Jon Chait argues this morning that Sen. Olympia Snowe’s surprise announcement that she’s quitting the 2012 race is really nothing the Dems should be cheering, because all indications are that the real reason behind her bowing out is that Americans Elect and their Sensible Centrist shenanigans are afoot, judging from her outro statement.
This sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric emanating from Americans Elect, the third-party group that believes that both parties should put aside partisanship and come together to enact an ever-so-slightly more conservative version of Barack Obama’s agenda. Moderate retiring senators often deliver lofty, vacuous paeans to bipartisanship on their way to a lucrative lobbying career. But Snowe’s statement seems unusually specific (“unique opportunities to build support for that change from outside the United States Senate”) about her intent to do something.
I suspect it may not be coincidental that David Boren, the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and oil industry lickspittle, came out for Americans Elect today. The group is set up so that its presidential and vice-presidential candidates need to come from opposing parties. The process is set up to, at least putatively, allow the voters to choose the ticket. But Americans Elect and its well-heeled funders have maintained tight control over the proceedings to ensure their envisioned ticket pairing establishmentarian insiders can prevail over candidates like , say, Ron Paul who might be able to actually win an open vote.
Snowe and Boren would make for the kind of ticket Americans Elect is looking for. Is that the plan?
Americans Elect is definitely designed to take votes away from one candidate and give a “less than 50% popular vote but 270+ electoral vote” situation, which will faithfully be interpreted by the Village as a “you don’t have a mandate so you’d better listen to us” win. That would be more effective if used against Barack Obama, but I’m not entirely convinced that the Americans Elect ticket would hurt only the President, especially given Romney as the GOP nominee.
On the other hand if you believe that there’s going to be a brokered convention leading to a crackpot wingnut non-Romney nominee however, Americans Elect is exactly the vehicle that could give that nominee the win in November.
On the gripping hand, Romney keeps winning the GOP primary voters whose motivation is solely defeating Barack Obama. It’s also very possible that the anti-Obama vote will line up behind Romney, and with Americans Elect in the mix, it could be enough to put Mitt in the White House even with an otherwise depressed GOP base.
And yes, Snowe would have won re-election easily, unlike Arlen Specter or Evan F’ckin Bayh or Joe Lieberman. She bailed for a reason, and Cohn’s argument as to why makes sense.
zzyzx
The only state that Snowe could possible threaten Obama in is Maine. Until there’s evidence that people want an even more centrist third party I’m not worried.
Catsy
You win today’s choice of internets for using this phrase correctly.
I’ve always liked it and made a point of using it when appropriate because it fills a rhetorical role in English that is otherwise awkward to express. Someone inevitably asks, I explain it, and they go “OH! Okay.”
BGinCHI
The thesis is that David Boren is going to be the next President of the United States?
Seriously?
That wouldn’t even be believable in a graphic novel.
You’re Boren me to tears.
Steve M.
Gotta disagree with you there. A Democrat who gets less than 60% of the vote has no mandate by definition. By contrast, if a Republican wins in any way, shape, or form, even losing the popular vote and winning the electoral vote only by means of bad ballot design and thuggery preventing a recount, it’s Mandate City.
Elizabelle
It’s a horrible idea, swathed in “centrism.”
Obama deserves a second term for the leadership he’s shown throughout unprecedented trials.
American Select and the Republicans supporting it should be ashamed of themselves.
ericblair
This is a Village vanity project and has zero zip nada appeal outside the Georgetown and McLean cocktail weenie circuit. The Respect Your Betters Don’t Rock The Boat ’12 tour will sink without a trace, minus nice substantial consulting fees and business expenses. Then there will be tutting and headshaking over ceviche about the milquetoast chairwarmer who coulda been.
JPL
It would be ironic after reading her letter, if she were to take enough votes as a third party candidate from Obama to give the whackos the presidency.
flukebucket
I am going to stick with 65 years old and burned out as the reason. Hell, a Gingrich / Paul ticket would get more third party votes than Snowe / Boren.
Bulworth
My gracious, Chait sure is friggin shrill. Hallelujah!
