Post a Comment On: The Writer's Journey

I guess we all expected Obama to win, but he really stomped McCain in electoral votes. I had expected a closer race than that, but I also had different expectations. I expected the independent vote to be far higher than what it was. This election had the lowest independent voting of any election I can remember. That last numbers I saw showed a whopping one percent.

I try not to post anything political here because politics is simply too complex and too convoluted for anyone to have the exact same opinions about anything political. There are simply too many aspects to look at and too many opinions regarding each one. But, I do wish that more people would vote for independent candidates.

The two party system means that you have two guys and each only has to show that he is better than the other guy. The candidates rarely have to resort to their actual voting records, their history of creating jobs or their economic viewpoint. As long as they are marginally better than the other guy, they will usually win. In a system with three or four main parties, however, I think the process would be a lot different. A campaign showing the faults of two or three other guys would look ridiculous.

The candidates chosen by each party would actually have to be good politicians who have done things with their careers. Parties would be forced to find better candidates and the campaigns would actually be run based on what the candidates have done with their political careers. They would have to be in order for a candidate to get enough attention to beat two or three other candidates.

I don't think that the Italian-style system of millions of political parties would work here, but three or four main parties is sorely needed in this country. So who is my candidate? At this point, with so little independent turnout, it doesn't really matter much. I can't vote for the bipartisanship, so I generally vote for the same candidate every time. Why? This is why.