Scott Brown reaches out to independent voters

In  highly Democratic Massachusetts, Scott Brown reaches out to independent voters looking for support. On the surface this appears to be a sound strategy, considering that in Mass, registered independents actually outnumber registered Democrats. The assumption being that registered "independents" are politically middle of the road and can be easily swayed from supporting the candidate of one party towards the candidate of the other. But that's isn't really the case.

First,to clarify, in Massachusetts, one does not register as an "independent", but rather, someone who is not registered as a Democrat, Republican or some other minor party affiliation, is simply listed as "unenrolled."

Unenrolled voters may be very liberal or very conservative, but simply do not wish to be associated with the party for some other reason.

One very common reason why voters in Mass may choose to be unenrolled is that they may participate in the primary elections of either parties. And sometimes, liberal voters might vote in the Republican primary and vote for the candidate they deem less likely to win in the general election, and conversely, unenrolled conservatives might vote in the Democtratic primary with the same end in mind.

Then there are the truly open minded and free thinking voters who want to see the best possible candidates from both parties in the general election, so they might not vote in the primary in which a certain party's candidate is the shoe in, and instead use their vote  to support the candidate they would like to see running against the shoe in. Such voters, I'm afraid, seem to be in the minority.

Many unenrolled voters are not happy with the policies of either party. They are very skeptical but generally speaking, they still lean one way or the other. Getting them to sway may be just as difficult as convincing a Democrat to vote Republican,(and visa versa).

There of course is another type of indendendent voter. They are the wishy washy voters, not terribly interested or informed about politics, although they think they are. They don't have enough interest in any one party to become a registered voter. They're politically unspohisticated, don't really have in depth understanding of the issues or the candidates and are easily manipulated by the buzzwords, catchphrases, soundbites and media blitzes of the political campaigns.

And there are, unfortunatley, far too many of these kinds of voters. Enough to turn the tide of the election. As a result the candidates that win are not necessarily the best candidates for the office, instead they are the candidates that run the best political campaigns.

These are the independent voters that Scott Brown has been courting, and he's been quite successfull at it thus far. The Coakley campaign rested on it's early lead and now finds itself playing catchup.Brown has not said anything new to suddenly sway the voters,  if anything he looks less middle of the road and more in lockstep with the national Republican party than he did at the beginning of the campaign. What he's done is launch a succesful advertising camapaign and got a headstart on the negative ads.

But Coakleys back in the game with a barrage of television ads, fighting to win back those voters who can be swayed.

In my household, the advertizements are mutted out. We hate the negative advertizing of either candidate and are not effected by them at all. It concerns me that the outcome of this election may lay in the hands of those who would be so easily swayed.

If the polls hold true, in the end we in Massachusetts could be suffering from a very bad case of voter remorse. And because of the effect this election will have on national politics, the voters could be doing the nation a very bad disservice.

It's really unfortunate that it is in the hands of the lowest common demoninator.