That’s what Jim Hightower said were “the only things found in the middle of the road.” Frank Rich at NYMag teases out the bad choices and/or dishonesty behind the latest Media Village outbreak of “bipartisanship” fervor:
…[T]he The first trial balloon, all but bursting with hot air, was the announcement of an organization called No Labels last December. Venerating the “vital center” and vilifying “hyperpartisanship,” No Labels was endorsed by Michael Bloomberg, the former George W. Bush operative Mark McKinnon, and MSNBC’s bipartisan-minded morning talk show Morning Joe, which celebrated No Labels’ opening festival of civic-minded treacle as if it were the birth of the United Nations. Among the star attractions was Evan Bayh, the former Democratic senator from Indiana, a Broder-anointed patron saint of bipartisanship who quit the Senate in 2010 after writing a self-martyring Times op-ed whining about congressional dysfunction… Bayh has since elucidated his definition of bipartisanship by signing on as a talking head at that haven of nonideological civility, Fox News, and by partnering with the former Bush chief of staff Andy Card on a Chamber of Commerce–sponsored “bipartisan” road tour opposing EPA regulations on smog-producing ozone. No Labels, meanwhile, has gone on to create a blog that awards “high-fives” to politicians upholding its content-free ideals. Among the winners have been Boehner (for asking his caucus to show up for Obama’s address to Congress) and Gabrielle Giffords (for showing up to vote for the debt-ceiling bill). While Woody Allen may be right that 80 percent of success is showing up, if that’s now the high bar for a functioning government, America can pack it in.
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No Labels has since been joined by two other bipartisan campaigns, both with prominent liberal supporters and both poised to damage Obama in 2012. One is the brainchild of Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, which, in a perhaps unintended bit of cultural synergy, is also the signature sponsor of Morning Joe. Schultz took a full-page ad in the Times this month to nationalize his crusade… for a moratorium on campaign contributions to protest “irresponsibility among elected officials” who “have put partisan agendas before the people’s agenda.” Exactly which “people” he means isn’t clear—presumably those who share his own largely Democratic orthodoxy—but his scheme was promptly embraced by Times columnists (not Krugman!) and by No Labels, which recruited him for a national teleconference. Schultz boasts of being “overwhelmed” with support and of recruiting some 100 CEOs to sign his no-giving pledge. USA Today, digging deeper, discovered that most of those 100 executives had given less than $5,000 or nothing at all to politicians in recent years. Somewhere the Koch brothers, pouring millions into the tea-party coffers to further the agenda of their own “people,” are laughing at this decaffeinated exercise in unilateral political disarmament.
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The other new bipartisan scheme is a web-based campaign, Americans Elect, promoted by Thomas L. Friedman, McKinnon, and Douglas Schoen, a Bill Clinton and Bloomberg pollster with a sideline of using Murdoch outlets to berate Obama for not sufficiently emulating Clinton and Bloomberg. Americans Elect has collected more than 1.8 million signatures to put a third-party presidential candidate on the ballot in six states (so far) next year. If there are any candidates on the organization’s wish list, they are secret, as are some of its donors—though Friedman has written that its “swank offices” were “financed with some serious hedge-fund money.”… And what would be Friedman’s third-party platform? His domestic bullet points include a short-term stimulus, Simpson-Bowles deficit cuts, a gasoline tax for government-supported scientific research, and a carbon tax to finance new infrastructure and clean-power innovation. That’s an agenda to delight attendees at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Morning Joe devotees, Bloomberg fanciers, and, for that matter, Barack Obama. It would draw only a fraction of those independent voters identified by Pew and no Republicans except for the one percent that likes Jon Huntsman, a No Labels “high-five” honoree whose presidential campaign, dedicated to bipartisan civility, is in a race to the bottom of the polls with Rick Santorum’s. If Americans Elect gains traction, virtually every vote it receives will be at the Democrats’ expense.
As a reminder of the (imaginary) rich demographic vein of Bipartisanshipmanism, Rich also includes a breakdown of the actual “independent voter”, as oppposed to the even-handed, public-spirited platonic ideal that sets Burkean bells a-ring:
One polling organization that regularly examines them in depth, Pew, has found that nearly half of independents are in fact either faithful Democrats (21 percent) or Republicans (26 percent) who simply don’t want to call themselves Democrats and Republicans… Another 20 percent are “doubting Democrats” and another 16 percent are “disaffected” voters, respectively anti-business and anti-government, angry and populist rather than mildly centrist. The remaining 17 percent are what Pew calls “disengaged”—young and uneducated Americans, four fifths of whom don’t vote anyway.
