42% of Americans Ditch Two-Party System, Say Government is Biggest ProblemBy Claire Bernish According to a Gallup poll released Monday, for 2015, just 29% of respondents call themselves Democrats, while 26% identify as Republicans but fully 42% say nay to both parties and claim to be Independents, down only marginally from 43% last year. Indeed, Independents as a group reached 40% of the population for the first time in 2011, and have comprised at least that percentage since then. Before Gallup began polling by phone in 1988, there were several years when the average percentage of Republican identifiers was lower than 25%. But for Democrats, that self-identification reached a 27-year low, down from the previous years 30% and because data from 1951-1987 collected in person never found a yearly average Democratic identification less than 37%, it is safe to conclude that the current 29% is also the lowest in Gallup polling history. When pressed further, 16% of Independents admitted leaning Democratic and another 16% admitted a Republican tendency, evidencing the weight of the two-party system on voters feelings, as Gallup pointed out, because in most elections, voters are asked to choose a candidate from one of the two parties. What could explain this virtual nadir in party identification? Its the gubment, stupid. For the second year in a row, exasperation with the government topped the U.S. populace list of pressing grievances in a separate Gallup poll. They named the nations number one problem more often than the ubiquitous economy. In fact, of the last 15 years, the economy was the top complaint eight times including each of the six years prior to the government, itself, taking first place in 2014. With party fervor inevitably headed for a crescendo with the 2016 presidential race in full swing, perhaps the lackluster red and blue loyalty evidences the precursor to a shift. Imagine the possibilities should this silently growing majority decide to cast votes outside the two-party platform. Maybe, just maybe, these Independents have begun to see the duopoly for what it is two sides of the same tarnished coin. This article (42% of Americans Ditch Two-Party System, Say Government is Biggest Problem) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under aCreative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org. The Constitution says government is the solution. The problem is not democratic government but plutocratic government, which uses the state as the instrument of transferring public funds to private pockets. We do not need to shrink government but to expand democratic government and shrink the influence of Big Money and the transnational corporations which control the political process. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over expecting different results, government has never worked, so why keep it? So you say using the internet which was developed by the government, before you drive to work on government buiilt roads, using government developed GPS, with your rights guaranteed by the Constitution, which was set up to create a central government. Government works for you everyday. If you house starts on fire, whom will you call? What doesntt work is when elites capture government and bend it to their special interests. You want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, using successful government innovations to communicate your claim that government has never worked. Do you think lack of government works? Then I urge you to move to Somalia or Afghanistan or Libya, where there is no legitimate central government and the regions are ruled by warlords, terrorists, and criminals. Do not go to the nations with the best governments and the happiest people, like Denmark. And get off the goddamned internet! It is neither the d-word party against the r-word party nor the r-word party against the d-word party. It is both the d-word party and r-word party against us having a Limited Constitutional Republic and therefor against the people. I have heard such statements for 55 years. In fact, only the Democratic Party, to which I do not belong, has a progressive faction (37% in house, Sanders in Senate) to support. War on Iraq: Repubs voted 97% for, Dems 58% for; total split on raising minimum wages, collective bargaining rights, gun and immigration law reform, Iran nuke deal, etc etc. The problem is that the Republicans are totally bought and paid for and that the centrist What we need is a democratic republic, and right now, Bernie is the only path to taking the government back from the banks, the corporations, and their paid shillls. Do you have a better path to government that serves the people? Whining about the major parties is useless unless you have a plan to do something about it. The d-word and r-word parties are two sides of the same coin. The Creator granted the right to keep and bear arms? What year did he do that. You have a dogmatic view of politics which blinds you to critical distinctions. Dogma argues from first principles (assumed) to dismiss evidence and empirical differences. We need a democratic, secular reiublic, which is what the Declaration of Independence proposes as the foundation of a new nation. The Constitution was a counter-revolution which enabled rule by the 1%. You start with assumptions an proceed to dogmatic doctrine. I start with equality and consent of the governed, the core values on which the nation was founded, which require no dogma, no doctrine but a democratic process which we do not have. You are basically a fundamentalist right winger. Sorry, I outgrew that 50 years ago. A Creator given right is people being able to live which includes being able to defend themselves. That includes being able to bear arms to defend themselves from corrupt governments. I do not accept the assumption of a Creator. The universe is. If it needs a Creator, who created he Creator. This concept collapses on the basis of its own premise, that what is requires a Creator. So that line will get us nowhere. Now if we have the right to self-defense, which I accept as part of our evolutionary heritage, guns would be part of that right IF in fact guns protected us more than they subjected to risk of death or harm. I have studied this issue seriously for 3 years and I will share with you what I have learned, all of which suggests that the best way to defend yourself is to get rid of your guns. That being the case, the right to self-defense is best realized by getting rid of the guns. 1. Among the 35 advanced nations, all others, none of which recognizes gun ownership as a right, have an 85-99% lower gun murder rate (and 80% overall murder rates). The one nation with the right to keep and bear arms has 90% more gun murders, 80% more murders). (sources: Nationamaster, Wikipoedia, and gunpolicy.org) This is overwhelming evidence that guns do not promote self-defense but cause more harm than they deter. For that reason, the right of self-defense can more effectively be defended by getting rid of the guns. 4. The two most nearly gun free zones in the world, the UK and Japan, have 99 This evidence supports the thesis that the best self-defense excludes guns and on that basis, Creator or not, gun ownership, which decreases self-defense at all levels, is not a right that can be sustained. A home without guns is nearly 3 times as safe as a home with. For that reason, gun ownership as a means of self-defense is self-defeating and cannot be defended as a natural right. I suspect your gun views are based on belief and that you will therefore dismiss this daunting evidence. I will stick with the evidence and not subject my family to the nearly 3 fold increase in risk that homes with guns impose on their family. If you reject the Creator as identified in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, then you move all rights and the people to be below the whim of the government. Independent Gary Johnson [former governor of New Mexico] is heading the lawsuit to open the Presidential debates to third party candidates stop the monoploly by the RNC DNC. He recently announced that he will run in 2016 as third party candidate. In the last election he received more votes that any other 3rd party candidate in history without even being allowed to debate. Look at his record in New Mexico for 8 years and check out his website at http://www.garyjohnson2016.com for a possible alternative Loyalty / Betrayal; thats my Left / Right. hardly news. 