The question is, why?

If independents are, in fact, best understood as partisans in disguise,

if independents are too scattered ideologically to come together,

if the rise of independent voters is inconsequential,

if true, independence represent less than 10% of the population,

why spend so much energy insisting they don't matter?

Lots of things don't matter. They tend to attract battalions of academics and powerful pundits to convince us.

Why such stridency?

Two words.

Ross Perrault. Welcome to a special episode of an

episode of Independent Americans.

I'm your host, Paul Reichoff.

Independents are now 45% of all voters.

There was some really newsmaking polling released recently by Gallup

that shows the highest number of independent voters recorded in modern American history.

But still, the two parties are fighting against

us. Still, the media doesn't pay attention to us. After all this progress and all this growth,

independents are still misunderstood and even dismissed. So my friend John Updike and I put together a

piece and I recorded it for a special episode that

digs deeper in why the 45% of Americans that are independent is so important and why does

the political establishment keep pretending we don't matter so here's a special episode on this

issue of why we do matter.

...