2024: The Year of the Independent Voter

By Niko House, columnist, The Kennedy Beacon

Will 2024 be the breakthrough year for independents?

The last several years may be more politically transformative than any time in recent or distant memory. In 2016, the American electorate experienced something they’d never seen before: a candidate who was officially registered as an independent became the most popular Democrat in the country by almost every quantitative metric. Senator Bernie Sanders went toe to toe with the establishment, and more specifically, Hillary Clinton, although the Democratic establishment had already nominally crowned Clinton as their presidential nominee. 

Although Sanders ran to gain the nomination to represent the Democratic Party in 2016, his stances at the time, like his official political affiliation, were almost completely independent of Democratic Party orthodoxy. Sanders brought on the fury of the Democratic elite, but he posed questions and policies that made Americans question the status quo. And as we heard more from both Clinton and Sanders, many of us quickly evolved from questioning the political status quo to being perpetually skeptical. Whether he intended to or not, in 2016 Sanders opened up Pandora’s Box, and there was no going back. 

For the first time, the majority of Americans began to wrestle with the inconsistent logic US officials apply when gaslighting the masses into accepting less than what they deserve. Americans began asking serious questions, such as: 

• Why are American citizens – and government – spending more money on health care than any other country in the world? 

• Why are politicians so quick to approve military budgets to engage in conflicts without a declaration of war by Congress? 

• And why is no one held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of lives lost as a consequence of unjust and unlawful military campaigns? 

Most of all, people began to ponder why Sanders, an independent, was forced to run as a Democrat to have a legitimate shot at getting to the White House. And how, why, and when did the political system become so restrictive and binary that only two parties have the power to control the outcome of all the politics of the most powerful country in the world? 

These are merely a few of the questions that, for the first time, caused the Overton window to be dragged not just from left to right but up, down, diagonal, and in every other direction on the political spectrum. Not that some people hadn’t posed these types of questions before. But before 2016, they were most certainly in the minority. 

The controversial results of 2016’s Democratic Primary led to movements like “Demexit,” “Revolt Against Plutocracy,” “Blexit,” “Walk Away,” and a surfeit of other organizations that can only be described as anti-Democratic Party to be formed. The Green Party and the Libertarian Party, led by Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, respectively, also achieved record-breaking fundraising numbers and garnered a record number of votes for each respective party in the general election. 

Although it was difficult to contextualize at the time or articulate with specificity, one thing was evident – the national political discourse would never be the same after 2016. 

Some might’ve noticed that I’ve yet to mention Trump. I didn’t mention him above because he’s played such a unique role in reshaping the political scene, even though most of his contributions in that capacity were not by choice. In the same way Sanders tapped into the hearts, minds, and hopes of the political left, Trump was able to tap into the hearts, minds, and latent fears, legitimate or illegitimate, of the populist right. He challenged the neoconservative Republican establishment in the way Sanders did, albeit in his own grandiose style. And like Sanders, Trump challenged the legitimacy of the wars the US constantly finds its way into. 

However, the main difference between Sanders and Trump at the time is that Trump won his nomination and, subsequently, the general election. This, in my opinion, was a major setback in the independent movement. Because Trump was *allowed* to win the Republican nomination at a time when the Democrats were actively cheating to stop Sanders from winning theirs, many conservatives, former Democrats, right-leaning independents, and even former Sanders supporters fell right back into the bipartisan trap. But they soon discovered that the Republican Party is no sanctuary for true independent thinkers, anti-establishment activists, or populace politicians like Trump. 

Enter Russiagate and the Pandemic

The government’s handling of Russiagate played a massive role in betraying citizens’ trust in the two-party system, the legacy media, and the US intelligence apparatus. Lifelong conservatives watched Republicans like James Comey, Mitt Romney, Ana Navarro, and other members of the political and media elite conspire to accuse Trump of working with Russia to cheat Hillary Clinton out of victory in the 2016 election. When Trump tried to keep some of his campaign promises, Republicans like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell worked with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to block his way. Even some Fox News personalities and Rupert Murdoch himself began to turn on Trump a couple of years into his administration. 

And these Republicans did not unite to challenge some of the awful policies Trump introduced. They weren’t mad he bombed Syria without investigation after Assad was accused of gassing his own people, which turned out to be a fabrication. But they were upset, as Reuters reported, that he announced that he was going to pull the CIA out of Syria just weeks before. They weren’t upset that Trump signed off on sanctions against Russia, heightening the tensions between the US and Russia at a time when the prospect of nuclear war was growing more and more plausible. But they were upset when he fired James Comey for colluding with the Clinton campaign to remove Trump from office via the Russiagate scandal. 

