I didn’t vote for Ross Perot, but he was an actual candidate with actual positions and I guess some people liked him and his positions and voted for him. Same with Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan. Likewise, there’s a libertarian candidate who runs every year, and say what you like about the tenets of libertarianism, dude, at least it’s an ethos.
What the fuck does Americans Elect stand for? They don’t have a candidate, they don’t take stands on issues (“centrist solutions” is not an issue). The best I can understand is that a bunch of self-described centrist rich people got jealous seeing regular citizens, along with partisan-minded rich people, fund campaigns, and decided they wanted to have their own shindig.
I guess once you’ve got your own boat, plane, and mansion, owning a candidate is the next logical step. It doesn’t matter who the candidate is or what he stands for.
Is there any other explanation? Here’s some details from an American Prospect article by Harold Meyerson:
- The campaign to ensure the candidate’s ballot access in all 50 states has raised $22 million (more than the campaigns of every Republican presidential candidate except Mitt Romney), with which it has employed 3,000 paid signature gatherers and enlisted 3,000 volunteers.
- We also have no idea who the donors of that $22 million are, though the organization they’ve given to has published a list of “leaders” chock-full of private-equity executives and hedge-fund managers.
- Americans Elect has established a website on which voters can register their membership (roughly 350,000 have joined so far) and, come June, nominate by majority vote a presidential candidate who has met Americans Elect’s candidate criteria—chiefly, that he or she has chosen a member of the opposite party as his or her running mate.
- The organization’s leaders insist that theirs is a more inclusive selection process than the two parties’ primaries. But Americans Elect’s membership of 350,000, though it will surely rise, for now constitutes 1 percent of the roughly 36 million who voted in the 2008 Democratic primary fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
reflectionephemeral
Well, those other candidates came with some degree of grass-roots support. This thing is like the XFL. Tons of money and ink, and roughly zero interest from America.
AmericanSelect is almost comically vague. You’d think they’d at least, y’know, wrap it in the flag a bit, maybe carry a cross, but it’s just a great big nothing, as far as I can see. A vanity project from a guy or two who watch too much Morning Joe, I guess.
Also: I remember writing, under a different name, a little while back, “Say what you like about the tenets of libertarianism, at least it’s an ethos. Republicans believe in nothing.”
cathyx
Owning your own politician is the new fad.
Hunter Gathers
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they will nominate two old white males. Perhaps some as young as 50.
Ben Cisco
Undermining President Obama. SATSQ.
pragmatism
cover for people who are embarassed to be gopers.
TG Chicago
Whatever this thing is, it’s not benign. People don’t throw that kind of money around for nothing. They have a plan in place.
And I refuse to believe that they don’t have a candidate in mind. These people aren’t seriously going to throw their money away on “whoever is selected by an internet poll”. Because that would mean “Ron Paul”. He always wins internet polls.
They know who they’re setting up, and they’ll ensure that this person gets “nominated”. They have an ethos; they’re just keeping it hidden for now.
Snarki, child of Loki
I’m planning on nominating “Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf”.
Who’s with me?
JPL
Bloomberg and Bayh. Firedoglake will probably back them but they will ask Jane not to campaign.
The party will be called the Narcissists.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s financed by a group of hedge fund managers.
1% vermin.
Fuck them.
Redshift
@TG Chicago:
They’ve already given that away, with their rules that say that the candidate will be selected by “members” unless the members select someone who is insufficiently “centrist,” and then the board (chosen by the unnamed one-percenters who are footing the bill) will pick someone else.
No wonder the Village is so enamored of it; it’s the Village version of “democracy” — the leader will be democratically chosen by the people, unless the people choose wrong, and then their betters will fix it for them.
Yeah, that’s much more democratic than parties and primaries and stuff.
gnomedad
@pragmatism:
In a nutshell. It would make a good bumper sticker or 30-second spot:
Americans Elect
When “Republican” Is Just Too Embarrassing
Calouste
@TG Chicago:
I’m wondering if this is not some kind of pyramid scheme. Someone sets the thing up, seeds a few hundred thousand, gets rich idiots to add another 20 million, which gets mostly spend on salaries and consultancy fees and companies that are connected to that first someone, and presto, a few hundred thousand has turned into a few million. Do we know if Mark Penn is involved?
