Linda Killian’s book, The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents, is finally getting some attention. A string of authors — Douglas Schoen, John Avlon, and Omar Ali, to name a few — have been writing for years about the nascent movement of independent voters, now 40 percent of the country, to little notice from reviewers, pundits and the like. But last week, Killian finally drew the wrath of Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at The Center for American Progress, writing for The New Republic.

Teixeira emphatically denounces Killian’s book for propagating “the greatest myth in American politics: that independents are actually independent.” He is outraged that Killian, a columnist for U.S. News & World Report.com and now a resident scholar at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., has dared to assert that independent voters are something other than partisans in disguise. Citing a University of Michigan National Election Study showing that some 80 percent of independents lean to one or another of the two major parties, Teixeira pronounces the 40 percent of Americans who are independents to be a fiction, and Killian to be either an idiot or an incompetent.

Wow! For a man (actually, make that a MAN) who has devoted his political career to resuscitating a Democratic Party governing majority (he co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002), you would think he’d be a little more cautious about denouncing independents. Otherwise, his hoped for majority may get another slam, as it did in 2010 when independents expressed their disappointment and frustration with President Obama’s inability to conquer the partisanship in Washington, including the partisanship of his own party. Ruy might rue the day he tried to tear down Killian and the volatile movement-in-the-making she writes about.

Teixeira argues that voters are defined by who they vote for. Ergo, if independents vote for a Democrat or a Republican, they are really aligned with that party and are not independents at all. Hence, concludes Teixeira, why recognize the category at all? Leaving aside the obvious point that in nearly every election, the only choice voters have is a Democrat or a Republican, here’s where the rubber hits the road. Independents may cast a ballot, or ballots, for one or another major party candidate, but they still feel it is important to maintain their independence. In 2008, 60 percent of independents cast ballots for Barack Obama in the 33 states with open primaries or caucuses, handing him — rather than Hillary Clinton — the Democratic nomination. Independents then went on, as a whole, to support Obama 52 percent to 44 percent over John McCain in the general election. They chose the Democratic nominee and the President, but they did not become Democrats.

Similarly, in 2010, when independents punished Obama for subordinating their demand for post-partisan governance to the Democratic Party agenda, they did not re-register as Republicans. The post-midterm election Gallup polls show the percentage of independents increasing (38 percent), the percentage of Democrats on a decline (31 percent), and the Republican levels virtually static (29 percent). At the very least, it seems to me, Teixeira has to offer an explanation of that.

The problem, though, is that to do so means he’d have to give up the equation he has made up: who Americans vote for is who Americans are, politically speaking. My advice is put aside all the polls, the data and the focus groups and just listen to what the 40 percent are saying. They do not wish to enroll in any political party. In a system such as ours, where parties are quasi-governmental institutions which rule the roost, that is no small thing. It is an act of defiance against the partisan establishment. Will that defiance develop into an organized movement? Groups like mine which organize independent voters — IndependentVoting.org — believe it will.

To be fair, there are things in Killian’s book with which I disagree, most importantly her tendency to characterize independents as “centrists.” They aren’t. They span the political spectrum on traditional issues. I know this from 30 years of organizing. Even the Pew Center agreed that “The growing rejection of partisan identification does not imply a trend toward political moderation…”. However much their ideologies vary, though, independents do coalesce around agendas for structural political reform, something that Teixeira belittles with a yawn, even though the parties wield an obscene amount of power over the political process. As former Congressman Mickey Edwards, a champion of nonpartisan reform notes, “The goal is not to destroy parties but to transcend them; to welcome their contributions but end their dominance; and to take back from these private clubs control of our own elections and our own Congress.”

Teixeira observes that Obama’s efforts at compromise with Republicans cost him support among independents, which is surely true, but not because independents are really partisans, as he argues. Obama’s efforts failed to win independent support because compromise between the existing political camps is increasingly seen as both futile and insufficient. Independents want a new kind of political culture in which parties, partisanship and ideology do not rule the day, a radical demand in the face of the existing culture. The Obama camp would do well to relate to independent voters on that basis, but Democratic partisans like Teixeira seek to hold Obama hostage to a partisan coalition. There will never be a new progressive majority in this country without including independents as independents, not as “leaners.” Given how partisanship is standing in the way of social and economic development, the Democratic Party cannot substitute itself for that broader coalition.