It didn’t take long for many of Trump’s working-class supporters to realize that the Republican Party is as much of an obstacle to achieving anything positive for the American people as the Democratic Party is. 

But the pandemic response might be regarded by many as the most important catalyst for a solid, long-standing, and productive independent movement. 

Americans witnessed their government, Republicans and Democrats alike, facilitating the largest wealth transfer from the working class to the top 1% in the history of the world through the CARES Act, while pretending it was an effort to help the working people they’d just robbed blind. When Trump tried to veto that and other pieces of legislation that only put money in the pockets of corporations, the pharmaceutical industry, and the health care system, Democrats and Republicans pledged to overturn his veto on behalf of their corporate masters. At one point, Trump asked Nancy Pelosi on Twitter to send a bill with no pork attached that would only put money in the pockets of people. Pelosi refused to do so, saying that he only suggested that to gain political points ahead of the 2020 election. 

Americans watched helplessly from their homes as the US government took our hard-earned tax dollars and handed them to corporations and the military-industrial complex while simultaneously attempting to convince us that there wasn’t enough money to provide sufficient aid and relief to those who desperately needed it. 

But Congress did manage to dine out on the taxpayer’s dime when they found enough money to give themselves a raise. 

While Democrats and Republicans were working side by side, using the pandemic to commit theft in broad daylight at the federal level, at the local level, people experienced other political transgressions that eventually led to widespread distrust. Small businesses across the country closed en masse, never to reopen again. Schools closed indefinitely across the country, causing millions of students to fall behind in their studies. We began seeing record-breaking inflation. People lost their jobs for refusing to get a barely tested, unproven, experimental vaccine. Almost every single day during the pandemic, people were subjected to the media lying to them in one form or another about the status of the pandemic or the legitimacy of the solutions the government presented. 

After realizing that effectively everyone in mainstream politics and the mainstream media was in on the “scam,” people spent much of their time in lockdown seeking out alternative media and thought leaders. I think the duopoly failed to predict this unintended consequence of the pandemic shutdowns. People turned away from mainstream media and mainstream narratives and began to see through the cloak of lies that has been draped over us for years.

The consequence of eight years of constant betrayal by the bipartisan establishment is that confidence in mainstream media has reached record lows. CNN performed so poorly over the last several years that the company was sold, and there were some high-profile firings, including Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo. At the same time that mainstream media is plummeting, independent media is more popular than ever. Now even voices like Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand, who joined independent media, spend their time debunking the very same mainstream narratives they once perpetuated in their mainstream roles. An Axios poll conducted around the start of the primary season found that 49%, nearly half, of all Americans identify as politically independent. 

The poll also found that the younger generation is largely responsible for this trend. Although it isn’t unusual for the youth to be rebellious and politically independent, what is uncommon is the political trend of the younger generation remaining politically independent, as is depicted in this and other polls. Biden ended 2023 with the lowest approval rating of the last eight presidents, including George W. Bush, who was notoriously unpopular by the time he left office. What might be even more damning for Biden and the future of his party is that, according to a Gallup poll, only 37% of all Democrats approve of Biden’s overall performance, with most of his supporters falling on the older, more wealthy side of his base. 

Even two of the most notable Democratic voices have elected to leave the party to take advantage of the opportunity created by their failures to carve a new path. After voting for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, Dr. Cornel West declared his run as an independent for the 2024 election. In a similar fashion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also parted ways with the Democratic Party to launch an independent run at the White House after the party’s elites conspired to prevent Kennedy from winning the nomination. [Multiple polls show that Kennedy is leading among independents and all Americans under 45, Gen Z-ers in particular.]

As reported by Sarah Fortinsky in The Hill, “1 in 5 registered voters are open to supporting third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his White House bid in 2024,” which, by previous metrics, is enough national support to land him on the debate stage, where he just might convince Americans that he is a viable and substantive alternative to Biden and Trump. But more importantly, Kennedy may have a chance to show that Americans have a viable alternative to the two-party duopoly. And if Trump is somehow defeated in the general election despite Biden’s record low approval rating, Republicans won’t be able to use his base to avoid their impending reckoning and mass migration from their party as well. 

The political line has never been more blurred than it is right now. For many Americans, the prospect of a rematch of the 2020 election is petrifying, with both candidates demonstrably incapable of “draining the swamp.” But no matter the result of the election, it’s up to the people to snatch this unique opportunity, born of unfortunate circumstances, if we are to truly make 2024 the year of the independent.