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By Shane Croucher
Senior Editor
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Last Sunday, the eve of early voting in Texas, the actor Matthew McConaughey posted a six-minute video urging, imploring Americans to stop treating a vote for an independent as a wasted one.
He was not, he stressed in his thespianic soliloquy, endorsing a candidate or a party. Simply “fairness and reality.” But many Democrats thought it was unfair and told McConaughey to get real.
San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones called the video a waste of time and said vote Democrat across the board. Hillary Clinton, on her new podcast, High Stakes, pronounced it “really unfortunate.” A bit like her own 2016.
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Beneath McConaughey’s cowboy-philosopher cadence was a real argument, sharp in places and shaky in others. In this latest edition of Dissected, Newsweek takes the scalpel to McConaughey’s declaration of independence.
“So they’ve been telling us for years that an independent vote is a wasted vote. Well, a great question for our times is: how’s that unwasted vote been working out for you? Yeah...”
How many independents are getting elected? Because it sure does look like a lot of wasted votes.
“Now, before we go any further, I want to let you know this is not about me right now.”
Is a video monologue delivering your opinion about anything other than yourself? But more notably, that “right now” is carrying a lot of weight. He’s running. At some point. Maybe.
“And I am not here today to endorse a candidate or a party. I am here endorsing two things: fairness and reality.”
Since when have fairness and reality ever mattered in politics?
“Our birth certificate is not the declaration of compromise, it is the declaration of independence.”
Stirring stuff. Only, the Constitution that followed was a massive exercise in compromise. In fact, the Senate, where he’d like to seat a few independents, exists because of something literally called the Great Compromise.
“In 2024, 87 percent of the U.S. House seats were effectively decided in party primaries by just 7 percent of eligible voters. Seven percent.”
To be fair, it checks out. It’s the election-reform group Unite America’s figure, almost word for word. Let’s hope McConaughey is using his vote. Old records showed he hadn’t voted in a Texas primary since at least 2012. The 7 percent could have used him.
“Now, skeptics are going to say most independents still vote partisan anyway, and they do.”
Correct. Gallup’s record 45 percent of independents—more than either party’s 27—breaks down into 20 points leaning Democratic, 15 leaning Republican, and 10 leaning neither way. America’s largest political identity is, mostly, a party with commitment issues.
“And the few I’s we have sent to Washington have always had to pick a door, an R door or a D door. Now that’s two doors, but no third.”
Well, duh. Committee seats run through the parties. So, independents, such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King, pick a caucus with Democrats and secure committee assignments. The third door exists. It just doesn’t lead to any committee rooms.
“The truth of it is, we don’t know how many independents would vote for a true independent, organized, funded, owned by neither side, because no one has ever given us one.”
Ross Perot has entered the chat. In 1992, the Texas businessman, running as an independent, won nearly 20 million votes, almost 19 percent of the total. So we do know, roughly: about one voter in five. Under winner-takes-all rules, that bought him a great deal of attention—and zero electoral votes.
“In a Congress as close as this, when three to five true independents, ones who don’t caucus with either side, well, they’re not a minority. They’re the majority-maker. Nothing passes without them.”
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s margin is the narrowest in decades. And we have seen a majority-maker before. In 2001, Jim Jeffords quit the Republican Party, declared himself an independent, and flipped the Senate—by caucusing with Democrats. They made him made him chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Majority-makers, it turns out, get paid in gavels.
“Independents don’t just have leverage, they actually are the leverage.”
Careful now, you’ll risk giving these politicians an ego the size of yours.
“Think of the I’s as the toll booth between an idea and a law. Every bill coming from the left or the right has to stop at that booth and answer one question: does this make sense to the middle?”
The Senate already has a toll booth. It’s called cloture, and since 1975 the toll has been 60 votes. Traffic reports have not been encouraging. Anyway, I thought you were against compromise?
“This summer, former Senator Joe Manchin and his daughter, Heather, launched the Independent Leadership Council, built to recruit, fund, and back true independent candidates for Congress.”
Heather is Heather Manchin, who ran the drugmaker Mylan as Heather Bresch and in 2016 defended a $608 list price for a two-pack of EpiPens before a House committee. Not the first person you’d hire to staff a toll booth. Or possibly the first.
“Again, I am not endorsing an organization.”
Noted. He has merely named one, introduced its founders, and summarized its mission. Just independently not taking any sides.
“And Joe Manchin knows the math. He lived it. In a 50-50 Senate, one independent mind became the deciding vote and took all the fire for it alone.”
For the whole of the 50-50 Senate, Manchin was a Democrat, albeit a thorn in the side of most of them. He registered as an independent in May 2024, after announcing his retirement, and kept caucusing with Democrats. And “alone” will be news to Kyrsten Sinema, the other centrist swing vote of that Senate, who left the Democratic Party in 2022.
“Now imagine that same power held by three or four, together, owned by no party at all.”
No need to imagine. Four independents running for Senate this year, in Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, have pledged not to caucus with either party, and their boosters already talk of an “independent caucus.” Three or four lawmakers voting as a bloc under one label. Washington has a word for that. Give it a logo and a few cycles, and the hunt for independents starts anew.
“Not a third party to replace the other two, no. A permanent check, to keep them both honest. America’s brand was never R or D. It’s independent. Enjoy yours. Just keep living.”
Manchin launched his council in July with almost the same words: “Not a third party, but a movement.” The talking points, at least, have found their caucus.
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