Like most establishment analysts, Teixeira does not see or value things, in this case movements, which are in the process of becoming. He is correct that NO LABELS and Americans Elect are vaporous, but that’s because they are champions of centrism. They are not organizing independent voters to become a force for political transformation. They’re trying to spruce up the old partisan system. Good luck!

The problem with political science, which Teixeira worships, is that it isn’t a science and it’s extremely political. Killian’s book may have its flaws. But she did punch a hole in the Big Boys’ prevailing political science paradigm, the one that is strangling the country. You go, girl! That’s worth a read right there.

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According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, Americans’ distrust of government is at its highest level, with 89 percent of Americans saying they distrust our government. Another 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track, and 84 percent disapprove of Congress.

It’s easy to blame elected officials for the dysfunction in government. And each election cycle hope is raised that if we just elect the right person, the political gridlock that characterizes our current situation will be reversed.

But what if it’s not an issue of voting in the right people? What if the parties’ control over the political process is a structural problem that has made it impossible for elected officials to govern because party interests trump every other concern?

Voters are increasingly showing their lack of support for partisan politics. According to a recent Gallup poll, 40 percent of Americans identify as independents. Independents have become a permanent fixture in America’s political landscape. We are a plurality of voters, but we have no representation.

I’ve identified as an independent most of my adult life. But in Ohio, by voting for candidates in a primary election, I automatically become a party member and can be forced to sign a loyalty oath if I want to change which party primary I vote in for the next election. If I want to remain an independent, I’m excluded from voting for candidates in primary elections altogether, though expected to fund these elections as a taxpayer. That’s just one example of how party privilege trumps voter rights in this day and age.

Independents are starting to get organized and address the need for structural reforms. In Ohio, independents have formed a group called Independent Ohio and are participating in a national campaign led by IndependentVoting.org to pressure Congress for hearings on the second-class status of independents. The purpose of the hearings is to shine a spotlight on the biases independents face as a way of laying the foundation for change.

Independents want reforms that can prevent government from functioning exclusively on a partisan basis: open primaries, nonpartisan elections, nonpartisan redistricting reform, putting independents on the Federal Election Commission and reducing the domination of the parties over the people.

These reforms open up the process and empower the American people. Without structural changes to our political process, the people we elect — regardless of how much we support their program goals and no matter how committed or competent they are — will not be able to accomplish much. In a system based on self-preservation for the parties, taking care of the business of America takes a back seat. Independents are working to open up the political dialogue and transform the political landscape — so that the work of America can move ahead.

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A strange case in Tennessee got my attention. Now it’s before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, as the judges consider whether a political party has the right to overturn the results of a primary election conducted entirely in accordance with state law.

Here’s the background. Rosalind Kurita ran for re-election to the State Senate in 2008 and beat her opponent Tim Barnes by 19 votes in the Democratic Party primary. Candidate Barnes challenged the result on the grounds that Kurita won because many Republicans and independents participated in the election. But Tennessee, along with some 17 other states, does not have partisan registration. There, voters are just voters, and all are allowed to choose the primary they wish to vote in. So, if they’re were not registered into a party in the first place and cast their vote legally, on what grounds were those who voted for Candidate Kurita judged to be Republicans and independents? Shouldn’t their votes count the same as those who voted for Candidate Barnes?

In Tennessee, disputed primary elections are referred to the political party whose nomination the candidates seek. Here the matter was “adjudicated” by the Executive Committee of the State Democratic Party under rules adopted after the challenge was filed by Barnes. The “rules” articulated no standard by which the issue was to be determined. The Committee made no specific findings, but voided the election on the grounds that the results were “incurably uncertain.” The Party then gave the nomination to Barnes.

