Ezra Klein makes an interesting point about Americans Elect:
[I]f a high-profile incumbent, under threat of a primary challenge from the far right or left, takes the Americans Elect route, the practice could spread. (Are you listening, Senator Dick Lugar?) In that case, Americans Elect could help undermine one of the major methods by which parties enforce ideological discipline. It might give legislators like Bennett, Castle and Murkowski a license to cross the aisle — and survive. Then, if nothing else, we’d see more clearly how much polarization is baked into the system, and how much is a product of the particular people inside it.
Ed Kilgore makes the obvious observation: that teh polarization is really about how far right the Republican party is.
There are plenty of moderate Democrats in Congress, while it’s a vanishing breed in the GOP. For that matter, by any measurement, the Democratic “base” is significantly more diverse ideologically (and in every other way) than its GOP counterpart. All the examples of potentially liberated moderates Ezra cites are Republicans. So it’s reasonable to ask: are Republican moderates more successful in places where the disciplinary power of primaries is weaker?
If Americans Elect becomes an avenue for “independent-minded” candidates to bypass party primaries, you can bet your Charlie Rose tote-bag it will be Bayh-Lieberman-Bloomberg-type Democrats who go third-party to stick it to the silly hippies. Not non-crazy Republicans using an alternate route around the big winger spanking machine.
wrb
sub-pasha of infidelity would be better
Karen
Does No Labels = Americans Elect?
gaz
American Select is an attempt to hipsterize our electoral process. In a sane world, that alone should have killed the thing before it ever left the fevered “brain-trust”
Suffern ACE
Lieberman, sure. But Bayh left because he knew he would lose, not because he was afraid of a primary opponent. I don’t think Americans Elect would help someone like Bayh. Bloomberg, of course, isn’t a member of any party and was not driven off by a growing right wing push, at least not at the level where he was running for office.
Baud
At some point, it really isn’t the political system–it’s the voters. Political gimmicks like American Select can’t cure that.
AA+ Bonds
Ayman al-Zawahiri just called for a popular revolt against Pakistan’s government
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
What do you mean “if”? That’s exactly what Lieberman did to keep his seat. This isn’t a hypothetical, it’s an established fact.
Mankind will never be free until the last pundit is strangled with the strap-handles of the last totebag.
It hurts so good! Just like it should!
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
Nothing about any of these people is hip in the slightest
Tonybrown74
Didn’t realize you were a Miley Cyrus fan, Doug … :-)
WereBear (itouch)
A fundraising banner on the Internet has no infrastucture.
AA+ Bonds
@WereBear (itouch):
A vote on the Internet is that sandwich board McClane had to wear in Die Hard 3
dmsilev
@WereBear (itouch): Speaking of fundraising banners, am I the only one getting a RomneyPAC anti-Santorum ad at the top of this page?
May not be the most optimal use of Mitt’s friends’ dollars, but who am I to object.
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: That makes them different from hipsters, how exactly? (Name not withstanding)…
Hipsterism was old at least a decade ago, which means that Hipsterism is now decidedly unhip – which I guess is ironic – which I guess means it’s a Hipster thing – and if I keep going down this circular path my head will explode in a poof of logical recursion…
Davis X. Machina
@gaz: Are there enough “Daily Show” fans to support a third party?
Because in the long run irony is as big a threat to a republic as tyranny.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It might work for say a Liberman who already has his own political infrastructure. But there is a reason political parts have real world existences or it would be just done all by mail.
It’s also hard to believe American Select having much existence beyond this election. What is there platform beyond rich conservatives want the riff raff to mind their place?
gaz
@Davis X. Machina: I’m not sure whether or not you are being sarcastic, but in any case, I think you’ve got something there…
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
This is true, up to a point. There are some conflicts between various dem factions, but no where near the abject chasms in the GOP, and why they are prone to flying apart as a party, at least temporarily, and why their civil warring is more vicious. Dems squabble about details and degrees of policy prescriptions, and mostly about the means to go about getting what they want.
One thing the democrats have over the republicans, which I think is the prime glue that holds us together, is a prevailing sense of fairness. It is the virtue epoxy that runs through the party, despite all our circular firing squads, and emo poutraging for lack of this or that pony.
The GOP is founded on inequality and selfish interest of “I got mine, fuck you”, and when the wheels come off from other excesses, they turn toward each other like starved Hyenas grabbing for the biggest bone for themselves.
AA+ Bonds
Just a friendly reminder that the money Americans Elect is currently raising goes directly to their largest donors in the form of cash
Tonal Crow
Americans Elect will be running the first national U.S. election in which every computer virus, Trojan Horse, bored Russian teen, and Chinese intelligence operative will be eligible to vote.
That is, it’s nominating its slate via internet voting, which it calls a “secure, online nominating process.”
