Alex Altman of Time has an excellent article about Americans Elect:
[S]ince announcing his intention to seek the Americans Elect nomination in early December, Roemer has come to have reservations about the way the group does business. Formed in response to the depravity of U.S. politics, Americans Elect relies on what is widely seen as one of its worst aspects: secret money. Though it will be listed alongside other political parties on state ballots next fall, the group is organized as a social-welfare organization — devoted to promoting no particular candidate, ideology or issue — which allows it to preserve the anonymity of its donors. Some of them, like Ackerman’s father, a New York financier who forked over $5.5 million, have been forthright about their contributions. But the majority remain shrouded in secrecy. For Roemer, who caps donations to his campaign at $100 and won’t accept money from political action committees, the group’s financing structure has sown doubts about its intentions. “I might not be able to participate if the source of funding depends on the very special interests I am trying to force out of the room,” Roemer says. [….] [T]rust is a commodity in short supply. And though Americans are weary with Washington and craving comity, a band of insiders backed by Wall Street money may not be the type of change voters have in mind.
This explain why the mustache wouldn’t name any of the big money types behind this group when he started yapping about it last year — they wanted their donations to remain secret.
Bobo recently indicated a willingness to back an Americans Elect candidate even if Romney gets the nomination. I think a lot of media elites will get behind whatever Bayh/Lieberman/Bloomberg monstrosity our Galtian overlords put up.
With that much Village backing, it may be hard to keep this clown, whoever it ends up being, out of the debates. He’ll be on Morning Joe every day, get fluffed by Matt Miller and Bobo and Friedman twice a week, and get 24 hour a day tongue baths from serious centrist C-listers like Young Conor.
We may well be headed towards a third-party candidate with no real on-the-ground constituency of any kind, who is propped up entirely by secret money and establishment media propaganda. At least George W. Bush had to win primaries and pretend to clear brush.
I doubt that Bayhberg will get many votes, but if does it will be an absurd subversion of democracy as the term is commonly understood. And many of the people who insist we should invade other countries to made them democratic will be applauding the whole thing.
The Moar You Know
Ross Perot, part II: The Revenge Of The Mustache.
Seen this movie before, know how it ends.
Baud
My dog is not interested in any particular ideology or issue. Maybe he should be the Americans Elect candidate?
jl
Dude who woulda thunk? I kind of thought a bunch of arrogant wealthy big shots with piles of secret money were just what the voters had in mind for fixing things up.
Man, surprises every second in this crazy political life.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: I suggest we nominate Tunch, your dog can be the VP.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: A cat/dog administration. Now we’re talking real bipartisanship.
fasteddie9318
Please be Jeb…please be Jeb…please be Jeb…
D. Mason
I have a wild conspiracy theory that this is just the corporate arm of the Republican party trying to save face instead of actually break the 2 party system which has been so good to them. I mean look, with any candidate it would be a tough election for the R’s but with their existing field it’s basically a walk for Obama. If these guys pull a Nader that gives them some cover for the margin of loss.
cat
Have we discussed which side of the ticket the American Elect candidate cannibalizes?
jl
@Baud: We will need a balanced dog/cat ticket in order to centrist.
Very few pics of tunch lately, what has he been up to? Will he settle for VP next to a dog? I doubt it.
I will humbly pray to the prissy moralistic God of some right thinking religion or other tonight that arrogant wealthy bigshots with lots of secret money will come in a save us, perhaps be elected by acclamation, in a miraculous and spontaneous outpouring of public support on election day.
Or, if that fails, a Tunchist cat who will make the planes run on time, and solve all traffic snarls by understanding the interlocking connections of disparate issues, running through meany levels, that will solve all problems and surmount all obstacles.
And eat all the time, in addition.
harlana
Republicans are William Wallace.
Quite frankly, I’m ready for the evisceration to begin.
=)
jl
@cat: Tell me, please.
harlana
Do we have a “Republicans are William Wallace” tag yet?
I think we should.
Baud
@cat:
One would think that depends on minor details such as who they select and what they actually stand for.
Satanicpanic
God these people are awful. If there were any justice, pundit would be a job title as shameful as corpse robber or meth cooker.
Baud
OT, but TPM is reporting that the House has caved on the payroll tax. No details yet.
Chyron HR
@Baud:
They select no-one! They stand for nothing! You foolish political partisans just can’t wrap your brains around it, man!
jl
@Baud: They will select an arrogant wealthy bigshot, and will stand for lots of secret money.
Who will that cannibalize?
Hunter Gathers
Friedersdork will be too busy fellating Gary Johnson to join in the circle jerk surrounding the Americans Elect candidate.
What I find most hilarious about the whole AE thing is the concept of an online convention. If this convention is to be truly representative of the entire internet, the candidates chosen will be a couple of porn stars.
