Which Party Will Independents Seize?

The question isn’t which party will capture independents. The question is which party independents will capture.

Before Thanksgiving, John Halpin wrote a piece about which party is likely to capture independents in this political realignment. It’s a good article, but with the wrong framing. The question isn’t which party will capture independents. The question is which party independents will capture.

Both parties seem to believe their present challenge is convincing the great mass of non-aligned voters to put them in charge. They hope to use that support to put the same groups in power and go about governing the same way as they always have. The voters who elected them will get the pleasure of allowing them to rule.

That isn’t how this is going to go.

WHO ARE INDEPENDENTS?

No one seems to understand who today’s independents are. They’re mentally stuck in who independents were a few decades back.

Until recently, independents were mostly soft partisans who didn’t like to socially identify with the party for which they always voted. The remainder of independents were those few political recalcitrants with strong views outside the framework, like hard-core Libertarians or Greens, putting them outside the two-party system. Political campaigns didn’t worry about independents as a bloc because they didn’t act like a bloc. They acted like quiet partisans, and the few who weren’t didn’t have the numbers to matter.

“Independents” today are no longer a few soft partisans refusing to adopt their party’s label. They’re the dominant political group in American. Back in 1990, only 33% of Americans identified as independents, while 33% said they were Republicans and 35% Democrats. In Gallup’s recent January 2024 survey, 43% of American adults identified as independents, while only 27% percent identified as Republicans and 27% as Democrats. In other words, most Americans now reject its two dominant parties. Most Americans reject both parties’ ideologies and ideas. Partisans are the minority.

The partisans are the “weirdos.” Independents are the “normies.”

The leaders of our parties don’t understand they’re no longer running majority coalitions. Their ideas are no longer dominant or popular. They’re, in essence, small minorities with mostly unpopular ideas in temporary control of America’s two great machines of government. Independents are no longer a few oddballs, but the great mass of Americans, and they’re not impressed by either party’s ideological preoccupations. They just want stuff to work. As America’s true majority, independents aren’t in charge yet only because they’re not yet sufficiently defined and organized.

The way our political parties think about this realignment is therefore entirely backwards. They appear to think the game is about winning enough uncommitted voters so they can win majorities to ram through their current leaders' preferred ideologies and ideas. What’s actually going to happen is the uncommitted majority will eventually take over one of the parties due to their numbers, and the ideas and leaders of at least one of our parties will be replaced.

This is the lesson the last few years of politics has taught us, and it’s one no one in power seems to want to hear. America has a national majority that rejects both available options. They want a political party that’s “normal”—meaning one that does the things the majority of normal Americans want. They don’t want a party run by a small ideological minority of weirdos who are currently controlling politics. In each election, normal Americans choose the party they distrust and hate the least. Four years later, after that party did things they hate, Americans jerk back in the other direction. Politics jumps back and forth as each party gets a chance to rule and blows it.

The normies are sick of it. The days in which they keep going along with this situation is reaching it’s natural end.

WHICH PARTY CAN CLAIM THE NORMIES?

Asking which party can claim independents means asking which party is prepared to change sufficiently to earn back a majority of America.

• Which party can run a competent and transparent government?

• Which party can start solving the problems most Americans want solved?

• Which party can give up its unpopular ideological obsessions?

• Which party can build things?

• Which party can clean up the corruption?

• Which party can chase away all the crazy and unbalanced people pushing themselves upon America?

Which party is prepared to act normal?

In theory, both parties have factions that want to return to normal. There are figures inside each party working to sideline their worst impulses, create new ideas, and change their direction. I hope they succeed. However, I’m skeptical for the same reason America Online, despite all its advantages at the turn of the twenty-first century, couldn’t seize the opportunity of online media.

As you may recall, there was a moment in the early 2000s when AOL seemed positioned to dominate the world. An early Internet pioneer, AOL decided to put all the cash and influence it gained as a dominant tech company into the new opportunity of online media. At a time of immense opportunity, AOL had the resources, brand, and necessary skills to become the dominant new media company. When it purchased Time Warner in 2000, many saw it as the triumph of tech against old media and the beginning of an empire. Why, then, couldn’t AOL, perfectly positioned to control the new online media world, translate its success and power? Because its upper rungs had too many banner ad salespeople.