I’d be laughing ’til my throat hurt if this wasn’t meant to be a serious proposal.
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
No, hipsters are still hip by definition, the term well predates what is currently hip
You are thinking of the indie rock set and they’re also still hip, except for the ones who have failed to accept hip hop
The point is that what is hip is still defined by New York City and you can go to that particular hip scene and ask them what they think about Bloomberg and the New Yorkers who like Bloomberg
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: Shit man, I guess I’m just not as hip as you. Thanks for the remedial course on ironic coolness.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@AA+ Bonds:
Really? So it’s all just a scam to fleece the same idiots who subscribe to Startfor?
wrb
@AA+ Bonds:
Actually NYC has always defined what is not hip, just tragic.
Hip is owned by the West Coast.
gaz
In the spirit of correctness, American Select is a bunch of 1%’ers making a desperate hail mary pass to snatch what’s left of our electoral process away from all of us unwashed heathens. (you know, since, are obviously too poor and ignorant to vote properly)
DFH no.6
I recall Ezra Klein being more perceptive than this back when he and Jesse Don’t-Remember-His-Name ran Pandagon.
But I’m old and my memory’s not so good anymore, so maybe not.
Kilgore is exactly right.
AA+ Bonds
@wrb:
Okay sure whatever
I say this as someone who has never lived in NYC and never wants to have to live there
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
I don’t know, you can read a magazine? There is a thing called Blogs?
Loneoak
@gaz:
I don’t see any ironic mustaches or birds tattoos within a thousand miles of these people.
AA+ Bonds
@wrb:
The West Coast is pretty, not hip, and it moderates prettiness with hipness imported from NYC, which gets it from London, which gets it from Berlin, which is why Americans are always mystified and alienated when new musical trends arrive
Splitting Image
Call me skeptical. Until the “Americans Elect” donor base gets a lot larger than it is, their prototypical candidate is going to be Newt Gingrich: a mouthy asshole with a sugar daddy. Incumbents who have a considerable amount of crossover support already have a good chance at getting re-elected if they get ousted in a primary. Lieberman was one, Murkowski was another. Candidates who need Americans Elect support are therefore almost by definition candidates with no crossover support. Just a few important lobbyists who want to make sure they stay where they are.
Loneoak
@Davis X. Machina:
Not to be pedantic (ok, ok, to be pedantic), but TDS is satire, not irony.
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: I won’t apologize for being largely culturally illiterate. I blame the 80’s (except for Alan Wilder and Laurie anderson, cuz they umm, like, rock and stuff). After that cesspit, I just had to tune it all out.
So catch me up? Can I still make a hipster (the indie rocker ones) feel inadequate by mentioning The Residents to them, or have they figured out who they are yet? I ask merely for information.
AA+ Bonds
@Loneoak:
The only irony here is provided by liberals who attack urban bohemian DIY culture
Know your roots, folks, your bourgie bourgie roots
Midnight Marauder
@Karen:
I feel like No Labels is a homeless person’s Americans Elect.
AA+ Bonds
I’m still chuckling at the idea people have that Portland is the origin of hip instead of its last stop, I haven’t watched that show though I understand it’s very funny
Lev
Lieberman’s victory was mostly a fluke I think. A practically nonexistent GOP candidate, a Democrat who had limited appeal outside the progressive activist community, and a third-party incumbent. The incumbent part is the kicker. Also, a lot of states have poor loser laws that prevent a failed primary candidate to just run as an independent. The planets lined up for Lieberman, he wouldn’t have won 999 out of 1000 times you roll those dice.
I really just don’t think there’s much of a market for Bayhmentum among Democrats. He was like the Democratic Olympia Snowe, pretty much just someone who’s got a relationship with voters that overcame ideological bonds. Won’t happen again in that state, most likely, just like it won’t happen in Maine again for Republicans. Though if someone could explain Scott Brown’s appeal to liberal Mass. residents I’d be most grateful.
Ben Franklin
The moderates have become the 20% everyone is fighting for. They didn’t just disappear.
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
Some of them I’m sure, but the best way to do it nowadays is to start talking about local rap acts and how you hang out with them
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: I’d have to lie my ass off. I have friends on the Def Jux label.
EDIT: I totally misread you… please disregard above.
I dig local rap. anything sans bling and hating on women. It’s a great avenue for delivery of some very creative lyrics.
Even some of the majors: See Aesop Rock, Mos Def, etc..
Davis X. Machina
@gaz: I despise conservatives, but I loathe those too cool to care with the white-hot intensity of a hundred stars.
Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 8.5
The people who invented democracy remind us, from the distance of two and a half millenia, that we’re supposed to take this stuff seriously.
gaz
@Davis X. Machina: I hope you didn’t read any of the contrary in what I wrote. FTR, I take democracy very seriously. Any levity displayed by me above is just me laughing so that I don’t cry. alright?
