Wanted: Suggestible Celebrities
By Mitch Berg
The sub-head on today’s piece on the Ventura Independence Party reads:
The third party’s dismal results on Nov. 7 are prompting a reassessment of the way it appeals to independent-minded voters.
Mark Brunswick – the Strib’s political writer who did the piece – knows better than this (and shows us so, later in the piece). There is nothing “Independent” about the Independence Party.
Independent voters remain a relatively small bloc of the electorate, and even they are not a reliable source of support for IP candidates.
The week before the election, the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found that hard-core independents make up one in 10 Minnesota voters.
And exit polling showed that Peter Hutchinson, the gubernatorial candidate of the Independence Party, captured only 12 percent of the independents.
“Independence” was never what the Ventura Independence Party was about. After Ross Perot and before Jesse Ventura, the party drew the customary, embarassing 1-2% that the likes of the Libertarians and Greens drew in significant elections. Once Perot left the scene, the party was taken over by mushy-middle DFLers like Dean Barkley and Tim Penny – wonky Democrats who made “moderation” their big stump talking point, with about as much success as it always has.
Then along came Ventura, who won the governor’s race for the same reason Minnesotans run from hot saunas into cold lakes, or snowmobile through the dark while hammered, or root eternally for the Vikings despite their record – because it’s our nature to do dumb things for the fun of it.
Of course, you’d have to have been dumb enough to be a mainstream media figure to be fooled by the inner workings of the Ventura Administration, which was essentially Ventura’s irascible “personality”, with Dean Barkley and Tim Penny pulling Ventura’s strings on all things policy-related. It’s why Ventura ran – and won – on a promise of returning the entire budget surplus to the taxpayers, but governed on a wonky, picayune formula that divided the surplus up among puny refunds and spending. Lots and lots of spending, which turned into a huge deficit when the economy recessed in the early ’00s.
DFL-Lite.
With Ventura gone, the party is back to its roots; wonks. People who say things like “good government” with chipper earnestness, believing that government solves problems and that if you just twiddle the knobs enough eventually everything will work just fine.
The IP is like the AV Club for people with Poli Sci degrees who had to get real jobs after college. Nobody is fooled.
Well, almost nobody:
While some idealize independents as more serious about politics than party adherents, in reality they tend to be less informed, less likely to vote and less interested in politics, said Kathryn Pearson, assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.
“These are not the people who constitute an active, viable party,” she said.
Pearson added that today’s partisan polarization makes it less likely that people will back a third-party candidate if they see it as a wasted vote.
So when people involved in the IP say things like…:
“There has been in the past a presumption among the Independence Party that we can simply state a good idea and people will flock to it. We know that presumption is wrong, but we have been slow to adapt,” wrote Peter Tharaldson, the party’s Fifth Congressional District chairman, in a rough draft of a position paper on the party’s future.
IP state chairman Jim Moore acknowledged that voter support for the party this year was weaker than hoped.
“Minnesota voters chose to remain on the teeter-totter that is the Democratic and Republican two-party system,” Moore said. “At a minimum, we can hold them accountable, but the reason why we’re in this is to win and show Minnesota a better way of governing. Flat out, we didn’t convince enough people that we could do that this time around.”
…I have to wonder if even the the IP’s tiny film of partisans even believes this crap anymore? The IP’s showing in governor races drops by a little over half in each election.
The Independence Party needs a celebrity. A big celebrity with huge name recognition and a big mouth with lots of big-sounding but very shallow ideas to appeal to people who really don’t think about politics all that hard, like boat fees and license tabs, but who’s willing to govern as a marionette for Tim Penny, Dean Barkley and Peter Hutchinson.
I’m thinking an appeal to Madonna, Tim Robbins or Michael Moore might work.