WereBear (itouch)
I’m thinking this is the first tentative steps to establish a more moderate GOP. Of course, that have all the Right People, so except for that nasty mob of actual voters, it’s a great plan!
Lev
I became much more serene about Americans Elect after I realized that this isn’t going to hurt Obama much at all. Every poll I’ve seen shows third-party candidacies hurting Romney in a general election by drawing away Obama-skeptics who also dislike Romney. People who support Obama against Romney aren’t going to vote against him in favor of Bloomberg or Bayh or Hagel or whoever. Obama is popular, Romney is not.
pragmatism
@gnomedad: i would like to buy your bumpersticker.
it’s like blackwater changing their name to xe (and i think they changed again). gotta rebrand to get away from the toxicity.
harlana
OT, sorry, but Tim Kaine is an absolute disgrace to the DNC and Dems as a whole. I mean, what the hell is he talking about? Don’t Catholic hospitals, for instance, cover their employees with private insurance that covers birth control now?
Adrian Haiwei
I’m looking for a Pat Buchanan / John Edwards ticket.
BGinCHI
Americans Elect is designed to ensure that the status quo continues uninterrupted.
The Dems can’t be trusted (brown people and teh gays) and the GOP is too stupid to run anything.
So AE has to come in to protect the system as we know it, and as the 1% enjoy it.
Bort
On election day they will all chant “both sides do it” while fapping to a gigantic picture of David Broder.
harlana
Has anyone else noticed that Santorum is going all full-bore Glenn Beck now?
TG Chicago
@Redshift: Ah, didn’t know that. Thanks. I assumed they had a failsafe, but didn’t know it was public.
Also, interesting thought, Calouste.
Lev
Sharpton/Bachmann ’12!
JC
Wow. 3,000 volunteers.
That’s about 1/5th as many as will be at the San Francisco Embarcadero pillow fight, this Valentine’s.
(and yes, we are looking forward to this! I’ve got my pillow and my helmet ready!)
Martin
@Calouste: Um, how is that different from any other political organization?
pragmatism
OT but this open letter from Kenny Powers (Eastbound and Down) to Tebow is the dog’s bollocks. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7552472/kenny-powers-eastbound-sends-open-letter-tim-tebow
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Taking Super PAC’s to their logical end and outsourcing even the nomination process. After all the Republican party has been bypassed as a fundraiser for years now.
But exactly what do they hope to achieve here?
1. Mittens will be the GoP nominee and unless God intervenes looking to get nuked by Obama.
3. American Elect forms a third party, with a third tier GOP candidate with almost no state infrastructure to GOT, thus splitting the conservative vote and ensuring Mittens lose in November will be even harder
4. ???? and Obama reelected in a landslide.
5. Profit.
The underpants gnomes of politics?
Cap'n Swag
Big ups for the Stones reference in the title. My favorite.
eyelessgame
Americans Elect is pretty much “We’re going to stand for what Democrats stand for, except without all the hippie cooties. And by producing a second alternative whom Republicans will hate just as much as they hate the Democrat, we will apply Duverger’s Law, all in innocence, and cause the far-right Republican to be elected. But we didn’t mean to! Honest!”
Steve M.
I don’t know, but if enough people would join me, I’d happily endeavor to stuff the Americans Elect ballot box for Newt Gingrich as a nominee.
BBA
From what I can tell, the AE platform consists of austerity and gay marriage. That’s a reeeeeal winner there.
rikyrah
they have to choose actual candidates, who will have to run on an actual platform. get back to me when they do that.
MikeJ
@Steve M.: Better to help stuff it for Ron Paul. Every bit as loathsome as Newt, but has a real shot at winning an internet poll. If the goal is to discredit AE, having Paul either a) be their standard bearer or b) get tossed out for insufficient purity is a big win.
Calouste
@Martin:
Most political organizations are set up to get someone elected, not just to fleece the donors.
Moonbatting Average
The AE website is so hideous; it’s full of corporate-political non-speech and dumb flash graphics. It’s the ultimate expression of “there’s no there there”. Apparently it’s in line for some SXSW award, which sounds about right.
freelancer
@Calouste:
This.