Ben Franklin
@Davis X. Machina:
Add Plato’s rebuke of contemporaneous pols who would dress down when campaigning in poor districts.
AA+ Bonds
@Davis X. Machina:
In general the medieval commentators on Aristotle had a better understanding of democracy than we do, although in their case I think it’s largely because they considered it something comparable to the Gorgons or Hy-Brasil
Davis X. Machina
@Ben Franklin: Scott Brown’s pick-up truck, 2400 years before the first pick-up truck.
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
Well in that case you are ready to out hip all the local pasty French lit Ph.D.s, move fast before they start fearing non-whites again
Be aware though that among many of the wannabe-bro-types in the scene, bashing misogyny bling or guns in music makes you instantly a creepy old person
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: LOL!
I’m pasty as hell
but also, last week I found out I am jewish (mother’s side) long story.
So my own rap career seems to have been squashed before it was even fully contemplated by me =)
Although I guess there’s some precedent for me starting a label and ripping off my less melanin challenged friends =)
Davis X. Machina
I am also partial to Heraclitus’ fragment 100: The people should fight for their law as if defending the city’s wall.
AA+ Bonds
It’s very hip to be a woman who wants to wear eyeliner and an apron right now as Zooey Deschanel has left orbit but is still in sight
I really fucking hate her, the vicious effect she has had on twenty-something white women’s self image has not been exaggerated
BethanyAnne
Well, for what it’s worth, the one person that I know running for the Americans Elect nomination is Buddy Roemer – a Republican who couldn’t get into the debates. He’s very sympathetic to OWS, and his main issue is trying to get money out of the system. Not sure that this disproves your hypothesis, but there is at least 1 person running who contradicts it.
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
You can do ethnic Jewish rap if you really want a hipster clique instead of respect from the game
Learn to DJ first though
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: I guess I’ll be creepy and old then.
I like Mike Skinner’s rather succint take:
“Around here we call them birds, not bitches!”
And MOS DEF may have a thing or three to say to the little clowns.
Loneoak
@AA+ Bonds:
Her acting is turrible, but She & Him Vols. I and II are fantastic albums.
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: my brooklyn bud taught me how to scratch – when he was living in sea-town he opened for RJD2 whenever he came to the chop suey…he’s fairly good.
DJ’ing is easy – just match the snares. Turntablism is actual art.
But I’ve spent the last 15 years or so (on and off, depending on time, money and inclination) recording and playing (kb, drum machine, etc) for small-time folks in the biz. I can make a wicked record on about $1500 worth of gear and a bit of patience. My one and only claim and contribution to the field of hip hop – and I’m not exactly gonna get rich or famous on it (not that I want that)…
It’s just fun. In fact, I never really explored it until I realized how much damned fun it is to produce it. I don’t rap though – probably never will =)
Lojasmo
@Davis X. Machina:
Jon is white, and wears a suit, so he is destined to garner 45 million votes, Amirite?
jl
Only thing is that I think American Elect is neither moderate nor independent. They will push reactionary big corporate (not small or medium size business, but big corporate) economic policies, with some more gradualism, and much better marketing, than the GOP.
On social issues, foreign policies, immigration etc, they will be more moderate, but still not independent there either. Big corporate friendly policies will set the priorities.
Only reason some one like Lieberman would not be able to have a big influence overall in American Elect, is that his foreign policy might be bad for significant portion of international corporate business. So, his influence might be confined to domestic policy (which would still be a horrible development).
gaz
If Murray Hill, Inc. throws their candidacy in with American Select, I’ll vote for them.
Smiling Mortician
@Loneoak:
It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Smiling Mortician
@AA+ Bonds:
My understanding is that chuckling is very hip.
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
LOL, you’re super hip right now then, even hipper than a turntablist right now (which I agree, that’s weird and idk how I feel)
gaz
@Smiling Mortician: I’ve half a mind to make this actual product, just as a kind of social experiment.
AA+ Bonds
@Smiling Mortician:
Not as hip as staring blankly with your mouth as a set line, into a glaring light while covered in your body’s oils
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: fuck. I knew I must have been doing something wrong! =)
AA+ Bonds
Dubstep lasted a while here among dumb white people but then it became a captioned cat photo thing for old white people
Not that dubstep or the people who make it are dumb in the slightest
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: LOL!