Kurita claimed that she was denied due process and unconstitutionally deprived of the election she had won. The trial court rejected her claim on the grounds that the Tennessee Democratic Party was a private organization that did not have to accord due process and, further, that she has had no legally protected interest in the results of the primary election she had won. The decision did not address the rights of the persons who voted for her, or their being deprived of their choice of candidates in a state run and state financed primary. (Apparently, the Tennessee Democratic Party was angry at Kurita because she had supported a Republican for election to the State Senate speaker office the year before she ran for re-election.)

Kurita, like Alice in Wonderland, has fallen into the rabbit’s hole of partisan American politics. The parties run the government; they write the laws by which the citizens of their states must finance and conduct primary elections. And when the outcome of an election is not to the party’s liking, it can overturn it on any grounds, or no grounds whatsoever, under a set of rules that are adopted for just that purpose.

To add to the madness, the Tennessee Democratic Party rested its right to ignore the will of the voters who participated in the primary election to choose its candidates, on the Party’s (not the voters’) First Amendment right of freedom of association. Is it any wonder that our elected officials place the rights of their party over the rights of the voters and the interests of the State or country? If they do otherwise, they jeopardize their chance for re-election, the wishes of their constituents voters notwithstanding?

This twisted tale sheds light on why so many Americans don’t bother to vote and why a plurality of them have become independents.

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President Obama’s “recess” appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has caused a partisan political flap. The GOP is threatening court action to redress what they see as an effort to circumvent the Senate’s authority to confirm presidential appointments. The White House, with an eye on the 2012 election, responded that the people’s business, particularly the business of protecting the middle class, will not be impeded by anti-consumer Republicans in Congress. A fine sentiment. But, if the White House only resists the partisanship of the Republicans, and never challenges the partisanship of both parties, it can have a hollow ring.

And so it goes inside the beltway. While the question of how to reform partisan politics looms large, No Labels, a political reform organization founded in 2010 and counting members and former members of Congress and government, businessmen, academics, pundits and political consultants among its founders and supporters, has weighed in on the controversy. Its solution: a 12-point package of Congressional rules changes announced in December that includes requiring the Senate to act on all presidential nominees within 90 days of their being named by the president.

Interestingly, while Obama made his controversial recess appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board, he did not choose this moment to fill any vacancies on the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). The FEC continues to function, (badly, according to a January 6, 2012 New York Times editorial), with five of its six commissioners continuing to serve despite the expiration of their terms.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress, with the apparent acquiescence of the White House, prefer to let the agency continue in a state of bipartisan gridlock. The FEC has three Democratic and three Republican Commissioners. Legally, however, the Commission need not be bipartisan, the only requirement is that no more than three Commissioners are members of the same political party. It could be nonpartisan or multipartisan. The obvious solution, and one which IndependentVoting.org and other reform advocates such as Theresa Amato, executive director of Citizens Works, have advocated, is the appointment of several independents to the FEC (See February 2, 2010 op-ed in the Kansas City Star).

This and other “independent” solutions to overcoming partisanship inside (and outside) the beltway, including nonpartisan elections and open primaries, are back-burnered by No Labels and other reform organizations whose focus is on asking the partisans in Congress to reform themselves. No Labels had this to say when it announced its 12-point program for reforming Congress:

Our dozen proposals to make congress work mostly don’t require new laws or any new spending, and they don’t favor any party or particular cause. These are simple, straightforward proposals to break gridlock, promote constructive discussion and reduce polarization in Congress. They can be adopted, almost all at once, when the next Congress convenes in January 2013.

Leaving aside the difficulties inherent in asking Congress to reform itself, there is another set of reforms relating to how Congress gets elected, surely a critical component of engaging the question of who members of Congress should be accountable to — the parties or the people who elect them. Appointing independents to the FEC is one way of breaking down the partisans’ control of the political process itself. Shouldn’t the 40 percent of the electorate who self-identify as independents have representation on the body that oversees the electoral process?

Others are Top Two primaries and nonpartisan redistricting reform. Top Two does away with party primaries that are dominated by small numbers of party activists, who tend to be more ideological. Instead, all candidates run on one primary ballot with the top two going on to the general election. Independents can fully participate, unlike the closed party primaries which bar them. Another outside-the-beltway reform is nonpartisan redistricting that aims to break up the current system which allows parties to bargain with each other for “safe” districts where the winner of the party primary is assured election in November.