Bobby Thomson
@JPL: If by “ironic,” you mean “exactly as planned,” then yeah.
So ironic only in the Morrissetian sense of “unpleasant.”
jheartney
I agree with ericblair, Americans Elect would be lucky to get on a substantial number of ballots, much less pull in a nontrivial number of votes. Stop being so easily spooked.
David Hunt
@Steve M.:
Although the thought is correct, your numbers are off. A Democrat that wins with less than 110% of the vote has no mandate by definition. Also, a Democrat that gets 50%+ of the popular vote or a majority in the electoral college is obviously guilty of massive voter fraud and must be impeached and ostracized out of public life.
Dave
I can’t see people who are pissed at Republicans voting for a ticket with a Republican. The ads write themselves: “Snowe may call herself a moderate, but she voted with the GOP to (fill in insane GOP idea here).”
She can’t run away from her record.
jl
The Boren/Snowe ticket, or the Snowe/Boren ticket?
Will turn into the Bore ‘n’ Snore or the Snorin’Bore ticket soon enough.
Can’t you make the case that the Bore and Snore ticket would be more like Romney (assuming he is the nominee) than Obama, and might just as well take more from the GOP ticket than Romney?
You need a flamboyant nutcase like Perot, or a good shrewd carnival barker like Cain to sell boring tax and budget stuff. With Bore and Snore you have candidates that are just as colorless and uninteresting as their theme.
fasteddie9318
If the race is between the moderate Obama and the plutocrat Romney, what electoral space is a plutocratic moderate going to be able to occupy? I would argue that the only voters out there for a candidate like that are disaffected oligarch Republicans who aren’t going to be buying it when Mitt finally lurches out of the primary and tries to pretend that he was never part of the contraception clown show. I guess some of those people might have voted for Obama, but most of them would hold their nose and vote for the religious nutter over the guy who wants to raise their taxes a couple of points.
Suffern ACE
So they got no one. Pick one retired senator or governor from one party. Pick another from another party. Write a story. That sentence is no more “ODDLY SPECIFIC” than any other sentence. He might as well be reading the blank spaces between letters to determine the significance of what the letter does not say.
Here’s my summary of what this letter means. “I’m too old for this shit. Very truly yours, Olympia”
ShadeTail
@flukebucket:
I have to agree with this. For all that she’s been going along with the right-wing march lately, she’s clearly out of step with the Repub party. And chances are, she would have faced a crazed primary challenger if she had stayed in.
Ken
IF true, it’s only crude eight-dimensional chess from Americans Elect. They have to play at a higher level against Obama.
Steve
The imaginary Snowe/Boren ticket is not going to have any appeal among the working-class voters who are going to re-elect Obama. If you had a populist third-party candidate, someone like Ross Perot or even Ron Paul, well who the heck knows, you’d have at least some people who would see them as a viable “none of the above” candidate. But Snowe/Boren is the sort of ticket that appeals strictly to the Village.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
More I think that the Boren/Snowe ticket would give Friedman and the assorted Davids a sanctified point of contrast to Obama, who offers the agenda they claim to support, but he’s an icky Democrat, launching hysterical concern trollery from everyone from Walter Mondale to Evan Bayh to Claire McCaskill to Bob “Trojan Horse” Kerrey about Obama having gone too far to the left. I can see it happening, but one flaw is that compared to Olympia Snowe, James Stockdale had the snappy stage presence of Jimmy Smits scripted by Aaron Sorkin. I don’t think it changes the electoral college, but it definitely muddies the messaging waters.
Zandar
It may be less Boren and Snowe specifically than Muroidea copulation in general.
I’m not saying these clown could end up President, but the Republican in the picture could.
redshirt
Naw gonna happen.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This is being over read; for years the wingnuts used the threat of third party to bully the moderate Right into shutting up. This American Elect is calling the wingnuts bluff with the moderates walking out for a third party.
Remember GW Bush loss to Clinton in ’92 was blamed on Bush not being conservative enough. I think they a setting up a narrative that Romney loss was to Obama was because Romney got driven to far to the Right.
