Harold Ford looking in the wrong direction? Hmmm...... More news for independents on The Hankster... Cross posted on Donklephant...

Some Questions for Independent Voters, Democracy Advocates and Third Parties

Is it possible to have political organization that isn't a political party? Can people impact policy without being organized as a voting bloc? How do you fight the power of entrenched corrupt partisan organizations without becoming one of them? Where does the issue of power come in? How can independents break out of paralysis? What is "personal democracy"? Isn't democracy by definition collective, and thus requires organization? Why do most minor parties object to open primaries? Wouldn't third parties be well served by inviting independents to participate in their candidate selection process? Is the Tea Party independent, or a right wing faction of the Repubs hoping to push the RP to the right?

Of note:

• Politics is People, Not Parties (Future Majority/Craig Berger's Blog) Linked on Third Party and Independent Daily yesterday, this article is also posted with commentary on Wire Tap Mag  NOTE: Author of the quoted text is Alejandro Ribo, who seems to be the European (Spanish) version of techPresident, which "was started by Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry as a crosspartisan group blog covering how the 2008 presidential candidates were using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters affected the campaign." Rasiej and Sifry host a yearly conference called Personal Democracy Forum centering around issues of communications technology, open internet policy, and government "transparency" that draws 1000 techies from across the country.Independent Mayor Mike Bloomberg was their keynote last year