Shawn Griffiths
NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. - American journalist and co-host of ABC’s The View, Sara Haines, refutes the notion that people can't be independent-minded in their election choices in an era in which the Republican Party is controlled by Trump – a perspective voiced by her colleague, Sunny Houstin that Haines describes as “narrow.”
The conversation started with the topic of Karine Jean-Pierre and her decision to leave the Democratic Party after serving as former President Joe Biden’s press secretary. Jean-Pierre is slated to release a book talking about being an independent in the Biden White House.
Haines called her decision a “more honest political take.”
“I think it’s time for politicians to sell themselves completely to someone consuming what they have to offer and not worrying about jersey-wearing partisan politics and tribalism,” she remarked on air.
Joy Behar wondered if Jean-Pierre’s decision meant she was willing to vote Republican, but Haines pushed back, saying Behar was “simplifying” things.
The common media narrative automatically equates a person leaving a party with switching parties, because the US exists within a system manufactured to put every conversation in terms of “Democrat versus Republican” and “us versus them.”
Haines noted that this is not about picking a party. It is about making conscious decisions based on the individual. This is in line with IVN’s stance on what it means to be an independent-minded voter and candidate.
To simply ask, does this mean Jean-Pierre will vote Republican misses the point of what being an independent actually means.
“Usually, an independent leans one way. I have voted left for 25 years but I don’t identify as Democrat because the Democrats don’t stand for everything [I stand for],” Haines explained. “I wait to see the candidates. And if the Republicans ever put up a candidate that I was like, ‘That’s my person,’ in a heartbeat, I would vote for them.”
Hostin chimed in, arguing that such an independent-minded point of view made sense under the old Republican Party, but not when the GOP is led by President Donald Trump. “This is the Trump party. This is very different to me, in my view,” she said.
“With the Trumplican Party the way that it is, this argument just doesn’t make sense to me.” When Haines called this a “narrow view,” Hostin repeated that “the Republican Party doesn’t exist as it did before.”
Haines wasn’t deterred:
My point here is the blind loyalty. The second I sat here at this desk and said I feel President Biden should step down, the hate I got was not from the right, it was from the left. To me, the reason I’m an independent is to say, ‘I call them like I see them and I hope you do, too.’ Because that’s the way the system should work.
Her remarks – past and present – have helped elevate the definition of being independent-minded under a system designed to endorse two private political organizations, including dispelling the myth that claiming independence automatically means being a moderate.
Here is Haines on the October 7 episode of The View’s podcast, Behind The Table:
“The reason I’m an independent is I have pretty harsh critiques to each side of the political spectrum,” Haines said.
“Not equally, but they are pretty high-temperature problems for me so being an independent does not make you a moderate, it does not mean you don’t feel passionately about the things you believe in.”
She added that people who are independent should be proud because so many individuals try to force everyone into a box to understand them in a flawed two-party system that does not represent America’s multi-layered society or accept criticism of one's own party.