Cris (without an H)
Americans Elect will have no discernible effect on the election. None. We’re not talking about Ross Perot or John Anderson or Ralph Nader. This is going to be more like Barry Commoner.
PeakVT
On the other hand if you believe that there’s going to be a brokered convention leading to a crackpot wingnut non-Romney nominee however, Americans Elect is exactly the vehicle that could give that nominee the win in November.
Having a Billionaires Select candidate running in the general would definitely make things more dicey. But I don’t think that the charisma-free centrist candidate that ultimately gets appointed will take a net of over 4% of the vote from Obama verses the crazy conservative. If the current two-way race is 52D-48R (as an example), the BS candidate won’t make the split 45D-46R-9BS. If for some reason BS produces a stupendously talented candidate, then maybe there’s a chance with something like 39D-41R-20BS, but I don’t see that happening.
Hawes
Political parties are, by definition, grass roots organizations, at least in the sense of their origins. Eventually, party elites create some sense of organization and solidarity together to make it manageable, but top-down parties are, by definition, illegitimate with voters.
Guys like Perot, Wallace and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 simply tapped into a growing movement that otherwise needed a figurehead.
Is anyone really clamoring for American Select? Isn’t their ideal candidate in many ways Mitt Romney from 2006?
Now, the Tea Party could coalesce around a third party candidacy if Romney abandons their cherished shibboleths, but I wouldn’t bet on that either.
c u n d gulag
Zandar,
I love you – but have you been following Maine lately?
Look at their Governor!
She was afraid of losing to a teabagging wingnut in the Primary!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
We already have a centrist party in the US: Its name begins with the letter ‘D’. Sure, there are a few progressives in it, but largely because they have (as of yet) insufficient numbers to form their own party of the left.
If you’re truly a centrist, and you haven’t gone over to the Democrats by now, I just have to wonder what your true agenda is.
Here’s the future I want to see: The GOP flames out quickly, then dies out slowly (demographics). The Democrats become the center-right party. The Progressives form their own party, to the left of that. The up-and-coming Latino population splits between these two parties, probably along class lines.
History can then continue, unthwarted by the (so-called) Elect.
Tractarian
Huh? This makes no sense. Are you suggesting that a substantial number of voters otherwise inclined to vote for Obama would vote instead for a Snowe-Boren (or Boren-Snowe) ticket? No way. A left-wing third-party candidate could potentially peel away votes from Obama, sure. But any moderate or centrist vote that wants someone other than Obama is not gonna have a problem voting for Romney.
This makes even less sense. If a “crackpot wingnut non-Romney” emerges as the GOP nominee, a socially and fiscally moderate Americans Elect ticket would potentially devastate that nominee by picking up moderate GOPers and conservative independents.
I’m beginning to think Zandar and DougJ are having a little bit of fun with this Americans Elect nonsense. I mean, is there any reason to take this seriously at all?
$10,000 says Americans Elect gets fewer votes than Nader 2008.
BGinCHI
Well, if we’re all in agreement, let’s go ahead and exchange cabbage recipes.
Cris (without an H)
Several front-pagers here have pointed out that the ideal candidate for Thomas Friedman and his ilk is Barack Obama, just not running as a Democrat.
Rick Taylor
A-fucking-men.
Obama spent over two years making a concerted effort to compromise and bridge the gap between the parties, using Republican ideas whenever he felt he could plausibly do so. I felt it was misguided, and of course he’s been roasted for it by the purists in his own party, but it was done in good faith. I can’t take anyone calling for a centrist third party candidate to run seriously.
nellcote
AE is currently pimping for uber budget hawk David Walker.
Dave
If anything, AE will appeal to moderate/fiscal/Establishment Republicans who don’t want to vote for a GOP candidate that is forced to talk in apocalyptic terms by the GOP tea-billy base.
jl
@BGinCHI:
” Well, if we’re all in agreement, let’s go ahead and exchange cabbage recipes. ”
That is advisable. Mess o’ cabbage will produce less stale gaseous effluent than Americans Elect.
Cris (without an H)
I’ll see your Nader 2008 (739,278 votes, 0.56%) and raise you a Nader 2004 (463,655 votes, 0.38%).