Veritas
Remember Unity ’08? No Labels? Yeah, neither does anyone else. This group will meet this same fate.
RealityCheck
Zifnab
Americans Elect – it’s like American Idol but nobody wins!
Trinity
My boss is actively supporting this. Ackerman has been to our office several times and they (my boss and her husband) are even hosting a luncheon inviting a bunch of DC old school heavy hitters (Dem and Repub) to introduce them to AE.
Note: My boss is old school GOP.
David in NY
@Hunter Gathers:
Well said. There’s a song about that in Avenue Q: “The Internet Is for Porn!”
Schlemizel
Make no mistake about it, these guys have no interest in electing Buddy or any other POS they can con into running. Their goal is to siphon enough votes away from BHO that the Republican nominee can win with 42% of the vote.
The Dems should be pushing back against this loudly & soon. I think this is a much greater threat to reelection than whatever bozo falls out of the clown car. Tie Nader’99 and the entire Boy George fiasco around these fuckers necks every day in every way.
dmsilev
@Baud: They’ve got a few details up now:
House GOP caved, pure and simple, and of course we get to do this all over again in six or eight weeks.
DougJ
@Veritas:
I agree.
Schlemizel
@Veritas:
Wishful thinking! In 08 everyone remembered the last 8 years, now not so much. I think they could draw more than Ralphies 5% and do it in states where it will do the maximum damage to reelection.
Waldo
They need a candidate; Trump is a free agent. Hmm …
Punchy
What the hell is your obsession with Bayh? Is he your Indiana Sullivan?
Chyron HR
@Veritas:
But they have UNLIMITED ANONYMOUS CASH!
Isn’t that the key to VICTORY!?
Baud
@Schlemizel:
Which voters would they siphon off though? Notwithstanding a few noisemakers, Dems are overwhelmingly happy with Obama. What group of otherwise Democratic voters can the siphon off without also siphoning off an even greater number of otherwise Republican voters?
Schlemizel
@Baud:
Not sure who they pick but we all know what they will stand for: TRUTH, JUSTICE . . . THE AMERICAN WAY!
As a brand new third party the will be an ink blot in which people will see whatever they want it to. This has zero affect on the 27% but the great unwashed who now understand that the Republicans are distilled evil may well see this as nirvana.
There is a reason Jesse Venture became Governor of MN – he was a blank slate with a well-known name. When you talked to people many just knew Jesse agreed with them – no matter what they thought.
Brachiator
Then this would be one of the first substantive tests on whether there are really effective citizen journalists in the Age of the InterTubes. Revealing the connections of the secret money gang will be an interesting challenge, the winner being the first to hack relevant accounts and post the results everywhere, so that even the mainstream media will have to take notice.
Culture of Truth
American Select
Veritas
@Chyron HR:
You have to have an established political party too. Ask Ross Perot about trying to use money to win without one.
Besides, the cash from this group isn’t unlimited in the same sense it will be for Mitt Romney, who yes, will indeed have big, fat stacks of UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH with the Koch Bros. leading the way! That must really make you steamed, huh?
Schlemizel
@Baud:
Ralphie swung enough votes in (I may be wrong about the state & if so I am sure it will be corrected) Maine to cost Gore those electoral votes. In Florida he got enough to make the theft possible. Remember who we are dealing with here, BHO does not just have to win he has to win by a large enough margin to overcome the voter suppression work and outright theft we saw in ’99 and ’04.
There is a large percentage of the low information voters who now hate the GOP but are reluctant to vote for Dems because “all they do is tax and spend”. That poison is in the well already. Those people are ripe for this sort of con game.
Elizabelle
@Zifnab:
Zifnab at 20 for the win.
Veritas
@Schlemizel:
Still mad about 2000? Do you remember how you felt when Gore gave his whining, pathetic concession speech? The disappointment you felt when BUSH WON FLORIDA?
Tell me, was ’04 stolen by satanic Diebold machines remotely controlled by Dick Cheney from the basement of the Naval Observatory, or do you have some other theory? Did you threaten to move to Canada after that election and rage and cry for days?
Loser.
Baud
@Schlemizel:
Anything’s possible, of course, but I just think it unlikely that there are that many voters in play that it would turn an Obama win into an Obama loss.
Satanicpanic
It’s deja vu all over again
Suffern ACE
Good for Buddy. Glad he figured it out. I was getting worried about him for a moment. Now I can go back to standing with Buddy. So far, he’s been the most likeable of the GOP candidates.
Mnemosyne
@Veritas:
Running a victory lap after everyone saw you cheat your way to “victory” is at a Kim Jong-Il level of self-delusion.
Bulworth
Whut?! Say it ain’t so. For the love of Gd..
Culture of Truth
All the GOP does is tax and spend. Pass it on.