Michael Bersin
It’s the political consultant industrial complex at work. They get a bunch of wealthy yahoos who have never run for office, have never run a campaign, and have never participated in politics other than to write a check (and thus know nothing about the nuts and bolts of the political processes in running for office) and then do a song and dance number about this wonderful political campaign alchemy that will allow them to control the whole show, if only they write that check in a sufficient amount. Oh, and by the way, do you have any wealthy friends?
Someone involved in that game a few years ago informed me their quiet motto was “turning billionaires into millionaires.” A rather ironic method of wealth redistribution, don’t you think?
McWaffle
@BGinCHI: This was my impression. The GOP might eventually come up with a religious demagog who’s really more into the religion and less into the capitalism. There might be a market for a popularist theocrat, but that’d be no good for the market, ya know.
Heliopause
On those rare occasions you can pin these folks down on policy they usually seem to want centristy solutions. In other words, they want Barack Obama, the most centristy centrist who ever centered at the center of the Oval Office. So why aren’t they backing Obama? I guess what they really want is the policies of Barack Obama but with the ability to sit the various players down at a table and get them to “cut the bullshit.” In other words, these people are morons.
David Koch
One word: Tax cuts.
This is a vehicle for rich people who don’t want to pay taxes, who don’t want to party with the religious kooks.
kay
Americans Elect makes me laugh because it’s so clearly the creation of business and marketing people.
It has no legislative end, it’s exclusively executive, The CEO President, which isn’t how this country works, at all.
It makes the President equal to the VP, but the VP in the US system isn’t powerful at all.
Why would it matter if the VP was in the other Party?
And why would it be so different if Congress were still R’s and D’s?
I just think the whole premise has nothing to do with either reality, or the actual US system, as intended.
I love how there’s absolutely no work involved, too. It’s easy!
gbear
Thomas Freidman is interviewing cab drivers for the VP slot.
Chris
@McWaffle:
My understand is that the powers that be were afraid that Huckabee might just be that guy, and they spent considerably to make sure he never got to the top. Lucky for them, it turned out the base didn’t much like him either.
To be honest, I don’t think the base cares about religion in itself as much as it does about identity politics (of which religion is a part but only a part). Things like Mexican-bashing and Muslim-bashing, IMO, matter more than God-cred per se.
calliope jane
Heh. The prez and VP from different parties.
I demand duels.
I was having a conversation about this group with someone a few months ago. He thought it was a great idea and I was just like, WTF? You have no idea who’s involved, where the money’s coming from, and this shadow group will “select” the “optimal” choice when the commoners choose poorly? Fuck no. If they were really interested in changing anything, they’d work on all levels, not just the presidency.
Davis X. Machina
Because that worked so well in 1796
jl
OK. I will try to make a handy dandy checklist of what they have and don’t have in order of importance
Money, check
Multi state organization, check
Political marketing gimmicks, check
Ideas, ?
Policy proposals, ?
Slate of possible candidates, ?
Well, sounds like all the essentials for our current political system are there. The pundiits will like it. What’s the problem?
If people can join without contributing, or only contributing a dollar or something, I think the lefty blogosphere should all join.
That would throw BJers and FDLers and Wonketters (Edit and Great Orange Sataners) and etc, all into one fifth column inside Americans Elect.
Normally that mix would not accomplish anything, since the continents on the lefty blogosohere have differences. However, since we would come to commit lots of mischief and creative destruction, it might be fun. Something to look back on with fond memories at lefty blogoshere reunions about ‘the wars’ when we are all 90 years old.
Xecky Gilchrist
Wasn’t the vice president just the loser of the presidential election, back in the old days? I guess that’d make these yayhoos happy.
bodacious
I actually met up with a guy collecting signatures for this on the light rail in Portland. Nice guy, but I couldn’t make much sense out of his mission. He was just happy to be traveling the country and getting paid, as far as I could tell.
jl
@bodacious:
” He was just happy to be traveling the country and getting paid, as far as I could tell. ”
That could be us, come to think of it. Travel the country and get paid.
We should all join up and wreck it.
Beauzeaux
@kay: Everything you said +.