Zandar
What, you guys don’t think Huntsman/Bayh would Naderize the President?
scav
@BGinCHI: Will you accept aubergines? Went looking but was waylaid by the mere name of this one. ‘Swooning Imam’
Violet
I’m pretty aware of what’s going on politically, and I have no idea who or what this party is. It’s not going to work. They’re going nowhere.
If they really wanted to change things, they should start at a low level, like school board elections and city council seats and work their way up. They’re not. Typical rich people vanity project.
BGinCHI
@scav: Judges?
Yes.
Those look very tasty.
BGinCHI
@Zandar: Now you’re just concern trolling.
Post a cabbage recipe or stand down.
jl
@Zandar:
” What, you guys don’t think Huntsman/Bayh would Naderize the President? ”
Dude, Boren/Snow, Huntsman/Bayh? People will have a hard time remembering exactly who these people are from one day to the next. And they have so little to cay compared to Obama on the good side, and Santorum on the bad side, that the more they drone the less people will remember exactly who they are.
The brain has mechanisms to shut down meaningless irritating noises that signify nothing.
If the election becomes extremely close for some reason, maybe they could throw it, or toss it into the House, but otherwise, I just can’t see it.
scav
@BGinCHI: Any recipe that explicitly calls for “pert” vegetables and then makes them swoon. . .
Catsy
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Unless the GOP changes course, this is the outcome I think is most likely in the long run. The craziness of the Republican Party and its base is currently proceeding along an asymptotic curve. They are half-right, in that conservatives are a majority in America–but not in the way they think. The real home for (the remaining sane) conservatives and centrists in America is the Democratic Party, with a viable liberal/progressive party to their left as the second of the two-party system. What is currently driving the GOP is a collection of extreme fringe reactionaries, neo-fascists and would-be theocrats–and there are far fewer of them than they think.
PeakVT
@BGinCHI: Dueling crockpots at dawn!
Tractarian
No! No no no no no! It is not possible for a Huntsman or Bayh or Snowe or Boren or any other “moderate” to Naderize the president, because Naderizing Obama means “taking more votes away from Obama than from the Republican.”
There is a significant portion of the electorate that views both major party candidates to be indistinguishable right-wing corporate tools. This was true in 2000 and it is true today. A lot of those people voted for Nader in 2000; very few voted for Bush in 2000; and approximately zero will vote for Americans Elect in 2012.
TooManyJens
@Hawes:
Nope. And yet they are on the ballot in a lot of states, which is a pretty damned difficult thing for a third party to accomplish, especially a new one. I’m pretty sure they’re not getting it done with grassroots energy, so that leaves money. A small army of paid signature-gatherers working almost entirely under the radar (would you know about Americans Elect if you didn’t read political blogs?) to try to get someone elected, even though we have no idea who and they have no platform.
Yeah, this makes me feel really warm and fuzzy and democratically empowered.
handsmile
Ah, this must explain why Bob Kerrey is reconsidering a run for Ben Nelson’s seat. Having been alerted that Americans Elect was strategizing to create this tantalizing ticket of Snowe/Boren 2012, he sulkily accepted that he would not be the standard-bearer for the Village media mandarins’ shiny new toy.
Of course Kerrey who only returned last year to reside in Nebraska must jump to it. Seasoned pol that he is though, he knows just what to do to establish his credentials: register to vote in the state.
Via TPM, from a report in the Omaha World-Herald:
Bill Arnold
@Catsy:
I usually just go with “on the third hand”, “on the fourth hand”, etc. Less explaining to do.
jl
I will remember Americans Elect if they are on the ballot in CA and NV. They must be in CA.
Think of all the free industrially chopped fruit salad, cheese cubes, and crackers at their events, and no one to eat them. I, for one, will be there, and will bring my own heavy duty napkins just in case.
Roger Moore
@Cris (without an H):
I think he’d need to bleach his skin, also, too.
boss bitch
OMG! Zandar, all these people you name are dullzzzzzzz…..who the heck would vote for them?
Cris (without an H)
I think your tongue is wearing a hole in your cheek.