Nonpartisan election administration, top two and redistricting reform take aim at the power of the parties themselves seeking to break their hold over the electoral and governing process. These reforms are premised on the belief that you cannot change what members of Congress do in Washington without changing how they get there.

Their advocates do not claim they can be realized “almost all at once… by 2013.” They will be achieved by bottom-up fundraising, coalition building and organizing. The states that have adopted Top Two have done so in referendums in California and Washington state where the reform was adopted by a substantial majority. A petition drive to put a Top Two referendum on the ballot is underway in Arizona. States with Initiative and Referendum are also the most likely to enact meaningful redistricting reform.

Outside-the-beltway reform activists believe that the difficult and long-term effort it takes to achieve these reforms is a good thing. In the process of winning them and using them, the American people will become more developed and politically sophisticated and take direct responsibility for our democracy. Those who occupied Wall Street and Cairo’s Tahrir Square were responding to the fact that career politicians who benefit from the status quo cannot be counted on to change it. Those interested in political reform should to take that to heart.

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Finally, the Iowa caucuses are done. The Republican field is narrowing (a bit), refocusing on New Hampshire and/or South Carolina. Some party pooh-bahs are ordering Romney/Santorum 2012 bumper stickers for the fall. Perhaps Ron Paul, representing the party’s anti-establishment libertarian wing, has put a down payment on Paul/Paul 2016 bumper stickers. His bet may be when the conservative establishment fails to either win or to govern, that he and his son, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, could be the beneficiaries.

So goes the Republican Party, for the moment. But what of independent voters — the widely discussed but persistently misunderstood 40% of Americans whose disalignment from the major parties is a source of speculation and woe? Did they make a mark in Iowa on Tuesday, as they did so conspicuously for the insurgent Barack Obama in 2008? And, do the Iowa results provide us with new insight into the aspirations of this mass of anti-partisan Americans?

With respect to the first question, entrance polling puts the number of independents who voted in the GOP caucuses at about 23% of the turnout or approximately 28,000 voters. Ron Paul polled 44% of that independent vote, as compared with Mitt Romney’s 18% and Rick Santorum’s 13%.

Some Republicans are touting the independent turnout for the GOP caucus — up from 15,000 in 2008 — as a surge by independents towards the Republican Party. Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz, a Republican, told the Washington Post that these non-aligned voters “now will affiliate themselves as Republicans.” Schultz should be reminded that neither the decisive independent surge for Obama in 2008 nor for GOP congressional candidates in 2010 resulted in a “conversion” of independents to either party. To the contrary, the size of the non-aligned voting block has grown steadily, reflecting the overall disillusionment with party-based politics.

Insofar as participating independents expressed a preference in Iowa, they sided with the anti-establishment Ron Paul. But the notion that the Iowa results provide a read on the sensibilities of independents overall is false.

First, a closer look at the numbers. Independent voter participation in the GOP caucuses might have been up as compared with 2008, but the participation by independents as a whole was way down. In 2008, an estimated 66,000 independents came out to vote in both parties’ Iowa caucuses, more than twice the number of independents who chose to vote on Tuesday. In 2008, 75% chose Democratic balloting, and 41% of those voted for Obama. In other words, the conspicuous feature of Tuesday’s Iowa caucus was the number of independents who stayed home.

The Democratic caucuses — largely set up to recruit and train volunteers for Obama’s re-election — attracted a reported 25,000 people. No entrance polling was done at these sites, an indication that there was little or no expectation that anyone other than Democrats would show up.

Independent voters, a large, diffuse and unorganized base of Americans, are ideologically very diverse. Many have tried to categorize it — largely as centrist or moderate — and these analysts could not be more wrong. What’s more, social conservatives have attempted to capture that movement time and again (Pat Buchanan in 2000, Sarah Palin in 2008, the Tea Partiers in 2009) without success. The Iowa results reflect a turnout by more right-leaning independents, about a third of the independent movement overall. Of these, the anti-establishment Paul captured the lion’s share. Independents are almost universally anti-establishment.

