On the rocks or neat?

At the core of the problem between parties and unaffiliated voters is a desire to participate or not.

Since the third Presidential election, parties have been a factor. The activists who shared general beliefs in how a government should function joined and selected their best hope, a candidate who would garner wide affection from the voting population. Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists; Democrat-Republicans vs. Whigs; Democrats vs. Republicans, the list has, if anything, expanded over the centuries. Parties have always been collections of likeminded people who join in the pursuit of power.

What is different in the current unaffiliated ranks is that these folks have declared, in writing, that they do not want to be a part of any available recognized political party. I suspect that this arises more out of electoral-political-fatigue than out of a lack of identification with any party. In a word, "laziness" best describes these folks.

"Complainers" or "whiners" are the next best descriptors. In every state, a person can register to vote as affiliated or not. In every state, people are free to change their affiliation, or not, as often as they please. This lets the liberal-conservative look at a field of candidates early and join the party of their favored candidate. Likewise, the Conservative-liberal can join the party of the candidate carrying their desired banner and cast their vote in the primary election. Even principled party members can change form one party to the other when the choices of their stripe are unattractive as compared to the opposition party candidate. Instead of filling out the form to make the change for that permits them to make the choice, they complain that they had no say. They complain that the parties did not offer good choices for them. They whine about the partisan system.

In 2008, many in the parties are making the same complaints about their primary choices. For instance, Rudy G was the first Republican to announce and he did not appear on a ballot until Florida. Fred Thompson was leading all of the media polls but the voter polls eliminated him early. All summer and fall, we were subjected to debates between all the people in both parties who were destined to drop out as soon as the voters were to get a chance to say who they liked. By the time the second real voter polls came around ten viable Republicans had become two and ten viable Democrats had too.

In getting to this result, many state parties permitted people not in their party to vote in their primary. These partisan groups let people who disagree with them influence their candidate selection. They did not do this as a strategy to draw unaffiliated voters to a particularly desirable candidate. They did this as a matter of course. How can a state party permit unaffiliated and opposition party voters to select their candidate and then trumpet the results as an achievement?

Unaffiliated voters and those who choose parties that do not appear on primary election ballots turned their backs on the primary system. Their complaints are no more valuable that the opinions of small children who cry because they soiled themselves and become uncomfortable with the result. They are as teetotalers arguing about the taste of beer as compared to whisky.