But to take the question a little bit seriously: the thing about Ralph Nader is that he didn’t come out of nowhere. He emerged as the focus for a genuine movement that had been building among the left throughout the Clinton presidency. You guys think the firebaggers are dissatisfied with Obama, you need to remember the Battle for Seattle and the tangible (though false) sense of voicelessness among the Progressive left in the 90s.
They keep saying over at Avarosis’ place, “Tea Party the democrats.” Well that’s what the Green surge of 2000 was — a vocal faction, a natural constituency of a major party, attempting to upset their party dynamics. They went about it poorly, the teabaggers went about it better. But they were looking for a voice, and they found Nader, a canny self-promoter who had been a champion of Progressive causes for decades.
The rambling point is, Nader didn’t announce his candidacy and then hope a constituency would arrive. The constituency was there first, and he filled a need.
This Americans Elect bullshit isn’t anything like that. The Greens of 2000 were hungry and looking for a restaurant that would serve them. The Americans Elect “centrists” are already seated at the table and just wish that there was something on the Specials menu that was a little different that what everybody else is ordering.
Catsy
@Bill Arnold: But that’s not exactly what it means, or I’d agree.
The phrase “on the gripping hand” is used after expressing two considerations in a “one hand/other hand” construction, but it is used to then express a third consideration that could outweigh or render moot the first two.
The construction you describe is simply a way to continue adding possibilities without weighing them.
LAC
@ Zandar: I think that you should test the water you are drinking,it might be laced with vodka.
Concern trolling…the other white meat.
jl
@LAC: Which brings to my mind a question prompted by the existence of Americans Elect: What does chicken(shit) on a silver platter taste like?
Egg Berry
That might be the stupidest thing jon chait ever wrote, but i didn’t read his fanfic web site.
Roger Moore
@jl:
Not if their goal is only to steal votes from Obama. Obama won California with more than 61% of the popular vote. Even if you assume (ETA: he’s lost enough popularity that) he’d only get 55% of the popular vote in a two way election, that still means a third party would have to take 10+% of the votes from Obama and none from the Republican candidate to swing the vote. Not going to happen.
Jay C
Even despite the vast amounts of money some people with more of it than sense want to shovel at Americans Elect, I really have a hard time seeing it having much of an impact on this year’s election anyway: given that most states are winner-take-all EV, and that regular partisan affiliation is still the rule for Congress (and most statehouses) the notion of a “third party” savior garnering huge-enough numbers of votes to dent anyone’s “mandate” really does seem like a Beltway Village
wet dreamvanity project.Though I only know about Americans Elect from what I read on blogs (not much, I realize, but still probably more than 99% of the public) – it strikes me as being basically pitched to be Republicans less the teabaggers and snake-handlers, bolstered by a kennel full of Blue Dog Dems who don’t want to have to share a party affiliation with a radical hippie soshulist like Barack Obama…
shortstop
@BGinCHI: This made me jump, as I’m currently spooning up some mighty nice sweet and sour cabbage soup.
andrewsomething
@jl:
This.
We political junkies sometimes forget just how normal people follow politics. Most people outside of their home states have no idea who Snowe, Huntsman, or Bayh are. Hell, this is the first time I’ve heard of David Boren. Apparently he left the Senate in 1994. People born that year will be able to vote this year.
Elizabelle
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/02/rep-david-dreier-decides-against-seeking-reelection.html
It’s really wonderful what these citizen-drawn political maps can do.
A good idea, coming out of California.
nellcote
@jl:
As of last Dec. AE is on the ballot in CA as well as 11 other states.
jl
@nellcote: Thanks. The only problem is that the event ballrooms with the food will be so empty, it will hard to mooch much at all. Probably have to eat it all on site.
Comrade Mary
I am very close to using the Forbidden Word about Snowe.
So far, so good …
Tom Q
Just to reinforce everyone who’s saying this is nothing to waste worry on: the history of significant third party activity in a presidential election is that it occurs when a president is noticeably unpopular, but that’s there’s some resistance, whether parochial (as in the South 1968) or candidate-related (Reagan in 1980), to voting for the opposition candidate. Basically, it means th president is so unpopular, one candidate isn’t enough to absorb all the people who want to vote against him.