For the Obama team, these results should be instructive. Though Iowa is more homogeneous (read: white) and evangelical (read: right) than much of the nation, and therefore its voting patterns are of limited applicability — including for independents — Iowa nevertheless underscores a picture they must consider. Traditional social conservatives cannot close a deal with independents. But progressives, like Obama, have done far less than they should to close theirs. Obama cannot allow himself to simply be the voice of the establishment, left, center or otherwise.

Though Democratic partisans will resist, Obama can make his own connections by backing the anti-establishment progressive wing of the independent movement. And he will have to embrace anti-partisan structural reforms to win their confidence. Independents — the vast majority of whom were not spoken for in Iowa on Tuesday — await his call.

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In the wake of the debt ceiling debate, some are saying that “the gulf between the political parties” has called into question the government’s ability to manage its finances, and raising questions concerning the “effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policy making and political institutions.”

No, I’m not quoting Jackie Salit, President of IndependentVoting.org. These statements were made in the report of Standard and Poor’s that reduced America’s credit rating from AAA to AA+, the first time in the investment rating service’s history that the U.S. did not receive the highest rating. (Salit would have added a statement about the even wider gulf between the American people and the parties.)

Republican presidential candidates blamed President Obama for the downgrade. In so doing they demonstrated the very hyper partisanship that so concerned the S&P analysts. On ABC’s This Week, sniping continued between Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Martin O’Malley, chair of the Democratic Governor’s Association. Even though they have very different positions, to most viewers, they sound pretty much the same—namely, always and only, seeking partisan advantage.

Few would disagree that the debt ceiling negotiations were a case study in subordinating the national interests to partisan concerns, in particular to gaining advantage in the 2012 Presidential election. And the result was bad economic policy. The jobs crisis was put on the back burner, and raising the debt ceiling, something that has been done so regularly that it is barely noticed, was taken hostage by Tea Party ideologues who see reducing the national debt as the country’s number one priority.

Most responsible economists would argue that in a time of economic contraction and recession, budget cutting is not the answer. They remind us how Herbert Hoover’s effort to cut spending and balance the budget at the onset of the Great Depression only made matters worse. They prescribe short term deficit spending (more stimulus) and long term debt reduction. Here again partisan politics interceded, and the Republican majority in the House made clear that it would not vote to support another stimulus package.

That is not to suggest that the growing national debt can be ignored. Federal debt alone exceeds $14 trillion and projections point to a $1.1 trillion deficit in 2011. It is fair to ask how long people and governments will continue to lend money to Uncle Sam under these circumstances. I’ll leave that question to the economist and to the creditors.

What I do know is that imploring party politicians to act like statesmen does not work. Nor have efforts to find the “rational center” between the partisans. Ask the “No Labels“ folks who mobilized their following to urge Congress to do just that.

Partisanship is not a psychological illness. It is imbedded in the very structure of our political system. When times are good and the economy is growing, short term compromise (if not long term planning) can be achieved. When they are not, the ability of the political system to navigate tricky waters becomes less and less stable, more and more partisan.

As any good engineer will tell you, a structural problem requires a structural solution. And there are some that would make a difference. How about open primaries, nonpartisan redistricting and eliminating party control of Congressional committees? This is what independents want. And many different voices are starting to agree. Former Congressman Mickey Edwards, a Republican, identifies some structural fixes in his article on July 1, 2011 in The Atlantic, “How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans.”

After all, the Tea Party is a product of the current partisan system in which primary voter turnout is small, independents are mostly excluded, and hard core ideologues dominate. Gerrymandering to produce “safe seats” insures that the winner of the dominant party’s primary wins the general election. Thus partisanship and ideology are structurally re-enforced.

It has been said that desperate times call for desperate measures. In these desperate times, some basic structural reforms will do. It’s time to address the democracy deficit.

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On Sunday, July 3, Dr. Fred Newman died at the age of 76. I spent more than 30 years of my life with Fred, and he was a very dear friend, comrade and mentor.