Linda Featheringill
Quote from somebody many years ago:
“If you’re too well rounded, there’s no point to you at all.”
General Stuck
There is big money in hair braned grassroots grifter movements, and that is about to skyrocket with Citizens United cash flowing in unabated from god knows where, all secret, of course. It’s like starving a bunch of animals then turning them loose at the pig trough buffet.
Dems, especially, DLC types, are not immune from the gold rush fever, and the pocket padding will be entirely legal, no questions asked, not even where the dough came from. I’m betting the C Street boys open up a jesus approved harlot wing to their little castle.
It’s all a Recipe for disaster.
I will vote for the former Harvard Law Review president, who had the world to choose from, but decided to pound the mean streets of Chicago for a little community empowerment, and not much cash.
As far as what Rich says about the indie swing voter, he is right that there are relatively few of them that will vote for either party, but that is set against an otherwise 50 50 nation of likely voters. So it doesn’t, or shouldn’t from recent history, take many of them to decide a POTUS election.
Linnaeus
I’d be willing to bet that if the folks at No Labels actually read Arthur Schlesinger’s The Vital Center, they’d oppose about half of the political program Schlesinger advocated.
John Cole
The best part of that Rich piece is that he slaps around David Brooks for most of it.
John Weiss
@Linda Featheringill: Featheringill you are the funny one.
beltane
@Linda Featheringill: When I read that the first thing that came to mind was Chris Christie.
Pat In Massachusetts
The kind of third party I think the country needs should have more of a Bernie Sanders flavor to it which of course is definitely not at all what the Very Serious People are having wet dreams about.
Mark S.
Ha! I’ve always suspected that, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen any hard numbers on it. It comes from talking to people who claim to be independent even though they’re more conservative than Rick Perry.
slag
Great. More high-fivin’ white guys. Just what the country needs.
Cluttered Mind
EDIT: Never mind, I found what I was looking for
Redshift
@slag:
<snicker> I’m just trying to imagine Huntsman or Evan Bayh actually high-fiving without it being Romney-level uncomfortable.
Davis X. Machine
Some more rigorously-drawn definitions of “independents” leave 3-8% and no more of voters in that category, no more. And even that’s split between the preening clueless and the sort of voter you’d expect the term to refer to.
That’s who holds the future of the republic in their hands… No wonder it’s hard to sleep of a night.
Cat Lady
If there’s a more oily unctuous self aggrandizing piece of shit than Evan Bayh, I don’t want to know about it.
slag
@Redshift: I’ve never seen it happen, but it would probably look something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQXqEAYHudQ . Or at least that’s how it would look in their minds.
Suffern ACE
It’s not so much the high-fives that annoy me, it’s the yellow flags they give out as penalties to politicians who are insufficiently hyperbipartisan. Obama got one the other week for appearing at an event where another speaker talking about taking the country back. Tsk. Tsk. Obama for not using his own speech to fervently deny that the country was lost, or something like that. Apparently appearing at a partisan event gets a politician a yellow flag…
Anne Laurie
@Cluttered Mind: I duplicated the link above the quote, just in case. Service!
Arclite
Remove corporate money from politics, and many of the problems people have go away. I know it’s not possible, I’m just sayin’
Frankensteinbeck
I have no problem with these third party movements. I consider the overwhelming likelihood is that they’ll just self-detonate without doing anything except rooking a few suckers. But if they somehow get votes, they’ll siphon them off *from the Republican side*. It’s the GOP who has a lot of moderates pissed at their extremism. The Democrat moderates are highly pleased with Obama. As are the liberals. The GOP has the bleeding wound for a vampire to fasten on, and the morons who are eager to be rebranded and claim they’re the middle when they’re the extremes.
Michael Bersin
In August 2000 I took a shuttle to LAX at 4:30 a.m. after the Democratic National Convention had ended. An individual boarded at one of the stops and the conversation in the vehicle turned to the convention. I identified myself as a delegate, that individual identified himself as a reporter for USA Toady. He stated his opinion that big dollar expenditures in politics was a bad thing and insisted that the Democratic Party needed to take the lead and stop accepting that kind of support from their “interest groups.” I replied, “And unilaterally disarm?” He gave me a disgusted look, turned away, and we rode the rest of the way to the airport in total silence. I thought, “This guy is an idiot.” And a few nights earlier I had participated in an extended conversation on the convention floor with a Fox News floor reporter (who was genius in comparison) during one of the extended breaks.
