As South Dakota Democrats toss their chair on the figurative burn pile, one important item that should be noted is that it coincides with a big occasion – the number of people identifying as Democrat has slipped below the number of people who prefer no party label, choosing to identify as no party affiliation or independent.
With democrats at 150,886, the combined Independents/No Party Affiliation registrants are now 151,109, outpacing Democrat registration in the state for the first time ever!
Republican registration still outpaces the two combined, maintaining dominance.
The lesson? It should be a huge wake-up call to to everyone that when you quit doing the things that a political party is supposed to do, the end result is irrelevance.
Good news to start on a Monday!
And, of course, the Goebbels-want-to-be herr shortyberger is spewing his “good” advice over at the dakota septic tank on what the dems need to do to correct this reality. Isn’t he in part responsible for the state of the SD democratic politburo?
Of course he is, a little dictator wanna be with terrible ideas.
btw – for the record, independents are ‘independent’ i.e. no party affiliation. this especially prevents and precludes lumping independents together in a ‘no labels party’ so they can have their own party power too. it’s a dumb idea. they choose to be independent of any party or label. it’s already a step too far to let them be part of the dem primary voting and pressure the gop to do likewise. the partisans worried about how to more easily aggregate and motivate them seriously miss the point. but i suppose it’s a fun parlor game.
again, an aggregate count of independents on a list of parties has as much weight as a popular national vote tally in a presidential race. zero. the dem party is still a strong second, and if the total number of independents sees a rise, statistically it will take more from the gop than democrats. especially in this era where the apparent job of the gop is to keep the party attached to donald trump like a badly fitted blue blazer, to keep him out of a jail jumpsuit.
If Cory Heidelbergers liberal, opinion laced blog and the wing nut right’s stunts and internet ranting are the guard rails of South Dakota politics, the Republican Party has a broad, open, unimpeded road ahead of them. We need to just keep our vehicle out of the ditches to prevail.
Let’s include nit-picking anything and everything that is inconsequential about Govenor Noem, too. You know, like criticizing her for wearing a hat, sin of having no belt, and for imagining having holes in her jeans when there were none…the horrors of it all. Right Terry?
Geez, did not realize that many Libertarians remained after Aylward decided he was Republican.
Could the SD Dems regain 2nd place by replacing their Chair, ED and staff with a no-nonsense grudznAIck? Way less drama.
they’re still second.