It’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. It makes no sense whatsoever for precisely the reasons you state.
jl
@jl: Wreck or hijack it. That would be interesting. What if they got a bunch of lefty blogospherians to join up, who all hated each others guts out of principle and history of bickering, but agreed on enough, and were aggressive and annoying enough to push a liberal/progressive agenda that would appeal to the majority of voters in the US.
I guess Chuck Todd, Mornin’ Joe, et al, would have a stroke on air about how the political process was being corrupted.
Edit: forget the hijack, Too risky for next election. Just wreck it.
Warren Terra
Please, call them by their chosen name: The American Select.
harlana
wow, watching bits of CPAC so far, these people are just desperate, absolute bugfuck desperation is what i’m seeing here
Delia
@David Koch:
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Once you cut away the religious kooks, the rich people who don’t want to pay taxes stand there all by themselves looking like the narcissistic douchebags that they are. They’re going to have to seize power in a military coup because not even the religious kooks will vote for them at that point.
danimal
I’m rooting for Huckabee/Bayh. That combo could generate a 49 state blowout for Obama. But of course, the American Selectors already have their candidate pre-selected, despite the pretense of democratic selection processes.
Anyone see Bloomberg’s summer schedule yet? Lieberman would make an outstanding running mate as well.
phantomist
A nice mix of cat’s breath and uncirculated hundred dollar bills. I smell Harold Ford.
Chris
@Delia:
Well put.
After thirty or forty years of cultivating those tedious fascists in the general public, they’re now getting bored with them and wishing they could rule alone without even having to throw bones to the little people… sorry guys, it doesn’t work that way.
Good luck getting the military to follow them.
SiubhanDuinne
@Xecky Gilchrist:
That’s certainly how it worked in Junior High elections. Class President was the one who got the most votes. Class vice president was the one who got the second-most votes.
I was pretty shocked when I realized it didn’t work that way in American Presidential elections.
Delia
@danimal:
Yeah, Bloomberg’s probably their guy. He’ll play especially well in the South and the West. But why let everybody vote? I’m sure their pre-selected internet voters will do a better job than this messy old-fashioned election business.
Suffern ACE
Bloomberg is going nowhere. I know he’s rich, but I don’t think he rewrote the city charter so he could run for mayor and then spent $30 million of his own money running against a non-entity dem to leave office on a vanity run for president. If he thought he could win, he would be running already.
Bruce S
“Americans Elect”
Definition – elect: Noun. “An exclusive group of people.”
Does that clear things up?
SiubhanDuinne
@Heliopause:
Cat Lady
@harlana:
Why would you do that to yourself? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.
Steve
@SiubhanDuinne: Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s vice-president, was from the other party (although of course they ran on the same ticket).
This highlights one of the reasons the concept works better for student government elections than presidential elections: no one is tempted to assassinate the student government president.
SiubhanDuinne
So I just checked out the AE web side to see it for myself, and now I’m trying to wrap my brain around a party that could theoretically have a Joe Arpaio/Bernie Sanders ticket.
The mind, she is boggled. The gob, she is smacked. The hoot, she is nannied.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve:
You didn’t know my student government president, but I take your point.
SiubhanDuinne
@phantomist:
CQTM
SiubhanDuinne
Going to stop posting so many comments in a row now. I’m beginning to feel creepily like Little Boots.
pragmatism
@gbear: On the plus side for the cabbie that wins, he can go to cheney’s “undisclosed location” and hide out while the MOU proves that he indeed does not know what the fuck he is talking about.
dmbeaster
AE is some weird mix of starry-eyed naifs and con-men. Some form of idiotic political naivete seems to be driving it for now, with an equal dose of opportunism about what might be done with it.
Given its completely corrupt power structure (classic smoke filled back room politics basically, updated for the internet), I expect it to go off the rails at some point even if it develops some steam. The only question is whether it becomes a footnote to 2012 or actually manages to stir up real trouble. The biggest risk is that it functions like every other third party, and upsets the balance of power for one side or the other. And it is hard to take the pulse on it since it has no candidate, and the power brokers are completely anonymous.
Thymezone
What do they stand for? Apparently they stand for “giving people a choice.” In this case, a choice between a few losers who couldn’t get anywhere in the two parties’ primary processes. Or who didn’t have enough juice to even get in.
But my main point is, they are losers. I haven’t seen one proposed candidate who has a chance in hell of making a dent in this election.