AA+ Bonds
The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC is still somehow hip and I don’t know how they survived something like 3 straight nights of Billy Corgan a few years back
What that won’t survive is the liberalization of Western North Carolina, although Shuler’s retirement gives them an extended lease, it is the Austin Strategy
(Of course in this scenario the hipness of the venue has an inverse relationship to how much money it makes for much of the curve, which contrary to popular belief is not always true)
I just thought of this because I saw Kid Koala and the X-ecutioners there (not together) and those are the last turntable shows I saw
I clearly know nothing about turntablism really
Smiling Mortician
@AA+ Bonds: I’ll just take your word for it.
gaz
@AA+ Bonds: I thought North Carolina passed some sort of resolution a century ago, vowing to be the least hip place in the union, outside missouri, oklahoma, IDAHO, and their southern neighbor…
how times change… =)
AA+ Bonds
@gaz:
Well
The Cradle has weathered the storm admirably for decades
It’s the Peel that is the up and comer, there are some acts that only play there when they come to NC
Wilmington(!) is getting there with that multifloor thing they have, the Lunchbox or the Lunchroom or whatever that thing is, and the new Kings in Raleigh is probably due for a Renaissance
You may be thinking of South Carolina (a mortal sin unless you are driving through it)
I mean, true story, a lot of coke-bottle-glasses get really excited when I tell them I grew up in North Carolina, they think I Fought In The War or something
FlipYrWhig
I have been saying that a bloc of “independents” would have a great deal of appeal to the vanity of many politicians. Think of how much more fun it would be to be Angus King than to be some freshman senator for either party. You get to have politicians and media figures constantly kissing your ass. You’re free to pontificate about the issues you care about rather than hewing to the official line of your party. Jim Webb would have been _much_ happier as an “independent” than as a Democrat. He could do his quixotic, quirky stuff on prisons and veterans, scold Democrats for taking health care reform too far, and snap at Republicans for being too zealously pro-war, all at the same time.
ETA: Or, good Lord, Joe Manchin. He’d be the poster boy. He could piss off Democrats to his heart’s content without being full-bore Republican.
It wouldn’t be good for the project of turning the nation towards liberalism more generally. But it would be great news for “fiscal conservative, social liberal” politicians and the reporters who love them. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, as “establishment Republicans” build bridges with DLC Democrats.
AA+ Bonds
Here is all the proof you need about Wilmington becoming hip if you don’t believe it and I can understand why you wouldn’t if you’ve been keeping up with legislation passed there lately
http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-soapbox-laundro-lounge-wilmington
This is from some jackass from Myrtle Beach and she’s probably right that the bartender wanted her the fuck out of there
Davis X. Machina
@Lojasmo: Yes. Provided of course that there was an R after his name, and it was a two party race. (Do read the whole post….)
Anonne
I was thinking more along the lines of Charlie Crist. In retrospect, if he had won Florida, it would have been a game-changer along the lines of what you were saying. But too many people felt that he was doing it just to preserve his own fortunes. I have a feeling that a lot of Americans would feel the same way about so-called “Independents” – you were voted out, go away.
But I agree that more Bayhs and Liebermans would be succesful than Crists.
PLH in NYC
Why is it always the hippies that get made fun of? We try to make the world a happier more pleasant place and everyone laughs at us and destroys another forest, species, habitat, park, waterway, whatever.
Socratic_me
Murkowski already essentially ran on this ticket. For all I was yelling about the terrible votes she had taken, most of AK turned out to vote for her because she was a moderate conservative. Did that moderate her positions? Her vote or the Blunt Amenment says no.
FlipYrWhig
@Anonne: I keep thinking Crist will make a comeback. He was almost McCain’s VP pick, no?
Anonne
@Socratic_me: I think they turned out because Joe Miller was an obvious nutjob. Given a less nutty alternative, I think she would have had a tougher race.
@FlipYrWhig: Nope. Charlie is sitting pretty at a prominent plaintiff’s injury/consumer action firm in Tampa. He’s an apostate, and that RINO is extinct.
Jebediah
@AA+ Bonds:
They’re like the underpants gnomes, except they have figured out step two.
Step One: Take money from small donors
Step Two: Hand it to large donors
Step Three: Profit! (for the large donors, anyway)
Brandon
Am I crazy or the only one who seems to recall that Mayor Mike is, or at least was until very recently, a registered Republican. And it wouldn’t in the least surprise me if thid group was created with the sole purpose of getting him elected to national office in 2016 through bypassing the Republican primaries. But the claim will be, helpfully perpetuated by Ezra and DougJ, that he’s ostensibly a Democrat with the media following suit by saying he’s going 3rd party because the Democratic party is too extreme or that he won’t kowtow to Democratic groups like unions who supposedly control the party. He just cannot be associated with it now because it would create the obviously fatal truth of a billionaires boys club oligarchical cabal trying to assert direct control over our government. The comedy of it all is that they think they can takeover our politics through a leveraged buyout, like they’re an investment bank or private equity firm. Just goes to show that the Masters of the Universe never make political donations without the expectation of a financial return. Even when the purpose is to enthrone one of their own.
bago
Some friends of mine created “DANCE PARTY USA” by putting a generator and Mackie