Seth Bodnar - independent US Senate candidate

[Big Fin]

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5988528-joe-manchin-launches-independent-council/

 

[SAJ-99]

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5988528-joe-manchin-launches-independent-council/

All for it, but it has to acknowledge the problem. Most Ind and even Liberatarians started their careers as either Dems or Reps. Once they got name recognition they switched the letter and ran on name and power of incumbency. This and the Independent party seems to lack $$$. My guess is because Independent candidates can vary widely in their views and Americans don't want to do the hard work of vetting all the candidates. Because of this, any Indy is just going to steal votes of well-informed voters from a D or R in a close race. I hope that Bodnar breaks the cycle. It will be hard for other Independents until someone proves it can be done.

 

[406dn]

All for it, but it has to acknowledge the problem. Most Ind and even Liberatarians started their careers as either Dems or Reps. Once they got name recognition they switched the letter and ran on name and power of incumbency. This and the Independent party seems to lack $$$. My guess is because Independent candidates can vary widely in their views and Americans don't want to do the hard work of vetting all the candidates. Because of this, any Indy is just going to steal votes of well-informed voters from a D or R in a close race. I hope that Bodnar breaks the cycle. It will be hard for other Independents until someone proves it can be done.

I do not think most people neatly fit entirely in either party. But, given the fact that for almost the entirety of our history, there have been two political parties, that are dominant, people most often pick the party that come closest to their views. There are fringe parties, like the Green Party, Libertarian Party, but they effectively serve as spoilers of their own interests.

Going back fifty or sixty years, there were left and right wings in each party. The bulk of southern Democrats became Republicans, after the various civil rights acts became law. At one time all of New England was dominated by moderate Republicans.

Now the parties have sorted out to be more homogenous in their views. It makes bi partisan coalitions much harder to form. Committee chairmen were once nearly as powerful as the leaders of their party. Now they mostly get to bang a gavel, to restore order.

We can all see it's not working very well, but it is not easy to imagine it working much differently.

 

[SAJ-99]

We can all see it's not working very well, but it is not easy to imagine it working much differently.

We can restart Jefferson’s Democratic Republican Party and confuse everyone.

In the end, we the voters are to blame for any flaws in the system. We can revisit this thread in 4 months and see if Montanans put their vote behind their complaints.