Number of Americans Associated With Either Party At Near Historic Lows

220px-Democratslogo.svg200px-Republicanlogo.svgA new poll shows that the number of citizens who identify with the Democratic or the Republican parties are at a near all time low. Only 29 percent of respondents in a Gallup survey identify as Democrats (the lowest point in 27 years). Only 26 percent defined themselves as Republicans in 2015. Thus, while the number of Americans in either party has fallen to near all-time lows, there remains virtually no choice other than those selected by the two parties as leaders.  Another surprising poll, however, says that 20 percent of Democrats might support Trump in the general.  Some 14 percent of Republicans said that they might support Clinton in the general election.

Roughly four in ten U.S. adults now say they are political independents, though the Democrats have a slight advantage on how independents lean.

In the meantime, critics within the Democratic party have increasingly accused party leaders like Debbie Wasserman-Schulz of openly rigging the process for Hillary Clinton while critics in the Republican Party say Donald Trump will destroy the GOP.

The result is a growing political crisis of disaffected and alienated voters, which explains the popularity of candidates like Trump. The perception of a duopoly is likely to increase the anger of the near majority in the country rejecting both parties. That can produce a dangerous disassociation of the public from their government.

65 thoughts on “Number of Americans Associated With Either Party At Near Historic Lows”

  1. The best way to bring down this U.S. Israeli / Zionist Mafia is to expose the Truth about 9/11.
    This will reach to the core of evil in the world. We have plenty of evidence. We need to start the indictments.

  2. @stevegroen
    “Hillary “We came, We saw, He Died” Clinton”
    Hillary Clinton is one of the most evil women to ever live. Supreme War Criminal, Mass Murderer. Words cannot really express such a loathsome, despicable person.

  3. OH … and, if anyone suggests, “well, that’s the price you pay for being a voter”, I’ll send my local election board a certified letter demanding they de-register me – today.

  4. Democrats and Republicans have deeper pockets than lil’ ol’ me.

    As an independent/unaffiliated voter, why the HELL am *I* continued to be forced (through taxation) to pay for their primaries?

    Let EVERY political party – or their registered voters – pay for their internal operation and squabbles!

  5. One political party, with 2 wings. Even George Washington asked us to not settle for just 2 political parties. I believe that Sanders and Trump are the product of the real problem. The establishment politicians in this country better pay attention, something is a foot. Happy New Year!

  6. @stevegroen
    1, January 13, 2016 at 2:46 pm
    “Good luck pushing Hillary left.”

    It seems to be the case, unfortunately, that the only way to move Hillary “We came, We saw, He Died” Clinton is to wave money under her nose.

  7. @stevegroen
    1, January 13, 2016 at 12:40 pm
    “Thanks for the Kerry article. It’s consistent with the absolutely outrageous remark in New Mexico in 2004. He was more concerned about his resume than humanity.”

    “Then there’s Hillary, who supported the Iraq War for probably all the same reasons. No hope and change there either.”

    ————

    Hillary and the Wall Street Ties That Bind or Why So Few Americans Identify with Either Major Party

    “Perhaps the best way to open the topic of Hillary Clinton and Wall Street is with the following story from David Corn in Mother Jones in July of 2014:

    ” ‘Hillary Clinton delivered a much-touted policy speech at the New America Foundation in Washington, where she talked passionately about the financial plight of Americans who “are still barely getting by, barely holding on, not seeing the rewards that they believe their hard work should have merited.” She bemoaned the fact that the slice of the nation’s wealth collected by the top 1 percent—or 0.01 percent—has “risen sharply over the last generation,” and she denounced this “throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber barons.”

    ” Sounds great, I suspect most here would agree. Corn went on to note:
    ” ‘Here was Hillary, test-driving a theme for a possible 2016 presidential campaign, sticking up for the little guy and trash-talking the economic elites. She decried the “shadow banking system that operated without accountability” and caused the financial crisis that wiped out millions of jobs and the nest eggs, retirement funds, and college savings of families across the land. Yet at the end of this week, when all three Clintons hold a day-long confab with donors to their foundation, the site for this gathering will be the Manhattan headquarters of Goldman Sachs.’ (My emphasis)

    “Taken in isolation, the story would be easy to dismiss. So she held a meeting a Goldman Sachs? But the event was illustrative of a long-running connection. I’ll explore this connection on the flip.
    One can have many arguments about Hillary and Bill Clinton. The vote for the AUMF, welfare reform, and NAFTA can be argued in various ways.

    “But one you cannot have is about the connection between the Clintons and Wall Street. It is simply a fact. Consider the top 10 donors to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns:

    Donor Amount
    Citigroup Inc $782,327
    Goldman Sachs $711,490
    DLA Piper $628,030
    JPMorgan Chase & Co $620,919
    EMILY’s List $605,174
    Morgan Stanley $543,065
    Time Warner $411,296
    Skadden, Arps et al $406,640
    Lehman Brothers $362,853
    Cablevision Systems $336,288

    “Five of the top 10 donors to Hillary Clinton were Wall Street investment banks, and many were the beneficiaries of the Wall Street bailout. Two others, DL Piper and Skadden Arps, are Wall Street law firms.

    “If you understand the origins of the financial deregulation that were at the heart of the financial crisis, these donations should hardly come as a surprise. It was Bill Clinton who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which removed the walls separating banks, securities firms, and insurers. [Even] More troubling is the story of the Clinton administration and the financial derivatives at the heart of the financial crisis. When Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (“CFTC”), raised concerns about the enormous risks derivatives were creating and the lack of transparency surrounding them, the Clinton administration worked to silence her and make sure the CFTC did not regulate them.