Right now you have the Democratic Party basically committed to Obama, and the Republican Party in a race to intellectual and political oblivion as fast as their little feets can carry them. And a few grifters who have made themselves a speaking fee increase or a book sale increase by pretending to run.
Obama, please. That’s the good choice in front of voters this year. That should be obvious.
eyelessgame
@Heliopause: As I say, my slightly different take is “The same platform as the (current) Democrats, but without the cooties.”
Suffern ACE
My guess is that they won’t find anyone to run. Kind of like Nadar who promised 4 candidates to run against Obama in nh, but couldn’t produce any. It won’t be someone who has run for office. A billionaire would get that instant respect of the msm, as they always do. But a Perot type? Nah. Perot had a certain cranky charisma that these guys probably feel is unnecessary. Warm fuzzy snore bore rich guy.
J. Michael Neal
It would be amusing as hell to watch them nominate Ron Paul, and then we later find out that the board is made up exclusively of Obama campaign staffers.
AA+ Bonds
It’s now jobbing to sandbag Obama, no matter whether its founders intended it that way or not. The leaders include well-known Nader-funding Republican ratfuckers.
The candidate will lose big in November but the idea is that he’ll peel away enough votes from Obama to ensure an otherwise impossible Romney victory in key states. (And it’ll be a “he” – do you think they have the guts to do otherwise?)
Also: it might work.
AA+ Bonds
I mean there is no way they will nominate a Republican, it will be a conservative Democrat with a Republican VP because otherwise their plan won’t work
AA+ Bonds
@Michael Bersin:
^And here you have the base (“al-Qaeda“, we’ll call it) on which those ratfuckers will build their city (by which I mean I agree with everything in the quote)
AA+ Bonds
Self-assured consultants using self-assured billionaires as useful idiots, and then those self-assured consultants become the useful idiots for ur-consultants like Karl Rove and Co., who spent their entire lives figuring out how to fuck the wannabes deep and hard
That’s how I see this
And then at the end if it works and Romney wins, all of those people except for the last group will congratulate themselves from their zeppelins for a fight lost but well fought to make America swell, and then Rove will hover over the White House and extend a fleshy tube into the roof and it will be all over
AA+ Bonds
(BTW I really admire that Obama Get the Facts banner ad where it uses red white and blue but the red represents the Bush years on the negative side of the horizontal axis)
AA+ Bonds
Last post of the night: everyday channers will absolutely slaughter their stupid fucking website vote even if Anonners and their pseudokin don’t get involved (and they will get involved, there is no target more red than the billionaires’ party)
You can’t actually use a website for shit in politics past a certain point of publicity so what we will actually get is some girl with her top off from an Image comic becoming their candidate
dmbeaster
What AA+ Bonds said.
I don’t know whether those running the damn thing are fronts for Republican Nader-funding ratfuckers, but that is entirely possible given the secretive and corrupt nature of this thing. It would make sense for the con-men grifters behind it to be that type of Republican operative, even if their are some naive wide-eyed waifs in the front office. Obviously, it all depends on who they ultimately front since the scam has to have a candidate at some point. Humorously, I chuckle at the idea that they are Obama operatives setting up a Ron Paul run, but unfortunately, whereas the Republicans have a ratfucking training camp called the College Republicans, there is no similar boot camp for those fictional Obama operatives to have mastered how to run such a con.
Also humorously, this is the Karl Rove ratfucking wet dream, and I dont mean the girl with her top off as predicted by AA+ in his final post.
This type of high level election manipulation is the true unintended consequence of Citizens United. Once you allow this amount of secret money and influence, the possibilities for the long con are endless.
Pococurante
“My name is Elmer J. Fudd. I own a mansion and a yacht.”
Heliopause
One further thought: The Professional Centrists abhor partisans like Jim DeMint (he was the first to pop into my head as a prime example) and would prefer that his type not be in government. Right? Well, guess what; South Carolinians love Jim Demint. You know who they love even more, bless his dear departed soul? That great uniter of all races, colors and creeds, Strom Thurmond. Do the idiot Centrists have a plan, short of armed federal intervention, for getting these neanderthals out of office? Because running some hybrid of Barack Bloomberg in South Carolina ain’t gonna cut it.