I first met Fred in the late 1970s when I was a doctoral student in developmental psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, looking for a psychology of empowerment that could impact on the suffering and sorrow of Black Americans. I grew up in Chester, Pa., and understood the devastating consequences of being Black and poor.

Fred took seriously my concern that traditional psychology and education were very limited in their capacity to help poor people with the pain of poverty. He told me that to accomplish what I wanted to do, I had to get smarter, and he insisted that I bring the most sophisticated tools of post-modern philosophy to the ordinary people of our communities. He sent me “back to school” in East New York.

Fred grew up in the predominantly Jewish, working-class Southeast Bronx in the 1930s. He served in the U.S. Army in Korea, then graduated from City College and earned a Ph.D. in analytic philosophy at Stanford University. After teaching at several colleges and universities, Fred left academia during the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement to become a community organizer. Over 40 years’ time, together with a vibrant collective of activists, psychologists, educators, artists and fundraisers, he went on to found the All Stars Project and a new brand of psychology called social therapy. He became a leading force in the independent political movement, fighting for the inclusion of Black people in that movement every step of the way.

In the Black community, Fred was known for many things. He created the development approach to performance and learning used at the All Stars. The young people at the All Stars, especially those who got to work directly with him, adored him. He was the campaign manager for my two independent presidential bids. He was an early ally of the Rev. Al Sharpton, joining him in many a march and rally anywhere from Bensonhurst, to upstate New York, to London. He drove Rev to the hospital on the bitter January day in 1991 when he was stabbed.

Fred was known as my partner in liberation. In less polite terms, he was sometimes referred to as “Fulani’s white guru.” Some of the more “politically correct” Black leaders in the city criticized me for working with Fred because he was white. I never cared about those critics. I knew I was lucky to have found him.

Everyone who knew Fred experienced his rigor and brilliance as a scientist. They also experienced the depth of Fred’s caring.

I was not only close to Fred in my work; he was also an active partner in helping to raise my son, making it possible for me to be there for Amani even in the most challenging of times. He helped me with the anxiety that every Black mother feels every time our sons step out into the world: the fear that an altercation with other youth or a police officer might result in injury, incarceration or death. Fred showed me how to support Amani and to not let my worries turn me into just another person in his life giving him a hard time. That made it possible for Amani to come to me when there was a real crisis. A few months before Fred died, he thanked me for giving him the opportunity to share in raising Amani. I just gave him a hug.

Thank you, Fred, for the many holidays you’ve shared with Amani and Ainka, and for sending Amani to baseball camp, where he learned to make his way with strangers and made lifelong friends.

Thank you for sharing with them, with me and with the Black community the history of the Jewish people and the historical importance of Black-Jewish relationships.

Thank you for being such a fierce and brilliant fighter. And thank you for teaching ordinary people that we have the capacity to build and create extraordinary things.

May you rest in peace, and may those of us whom you have organized and led continue to lead.

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Power politics has a way of erasing the memory of how things happened in the first place. That’s because when institutions come to power, they want the stories about themselves to reinforce their institutional strength. They never like to credit outsider, non-institutional forces, even if the outsiders role in a set of events was pivotal.

Both President Obama and the Republican-led Congress seem to be grappling with this very tension in the budget negotiations going on now. Republicans won control of the House in 2010 because independent voters put them there. Obama won the White House in 2008 because independents chose him. Yet the budget negotiations — both in their form and in their content — are thoroughly rooted in a Democrat/Republican reality.

The Republicans want spending cuts. The Democrats want to preserve the safety net. Obama believes that his job is to stitch together a solution that draws from both. Put another way, he’s trying to be the non-partisan President. And no doubt, the President’s advisors hope that independent voters — who decided the last two elections — (actually three, since independents in open primary and caucus states picked Obama over Hillary Clinton) will see him that way.

Maybe they will. Certainly independents — now 38% of the country according to the latest Pew poll — have made it plain enough that they don’t like partisanship, they don’t like ideological dogmatism and they don’t like…. well, parties. Even if they vote for them.