RD
@Veritas:
Weren’t you the one who said Chris Chistie was going to make a BIG SPLASH?
In any case, I’m glad you’ve finally settled on a Mormon loon electo-bot with a proven soc1alist/tea party track record.
Schlemizel
@Baud:
I hope you are right but I don’t want to wake up on a cold Nov. Wed. and find out I was right all along. Been there, done that.
Chet
So, I take it the “Elect” in the group’s name is intended in the Calvinist, not voting, sense of the term?
Ian
@Veritas:
How can you see that and still think he should be president?
Spaghetti Lee
I wouldn’t be too surprised. People are always hungry for “something different” and honestly I can’t blame them, given how full of fail contemporary politics is.
What I do think is that you overestimate the amount of people who care what Brooks and Scarborough and Meet The Press have to say. The establishment media can hand out all the blow jobs they want to Bloomberg/Bayh 2012: most actual people will be on Facebook or playing Angry Birds.
Dr. Squid
Maybe Bayh’s veep will go to Bloomberg’s underling and former Indianapolis mayor (and statewide loser) Stephen Goldsmith.
After all, they’ve been interchangeable for the last 20 years.
Dr. Squid
@Schlemizel: Not Maine. New Hampshire.
kay
I agree with the people who say this is just one more way to re-brand the GOP.
It’s yet another faction of Republicans who are embarrassed to call themselves Republicans, so they come up with a slightly different brand and some marketing gimmicks.
It’s funny, because the reason they’re ashamed is because of the Tea Party, and the Tea Party were the 2010 re-branding.
This could go on a while, if they re-brand each disgruntled faction of the Republican Party, and call it ‘new’. There are several factions left to split off.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
They’ll poll and focus-group it so that it hits the Dems more. Otherwise, they won’t do it.
If it looks like Dems aren’t going defect from Obama, Americans Elect will go down-ballot and try insure that the GOP takes the Senate.
kay
Just in time for the decline of and disgruntlement with the 3 year old Tea Party, another group of well-funded conservatives appear!
This time, they’re moderates!
I can’t wait to see the bus tour.
They’ll need a dedicated pundit too, one who can ‘get inside’ Americans Elect and tell us they’re really grass roots.
Culture of Truth
Isn’t Romney basically an Americans Elect candidate, though? So if they can get the tea party to vote for him, it’s all good.
Suffern ACE
@Culture of Truth: No. I do not think the establishment is behind Romney for anything other than electability. Those calls for Daniels or Christie or Barber to run were basically that establishment looking for its own not-Romney. They have been doing that all Spring and Summer.
Schlemizel
@Veritas:
No asswipe, it was stolen by fraud committed by the SoS in (most notably) Ohio and by the most excellent voter suppression activity that made voting while having a “black sounding name” more difficult.
The real losers were the American people who had to put up with another 4 years of the maladministration of Boy Blunder – a loss we are all still paying for today.
Roger Moore
FTFY. The only difference is the packaging.
JMG
Let’s be real. The reason these people are insistent on keeping their involvement secret is that revealing it would seriously piss off the Democrats and Republicans they are currently bribing with campaign contributions, and insure that whoever’s President will have them on his shit list.
The only thing people like this really fear is losing money.
boss bitch
I am not impressed by Roemer. First he says Joe Lieberman would be on his VP shortlist and its taken him way too long to even become suspicious of Americans Elect. First 5 seconds of reading about that group sent off warning bells.
chrome agnomen
@Satanicpanic:
as a meth cooking corpse robber, i resent the implications!!
peggy
Can’t even bear to read about this. Friedman and friends make Palin, Ron Paul and the Newtser look like Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
Unknown money, easily manipulated ballot box plus zero free press equals their ideal of democracy.
TG Chicago
Two thoughts about Americans Elect:
1) They claim they’re going to nominate their candidate via the internet, right? If so, we know who gets the nomination. Bloomberg, Bayh, Lieberman, etc, don’t have large internet consituencies. The winner would be Ron Paul. Anybody who has seen how internet polls end up would know this.
2) The people who are putting the money behind this aren’t actually throwing money into some scheme to let some DFHs or glibertarians decide their candidate. They already know who the candidate will be. The whole voting process is a charade. You can’t tell me that people are giving millions of dollars to a campaign without a clear idea of whom they’re giving it to. And they’re not giving away money to clear the path for Ron freakin’ Paul.
So we know that they already decided who they’re going to nominate and they’re going to rig the system to get their desired result.
The only question is: who’s the corrupt bastard they’re trying to buy the presidency for?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@TG Chicago: It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re buying the Presidency for Ron Paul.
Ken
@jl:
No, it’s a perfect role for him, as modeled by Cheney. Tunch is the power behind the throne, and everyone ends up blaming the drooling dog for what went wrong.