Progressives and centrists battle over meaning of indy vote

By Greg Sargent

As the intraparty Dem war over the meaning of the midterms continues, centrist Democrats have been making the case that the big swing of independents for Republicans proves Dems need to move to the middle to recapture this key demographic.

Now a leading liberal group is set to push back on that argument with a counter-intuitive case of its own: Independents are not a monolith, and what really happened is that indys who backed Obama in 2008 stayed home, because they were unsatisfied with Obama's half-baked reform agenda, while McCain-supporting indys turned out in big numbers.

The group is set to release new polling from the respected Dem firm Public Policy Polling that is meant to buttress this case. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee commissioned the poll and sent some results my way.

The key finding: PPP asked independents who did vote in 2010 who they had supported in 2008. The results: Fifty one percent of independents who voted this time supported McCain last time, versus only 42 percent who backed Obama last time. In 2008, Obama won indies by eight percent.

That means the complexion of indies who turned out this time is far different from last time around, argues Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. His case: Dem-leaning indys stayed home this time while GOP-leaning ones came out -- proof, he insists, that the Dems' primary problem is they failed to inspire indys who are inclined to support them.



"The dumbest thing Democrats could do right now is listen to those like Third Way who urge Democrats to repeat their mistake by caving to Republicans and corporations instead of fighting boldly for popular progressive reforms and reminding Americans why they were inspired in 2008," Green says.

The problem is that we don't know why the Dem-leaning indys stayed home. Centrists will likely push back on this by insisting that they may have not turned out because Obama overreached, was too partisan, and failed to change the tone in Washington.

But the point about indys not being a monolith is a good one to keep in mind. Also: This debate is not merely an academic one; it's about where Dems go from here. Both sides are marshalling data in order to get Dem leaders and elected officials to interpret the results their way, and proceed according to their preferred roadmap.