Obama would do well, not just to remember that history, but to make it a more visible feature of how he governs. Independents catapulted him — first to the Democratic nomination and then to the White House. When he says that the American people “feel a sense of urgency, both about the breakdown in our political process and also about the situation in our economy,” he can also acknowledge that the American people are doing something about it, namely leaving the Democratic and Republican parties and becoming independents.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 23% of Americans self-identify as Republicans, down from 25% in 2008 and 30% in 2004. 35% identify as Democrats (the same as 2008) even though the 2008 elections were expected to swell the ranks of Democrats. Independents, now 38%, were 32% of the electorate in 2008.

For many independents, it’s not enough for Obama to simply criticize Congressional leaders for their partisan intransigence. He has to show that he’s willing to back certain structural changes in the political process that make such intransigence more difficult. This means taking a stand in support of open primaries where independents can vote, which are currently under fire from right wing Republicans. And, imagine the shock waves that would follow an Obama appointment (in consultation with leaders of the independent movement) of two independents to vacant seats on the Federal Election Commission.

Moves like these would show independents that the President understands the history of recent electoral unrest and that he is ready to stand up for changes in the process that promote inclusion over party control and partisanship. Over the long term, that’s what independents are looking for.

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I went to hear Dr. Omar Ali speak at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem recently. Schomburg is considered one of the foremost institutions of its kind, with an extensive collection documenting the history and culture of peoples of African descent. Ali, an associate professor at University of North Carolina, Greensboro, was there to present his latest book, In the Lion’s Mouth: Black Populism in the New South.

In his opening remarks, he told the audience the book would not have been possible absent his experience working as an independent political organizer.

Ali said being an independent activist had allowed him to see things differently so that when, as a graduate student, he approached the subject of black political history in America, he saw gaps in the existing scholarship and unattended clues. He then began a process to uncover and piece together the largely unknown and untold story of Black Populism in America — the largest independent black political movement prior to the civil rights movement.

In the Lion’s Mouth provides, in vivid detail, a road map of this post-Reconstruction independent political movement for economic and political reform that paralleled, and at times crossed paths with, the better-known white populist movement, forming tactical coalitions with it and venturing into electoral politics.

Omar’s book is already influential. Charles Postel, the author of The Populist Vision, which won the Bancroft Award — the most prestigious award given for works of historical scholarship — drew upon Ali’s pioneering work in his reshaping of the history of populism in the late 19th century.
When it comes to independent voters and their location in American politics, a lot of people are seeing things in a new way. That’s because the American people — all of us — are collectively going through the experience of the country becoming more independent, whether we’re affiliated with a party or not, active politically or never voted. One impact of that process is that what was once considered conventional wisdom, becomes questioned.

Take, for example, a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “New Law on Ethics May Face Challenge.” It reports about a controversy in New York surrounding who would be allowed to serve on a newly-formed ethics body with the power to investigate state officials who run afoul of ethics rules.

The fact that power on the board was divvied up evenly between Republicans and Democrats raised sharp objections from leading First Amendment scholars and constitutional lawyers prompting them to warn that the ethics body may be destined for legal challenges in federal court if the possibility for independents to serve on it were eliminated.

Where once an equitable power sharing arrangement between Democrats and Republicans would be welcomed and applauded as fair, it has become suspect. That’s the power of a 40-year trend toward political independence (38 percent of Americans now consider themselves independent) making itself felt and allowing things to be seen in new and unexpected ways.

Floyd Abrams, the preeminent First Amendment lawyer, told the Wall Street Journal in connection with the ethics controversy and the failure to include independents, “When one is stripped of the opportunity to serve in government, it violates the first principle of the First Amendment, which protects all citizens in their ability to comment about and participate in the political process.”

For many years, independents were simply considered voters who wanted to drop out of the political process. After all, they had abandoned the two major parties. This was seen as equivalent to abandoning their right to participate. If becoming an independent meant you didn’t get the same privileges as members of a major political party, so what?