Looking back, that was the start of my involvement in blogtopia. I figured if those morons were getting paid for bludgeoning journalism I couldn’t screw it up any worse as an amateur…
Anoniminous
So a bunch of Much-Bucks got together, bought an advertising campaign, and are attempting to create a Center Party.
slag
@Anoniminous:
Calling it a “Center Party” is just so labely. Totally uncool. I vote that, like Prince, the party should from hereon only be signified by a symbol. Hmmm…but what should that $ymbol be?
birthmarker
Didn’t we have something like this last time? And it was called Unity08 and involved Sam Watterson?
b-psycho
Let’s fix this part:
Lihtox
Their rhetoric is perhaps a bit silly, but this country DOES need at least TWO sane political parties to be a functioning democracy. Americans like divided government, and like to “throw the bums out” when they’re unhappy, regardless of what the other party is saying at the time. (And frankly, I want to be able to vote against MY local representative or Senator if they’re doing a bad job, without fear of enabling some whacko.)
There MUST be an alternative to the Democrats. And there’s no way that that second party is going to be to the left of the Democrats; not going to happen here.
So I personally *would* like the Blue Dogs to split off from the Democrats, team up with some of these centrists, and form a new conservative party that can take the place of the Republicans: it would give us Americans a choice between sane people, which we like, and allow the Republicans to dwindle into the insignificance they so richly deserve.
And if I have to listen to them brag about how centrist and mainstream they are, that would be a small price to pay.
Chet
@Michael Bersin: To paraphrase Howard Zinn, you can’t be neutral on a moving shuttle.
Fred Fnord
@Lihtox:
How about if the price is that the Republicans win the presidency and majorities in the Senate and the House every time for the next 20 years?
The Republicans have 27% of the country who will vote for them no matter what, because they are insane and the Republican party is clearly the party of the insane. You cannot convince the insane of anything.
The Democrats have a base, too. But they are sane, and therefore can be convinced.
So, in a three-party case, the Republicans are looking for perhaps 13% of the vote that they don’t already have in the bag. That’s all they need. But the Democrats have to convince pretty much their entire voting base.
Gustopher
No Labels is really just the corporate right, trying to get the hell away from the radical right.
I wish them the best of luck in splitting their party in half.
El Cid
As was also shown a long time ago, can we please keep repeating over and over that the vast majority of “independents” vote either very Democratic or very Republican?
That the vast majority of “independents” vote either very Democratic or very Republican?
That the vast majority of “independents” vote either very Democratic or very Republican?
That the vast majority of “independents” vote either very Democratic or very Republican?
That the vast majority of “independents” vote either very Democratic or very Republican?
I know that nothing will break through the useful ideology of the astoundingly broad ‘middle’ of independents who stand bold upon their 17th century yeoman farmland and declare that they wish that only someone would represent conservative interests with a Democratic garnache frosting, but it’d be interesting to try.
Special Patrol Group
Is Mr. Rich now going to apologize for his for pulling the “there’s not a dime’s bit o’ difference” bullshit in 2000 (i.e., “Gush and Bore”)? If not, then fuck him.
Special Patrol Group
RICH (11/18/00):
I’ll take that apology any time, Mr. Rich.
brewmn
Thanks, SPG. It’s amazing how many left-of-center columnists found their fightin’ liberal spirit only after the lefty blogosphere’s turn against Obama had shown them that there was an audience for that kind of commentary.
I think they deserve some kind of award for finally finding their inner Woody Guthrie: we can call it the E.J. Dionne.
Ian
@Davis X. Machine:
take a look at voter registration versus voters. The dems aught to win every election.
Paul in KY
@Cat Lady: He lives in Connecticut.
William Hurley
Hightower’s folksie saying is just one of hundreds, if not more, takes on the self-evident truth regarding the mythological political “middle”.
The fact of this truth is at the heart of many comments, analyses and criticisms of the President’s penchant for negotiating in retreat or, differently described, coming to a negotiation prepared to acquiesce also known as folding.
To paraphrase a character from the Matrix, “In truth, there is no middle. If you try to create a middle, you’re not making reality bend, you’re only bending yourself”.
One outcome is that the President’s supporters become very agitated – a.k.a. bent out of shape.