Why Independents Matter in 2020

The #MAGA movement continues to alienate Moderates and Independents

In 2016, US presidential candidate Donald Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by less than1%.

He won Michigan by less than one-quarter of 1%.

Independents who swung for him at the last minute made that possible. Now, after four years of pissing on them, he won’t win those states again. He’s toast, and he put himself in the toaster oven with his outrageous lies and behavior.

Independents are now 41% of America’s voting force. According to Gallup, we are now a far larger voting bloc than either Republicans (26%) or Democrats (31%). And we’re not liking what we see. This gate swings wide and hard.

Although many moderates were marginally willing to take a chance on someone they perceived as a businessman over Hillary Clinton, it was still a dicey choice. And frankly, there was a lot of misogyny in play. Voters on the fence were willing to vote for a bad reality-TV actor and failed businessman who admitted to pussy-groping, over a woman who had excused her husband’s philandering in the White House.

For a lot of people, it was a tough choice. In 2016, I voted for Evan McMullin, who I still believe is an earnest, honorable, and qualified contender. I would have voted for John Kasich, had he stayed in the race. I wanted to vote conservative, but Trump was a disqualifying factor.

Someday, I hope we will once again have a president who doesn’t say things like “Bing bing boing, little covfefe rocket man, windmill cancer, nuke the hurricanes, buy Greenland, turn off the internet, rake the forests, all Mexicans are rapists, and why does Bloomberg need a box to stand on.”

The Obama “Division” Drama

I am not a Democrat, liberal, or progressive. But as an Independent, it’s clear to me that the whole race “division” drama which is blamed on Barack Obama was one of many conspiracy soap operas invented by Republicans and Russian agitprop. These are the same people who called Michelle Obama an “ape” and a “man”. The same people who told Obama to go back to Africa. The same people who supported the Birther conspiracy. Promoted by the same man who took out a full page ad demanding the death sentence for innocent young black men.

After all that, do Trump followers really expect us to believe that Obama was the cause of racial division in America? Oh, please.

It’s no wonder moderates and independents want nothing to do with the Republican Party and Trump any more.

Trump’s Online Persona and Followers

Online, as a conservative, independent non-Trumper, I get hit on all sides by both liberals and MAGA Republicans. Progressives, however peeved they might be with my conservative mindset, do not call me a cunt and a bitch. Trump followers do.

I don’t know why, and I don’t care. I am not their mama. I am not their psychotherapist. Maybe they feel threatened. Maybe they have Trump-as-Messiah Syndrome. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. And neither do my independent and moderate friends.

The nastier #MAGA followers get, the less we like Trump and the less we want to be associated with him. His most ardent loyalists are not doing him any favors; they’re paring away his base to the bone.

These people do not strike me as being conservatives. They can’t articulate any philosophy beyond the shallow talking points espoused by Trump. His followers are strictly Trump cultists, with absolutely no idea of what it means to be truly ‘conservative’. Every time the base calls a conservative voter with real concerns a “Libbie”, “libtard” or “RINO” it pushes independents and moderates further away.

Why the Numbers Matter

In 2016, Trump got a big swing from Indies because many people actually believed the idea that he would be a fresh, new voice. Pew Research said the Indie vote was 34% of the electorate and swung 42/43 between the two candidates.

But conservative and moderate independent voters have been sadly disillusioned and will be gone in 2020.

It won’t matter if the Democrat party is dead and gone, as Republicans soundly proclaim. Independents are now over 40% of the electorate. Registered Republican voters have shrunk from 29% to 26% as of August 2020. And not all Republicans approve of Trump. Even if alien spaceships sucked up every Democrat on earth tonight, Trump still has no chance of winning.

At this point, it has nothing to with liberal or conservative agendas. Most voters just want the horror in the White House to go away, and they will replace him with anyone reasonably sane and gracious enough to deserve the White House.