Centrists or Independents or both?

The Hankster has a very interesting brief post up about What do independent voters need to do?????. In it she argues that Independents are not Swing Voters and points to the most recent Talk/Talk from the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP).

The problem that I see is that "Independents" are far from unified and indeed it may not be possible to unify even a simple majority of "Independents" on any sort of political platform which includes very many positions.

I wish Todd from the old Dean Independents blog was around. He and I talked quite a bit via email about how and if Independents could be unified and his summation of Independents was the best I've ever seen. I forget exactly how he categorized them (it's been a couple years...) but he grouped Indies into I think it was three basic categories and then explained why there was precious little common ground between them. I tried really hard to talk him into helping me launch this blog, along with Donald, and participate as a writer, but he wanted nothing to do with politics and so Don and I launched it ourselves.

Fred Newman (Talk/Talk) correctly points out that nationally we are a nation divided into thirds - 1/3 Democrat, 1/3 Republican and 1/3 Independent. But he also unwittingly underscores why the 1/3 of Independents are likely to never agree on a common platform when he repeatedly refers to "progressive Independents." There are lots of conservative Independents. And I would argue, based largely on what I see in the blogosphere, that the largest ideological group among Independents who are politically active is the Centrists.

I fully agree with Newman and Salit (the other half of the Talk/Talk duo) that Indies should hold out and not give our votes so easily to either of the main two political parties as Swing Voters. It would be really nice if we could hold out for better terms before agreeing to pull the lever on election day. But, to do so we'd have to come together as a group and present a united front and I personally am skeptical that that can be done. At least on the national level. I do think that it could perhaps be done on a state level. But, if so I would expect that there would be divisions between different state groupings over who to give their votes to.

The much more realistic scenario for radically altering the political landscape in this country would be for a Centrist party roughly along the lines of the new Israeli Kadima party. Disaffected and Centrist members of both the Republican and Democratic parties form a key constituency of the Swing Voter bloc which routinely decides elections in this country. In fact I would guess (I have no polling to back this up...) that the aforementioned Dems and GOPers are probably half of the Swing Vote on average. So it seems to me that the more likely and pragmatic grouping would be for Centrists to come together and form a new party with which to offer America and viable third option. But... I think it would require some high profile politicians from both major parties to jump ship just as how the Israeli Kadima party was formed by a handful of high profile politicians.

All of the reasons that Newman and Salit offer for why Independents should or could come together to form a viable third way are echoed, albeit within the context of Centrism rather than Independence, by The Centrist Coalition and acclaimed journalist and political speech writer John Avlon's Independent Nation melds the two into a single concept - Independent Centrists as a force for meaningful change to the American political landscape.

From where I sit and having been a politically active Independent for close to two decades now... I think that the Centrist angle is the more viable one. Particularly after having watched Kadima go from infancy to control of the Israeli government in a matter of months. Although I don't expect that it would go nearly as fast here, I do think that this is the most viable model for change.

What do you think?