In its early days as a dial-up Internet access company, AOL made piles of money selling banner advertisements on websites. The best and most innovative sellers of internet banner advertisements naturally rose within the company. That meant, to start picking up all the easy money broadband online media offered, the people running AOL had to obsolete themselves. What was best for AOL was no longer in the best interest of the people running AOL, so naturally they dragged their feet, moved too slow, made excuses, and designed decisions around defending their power and remaining relevant, until the company bungled this amazing opportunity.

This is the same problem our political parties face.

You can’t become the normie party by enacting a few token normie policies or engaging in some light messaging. You have to adopt new ideas and priorities outside the competence and preferences of the people now in charge. You have to turn your back on ideas everyone in charge believes. You have to kick out a lot of counter-productive leaders and factions. Most important, you have to let in a new majority and let them have control. In other words, party leaders have to obsolete themselves.

While it’s clearly in the interest of both parties as institutions to become the normie party, it’s not in the interest of a lot of people who run those parties to ever let that happen. That’s why I’m skeptical they can do it, even though they have no choice.

HOW WE GET TO A NORMAL PARTY

America will end up with a normie party before too long. I’m sure of it because of basic numbers. A majority of America demands it. No party can continue to win long-term without winning over normal voters, and you can’t win over normal voters without giving them the government they want. You have do the things they want to do. You have to drop the ideas they hate. Most important, since there are more of them than you, when you give them a seat at the table, you’ll be handing them control, which means losing control for a lot of the powerful people now in charge. That’s where the endgame inevitably must lead.

How are we ever going to get there?

One path is infiltration. If enough smart, savvy, and dedicated leaders committed to normal politics infiltrated into the leadership of a party, they could theoretically reform it from within. As they infiltrate, they bring more normies into politics and government. As their numbers grow, they slowly marginalize old elements. By the time old leaders realize they’re outnumbered, there’s little they can do. They get ushered out, while new ideas and people get embraced.

This path of infiltration and internal reform is what I believe the forces from Silicon Valley that recently hopped aboard the Republican Party hope to do. It’s also what I think the center-left Democratic establishment—for the first time, loudly stating in the media that their party has gone too far left and must jettison identity appeals and “woke” politics—hope to do. I question, however, their chances. Republican reformers are operating inside a White House, so their success depends entirely on what more powerful players in that organization want. They might really be allowed to disrupt and change things from within, but it’s just as likely that, as they command attention and step on feet, they’ll get neutered, sidelined, and ushered out of the building.

Democrats, I think, face an even tougher challenge. Democrats are now the establishment party, which seems like an advantage in a quest to make a party competent and normal, but in their case is actually a burden. The forces causing the Democrats to act weird are powerful and entrenched, particularly within credentialed institutions. These forces control institutions and centers of power, and they have committed ideological support from powerful sections of society. Many would rather see the Democratic Party smashed than give up their ideas and control. I don’t see them giving up power or going away, and I don’t see how weaker insurgents can beat them from within.

What if both campaigns fail?

This is why, in the wake of this election, I remain committed to the idea of a normie movement and political boarding party. If internal efforts at reform all fail, as I fear they ultimately will, the only remaining path is to build a loose movement of similarly committed people outside the political-party structure. This movement of political normies must operate through and across both parties, operating as a broad network of the likeminded that works and helps each other. For now, it should grow and build up strength and ideas. This was the battle plan of the nineteenth-century historical Progressive Movement or the mid-twentieth-century Conservative Movement. When it’s strong enough, it should board one or both political parties from the outside like pirates—copying what William Jennings Bryan’s Populists did to the Democrats in 1896.

At heart, I’m a normie independent. I want a government that works for normal people. I don’t care what that party calls itself, only what it represents. The question, as I see it, isn’t which party can convince independents to support it. The question is which party will independents seize, turning it into a vibrant, normal, party with transparent government, democratic accountability, and new ideas that improve people’s lives. The answer to that question is still up for grabs, and up to us.

What party do you think independents will claim? Join the conversation in the comments.