    “Some have argued the repeal of Glass-Steagall was not the cause of the financial crisis (although I think it had some role), but the decision to prevent the CFTC from regulating derivatives definitely had a part in the collapse. It is obviously critical to note that eight years elapsed between the end of the Clinton presidency and the Wall Street crisis, and the primary blame rests with Bush and not Clinton, after all. And make no mistake, Jeb Bush’s strategy is to capitalize on the fact that ‘George Bush is quite possibly the best friend Wall Street has ever had in the White House.’ But the truth is the deregulation of financial institutions built momentum in the later part of the Clinton administration. (My emphasis)

    “Given this record, the support the Clintons have received from Wall Street is not surprising. And make no mistake: Wall Street has hopes for Hillary Clinton. Consider this from the author of a book on Goldman Sachs and its influence:

    ‘While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them thinks she really means her populism.’ (Emphasis added)

    “The problem is that without real regulation of the financial industry, any recovery will be limited, and the possibility of another financial meltdown turns into a probability. Volumes have been written about how the financialization of the U.S. economy has increased inequality and prevented a full economic recovery.

    “Equally important, however, is the political problem this creates. In poll after poll, significant majorities of Americans believe that the economic system is rigged against them. In a 2014 exit poll, 63 percent agreed that the ‘U.S. economic system generally favored the wealthy,’ yet only 41 percent believed that the government should do more to solve problems. Markos saw something similar in the 2010 exit poll and concluded:

    ” ‘Of the 35 percent who think Wall Street is to blame for our economic problems, 57 percent voted Republican — the party that does nothing but carry water for Wall Street.
    So why is that? It’s because people think there is no difference between the parties when it comes to the rich and powerful. And why should they? Obama’s finance team is essentially a branch office of Goldman Sachs and company. Treasury was more concerned with using HAMP as a way to protect the banks than help struggling homeowners stay in their homes. In a bizarre role reversal — the White House economic team tried to water down the finance reform bill that came out of Congress.’
    (My double emphasis)

    “It’s not hard to see why people have gotten the sense that Democrats aren’t much better on Wall Street matters than Republicans (even if they are).

    “The simple truth is that the connection to Wall Street has hurt Democrats on multiple levels. The failure to prosecute executives has created the impression that government plays favorites (and it is hard to argue it doesn’t). Indeed, Eric Holder famously noted that Wall Street banks were too big to prosecute. It has fed the perception that government is simply corrupt and cannot be trusted. This perception is devastating to the party that advocates using government to solve problems. (My emphasis)

    To be sure, Barack Obama has his own connections with Wall Street. Amazingly, even though not one senior Wall Street executive was prosecuted for actions stemming from the Wall Street meltdown, Obama has hurt Wall Street’s feelings.’

    “Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton. The election is not tomorrow. But there is a history when it comes to Hillary Clinton and Wall Street. Throughout their political careers, the Clintons have been close to Wall Street, and both the party and the country have paid for it as a result. We should be asking tough questions about this connection. Hoping that the Senate will push Clinton left strikes me as wishful thinking. The time to push her left is now—the time to be making demands about the agenda on which the next election will be fought is now.”
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/12/1376828/-Left-flank-critique-of-Hillary-Clinton-On-Wall-Street-ties

  8. @stevegroen
    1, January 13, 2016 at 12:23 am
    “An email-listserve friend once wrote that he spoke with Kerry at a fundraiser while the latter was campaigning in New Mexico in 2004. When my friend asked why he supported the Iraq War, Kerry answered, ‘Anyone who didn’t support the war was dead meat politically.’ ”

    I don’t have time right now to find his exact words, but I remember distinctly that Kerry said (or wrote) that his enlisting in the Navy during the Vietnam War was to burnish his credentials as a political office seeker. Not because he wanted to stem the rising tide of Communism nor because he wanted to help one side in the civil war between North and South Vietnam, but because he wanted to be able to say, “Hey, vote for me! I killed people in Vietnam!”

    In looking for his exact words describing why he enlisted, I ran across the following essay. It did not, to put it mildly, improve my pre-existing opinion of this political bottom-feeding Skull and Bones Yalie:

    “What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam”

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/26/what-john-kerry-really-did-in-vietnam/

    1. Ken Rogers: Thanks for the Kerry article. It’s consistent with the absolutely outrageous remark in New Mexico in 2004. He was more concern about his resume than humanity. I remember seeing stills from that 8mm footage, Kerry crossing his chest with .50 cal. bandoliers in what looked too good to be anything but a photo op. Ayn Rand would have loved him. What a total A-hole who should be tarred and feathered.

      Then there’s Hillary who supported the Iraq War for probably all the same reasons. No hope and change there either.

  9. @stevegroen
    1, January 12, 2016 at 11:54 pm
    “Really good stuff. Thanks.I didn’t know much about Hamilton other than he supported a plutocracy which I guess is all I need to know.”

    Well, yes, as long as that involves knowing concretely that the US banking system that Hamilton set in train is very much alive and flourishing in that little shop of horrors known as Wall Street, one of whose creatures (Goldman Sachs) Matt Taibbi has aptly described as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-squidding-of-goldman-sachs-20111213#ixzz3x6OEpyND

    1. Old news, Hildegard. More regime change from a weak president controlled by banks like his predecessor was. You know, the one that thought human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully so that OBGYNs can practice their love with women across the nation.

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