With Barack’s approvals already hugging 50% — and likely to climb if economic numbers continue as they’ve been — this effort is the equivalent of scattering seeds on un-arable land.
ReflectedSky
I don’t understand the premise. Who, beside Republicans and “Independents” who always happen to vote Republican, would vote for Snowe/Boren? I realize that there are voters who are uncomfortable with the current Republican party who might vote for Obama if this AE option wasn’t available, but that’s gotta be a pretty small sliver, while the slice of people who don’t want to vote for wingnuttery and/or just don’t want to look at Mitt’s mug has got to be bigger — and don’t forget, the Republican party is already a minority party. I don’t see how this hurts Obama. Either nobody notices, they notice and point and laugh, or significantly more people are drawn off the R line in the voting booth.
I realize AE must have some mighty deep pockets behind it. (It’s too much to hope that Friedman is spending his wife’s money up.) But think about HOW MUCH money they’d need to spend in lieu of party identification, structure and outreach; habit; and free media. Yes, they’ll get as much free media as the Village can give. But it also has to penetrate. Snowe and Boren both being dull and uncharismatic means nothing will get traction. If the two of them LIVE on CNN and the Sunday shows, 99% of the country will still hear next to nothing about them, and what they do hear, they’ll forget. There aren’t going to be that many plutocrats who will pony up the dough for a massive TV ad campaign. These guys know what they’re buying. Putting Snowe and Boren into power rather than Mittens or Barack simply isn’t a strong ROI — what are they really going to get from an AE President with no votes in the Congress that they can’t get by pressuring those two fraudulent centrists? (One pretending to be much further to the right, one pretending to be somewhat to the left, both clearly open for business.)
The Other Chuck
Wait, Friedman is running Americans Elect? Can we call it the Mustache Party? Or would that get confused with Jimmy McMillan from The Rent Is Too Damn High Party?
Frankensteinbeck
I’m going to side with ‘There is certainly a constituency in this country looking for someone else to vote for – and they’re Moderate Republicans’. Yes, this is meant to suck votes away from Obama. It will suck votes away from the GOP instead.
EDIT – Americans Elect appeals to… Thomas Friedman. People who aren’t sure if they can hold their nose and vote Republican this year.
Fogeyman
Extra points for “on the gripping hand…”
nellcote
I wonder what Rmoney PAC ads against Snowe would look like.
Geoduck
Add my vote to “she’s quitting because she’d have faced a wackaloon Teabagger primary opponent, and very possibly lost.”
Spaghetti Lee
I think you and Doug both overestimate AE’s influence along with your obsession with the Village. If Snowe/Boren is all they’ve got, watch them sink like a lead balloon.
Michael
I don’t know what’s funnier to me, the idea of a Snowe/Boren ticket, or the idea that people on the left would actually feel threatened by that ticket.
Davis X. Machina
@Geoduck: Snowe had 8x D’Amboise’s money, all the institutional (non-teabag) state party at her back, the previous GOP governor as a husband, and the ability to win an absolute majority as an independent in a three-way race if need be.
She left because she wanted to leave.
TruthOfAngels
Look, the Maine GOP? They are very, very wingnutty. In the present political climate, even such an august figure as Olympia Snowe can’t win the R primary. So she’s retiring. That is the thing, and the whole of the thing, and anybody who says different is being silly.
Davis X. Machina
@TruthOfAngels: There are two Maine GOP’s and two Maine Democratic parties, and Greens, and enough independents left and right that two of our last 5 governors were independents..
Four-candidate statewide elections here aren’t rare, a five-candidate race gave us our present governor, and three-party elections are the norm.
Snow’s seat was one of the safest in the Senate. Teddy Kennedy safe. Orrin Hatch safe.
priscianusjr
@ShadeTail:
Mino
Not worried. Americans learned their lesson in 2000. They also know what gridlock is.
Keith G
No it doesn’t. Cohn is pulling ideas out of his ass for some reason or another.
eyelessgame