That someone of Abrams’ caliber now sees independent voters as a protected class, entitled to legal and Constitutional protections, is a breakthrough and something independent voter activists have been pushing for a very long time. In fact, IndependentVoting.org has begun a campaign involving independents across the country to press Congress to hold hearings on the second-class status of independents. Among the issues Congress is being asked to look into is the exclusion of independents from the Federal Elections Commission, Boards of Elections and other state and local bodies that administer elections. Abrams’ observation adds muscle to that effort.

For Congress to hold these hearings would be an even bigger breakthrough. A serious exploration of the second-class status of independents would shine a light and bring attention to the myriad ways America’s political process has become degraded by partisanship. It may help those in the business of governing see new things and provide more innovative solutions to the problems we face. That’s something the American people would readily support.

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A pitched debate in Black political and academic circles about President Barack Obama’s commitment to fighting for a Black Agenda has broken into the mainstream media with a bang. The Washington Post, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, and The Amsterdam News have each noted aspects of the story over the last two weeks.

Leading the criticism is Dr. Cornel West, who supported the president throughout the 2008 campaign, but who now calls Obama a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.” His sentiments have been echoed by the respected talk show host Tavis Smiley.

The high-intensity language aside, critics feel that Obama has been unwilling or unable to push an economic agenda that deals directly with pervasive poverty and joblessness in the Black community, a problem that cries out for aggressive leadership.

Whether that kind of leadership can actually come from the president (not just this president, but any president) is an open question. Governing requires consensus building among institutional players. Leading movements for social transformation means bringing outsiders into positions of power. They are not the same thing.

Rev. Al Sharpton, a long time movement builder himself, has greater sympathy for Obama’s constraints. He argues that Obama is not the president of Black America, but the president of all Americans, and his efforts to blunt the full force of the economic downturn — if successful — will benefit Black people. Meanwhile, Sharpton argues, Obama must avoid the trap of advocating too vigorously for African-Americans because the right wing will cast it as special interest (racial) politics and use it to isolate Obama from mainstream white America, whose support he needs to govern and be re-elected.

West is not alone in questioning the extent to which the president’s inner circle of economic advisors and policy makers have placated the financial markets at the expense of the poor. Sharpton might even have such questions himself. At the same time, Sharpton notes the realities of politics and governing. And that is why we think it’s time to push the envelope on the nature of the political process itself and the ways in which, in its current form, it reinforces pre-existing economic, racial and social divisions and competition, all of which foster partisanship. Put another way, how do we express a national interest of, by, and for the people (including Black people!) rather than merely balancing (or disempowering) particular interests.

For us, this raises the issue of getting past, or outside of, the institutions that organize special interest politics. Chief among these, of course, are the political parties, which control the Congress and, notably, dictate the terms of the political game. Obama has tried to rise above this, only to be sucked back into a partisan grid. How do we get out of that trap? That is a complicated, long term proposition. But there are steps that could be taken now.

Take the issue of job creation, something that Obama, West, Sharpton, and most everyone in the United States cares about. Right now, that question is considered by the Congress along entirely partisan lines. Policies are adopted or rejected on the basis of how they serve partisan interests. Democrats want to do something about unemployment through government action. Republicans want the private sector and the markets to take care of the problem. Every question is framed in these terms. Should we spend money on public works? If so, what about the deficit? Will these jobs replace union workers? What about cutbacks in public employees? Should we spend federal dollars to shore up state and municipal budgets? Is that the best way to keep minority employment stable? And so it goes, with every question and answer framed in terms of how it appeals to the parties core constituencies.

Here is a step outside the box. Have America empower a committee of independents, of non-partisans, from industry, from the communities, from academia and think tanks, from citizenry of all walks of life, to collectively consider these issues. Have this committee selected through an online, transparent, democratic process. This is not a forum to hammer out a “bi-partisan compromise.” Its mission is to formulate an approach from outside the standard political alignments, one that gives support to the President to govern outside the partisan grid. That way, the process of dealing with such a problem notably chips away at the institutional arrangements which sustain special interest control of policy making. One final note: it would give Obama a freer hand to advocate for his most important constituency, the American people.

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