New Group Paves Way For 2012 Online Primary

DJRumpy sends this excerpt from CNN: "Americans Elect, which has raised $22 million so far, is harnessing the power of the Internet to conduct an unprecedented national online primary next spring. If all goes according to plan, the result will be a credible, nonpartisan ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to the growing problems America's current political leadership seems unwilling or unable to tackle. The theory: If you break the stranglehold that more ideologically extreme primary voters and established interests currently have over presidential nominations, you will push Washington to seriously address tough economic and other issues. Even if the group's ticket doesn't win, its impact will force Democrats and Republicans in the nation's capital to start bridging their cavernous ideological divide."

Comments

Re:Good in theory

[joebagodonuts]

I disagree. "The media" may resist, but if enough people get behind this, they will come around and cover it.

Saying "it's hopeless" only guarantees that it will remain hopeless.

Re:Good in theory

[timeOday]

"The Media" didn't create the 2-party system, our Constitution did, because we have winner-takes-all elections instead of proportional representation.

Cavernous Divide? Seriously?

[anagama]

What cavernous divide? There is a divide in rhetoric to be sure, and an emotional divide (*), but in terms actual policy differences between the GOP of GWB and the Obama administration, they're like siamese twins.

(*) I'm not sure how to characterize this -- I think of the people who despise "rednecks" and those that despise "hippies" -- they have a visceral hate for each other but it has nothing to do with policies apparently, because the Obama administration is indistinguishable from that of GWB. Hence, the somewhat obscure term of "emotional divide".

Centrist?

[semicolin]

Are they implying that they're centrist between the Democrats and Republicans? The rest of the world is watching American politics with some bemusement (and some worry) because there's really no left or centre in American politics. Both of your parties drift to the right ideologically compared to most other nations with open democracies. I see very little practical room between your two parties that would advance your nation forward in a healthy, productive, or sustainable manner.

Re:Divide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Came here to say this. There is no 'cavernous ideological divide'. The truth about american politics is that there is no choice. You have two parties that favor big government, are owned by corporations and are hell bent on maintaining the status quo. That's it. The few polarizing issues they differ on simply give them something to argue about in order to foster the illusion of choice.

It's like choosing between a bullet to the brain or a guillotine. Sure it's a choice, but the outcome is the same.

Re:Internet = Ticket to Democracy

[kaellinn18]

The problem with this is that a huge segment of the population doesn't know what they are talking about in regards to many things, especially on a national level. Talking about our national budget as if it were a household is just one example. Our piss-poor education system and ultra-religious society would combine to make this an absolute disaster.

Re:Good in theory

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You can not institute the reform of a Republic, by instituting the toolset of Facebook.

Fake electronic "Democracy" for a fake, electronic nation. The "ideological divide" is a stage prop, for legerdemain. There is no ideological difference between the parties on supremacy of Financial Capitalists, or on the primacy of American Imperial adventurism.

"Centrist"? Don't make me laugh! The "left" in today's Amercian establishment politics is to the right of RIchard Milhouse Nixon.

The role of the illusory "center" in American political manoeuvrings is to legitimise and institutionalise the digressions from Constitutional rule-of-law, into permanent features that endure beyond vacillations of party dominance and individual administrations.

I am not a Ron Paul advocate. But you can be sure this new, electronic primary will produce nothing that deviates from the progammed discourse - as does Paul, or Nader...
 

Follow The Money

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.alternet.org/news/153412/secretive_millionaires_funding_online_primary_for_'independent'_white_house_run

Of Course This Is Partisan - from the 1%

[Doc Ruby]

Just because it's not one of the other two, major parties, or one of the several minor parties, doesn't make it "a credible, nonpartisan ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to the growing problems America's current political leadership seems unwilling or unable to tackle." It makes it a different party, which is by definition partisan.

And practically every party claims to offer only "a credible ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to blah blah blah".

This new party might have something to offer. But painting it as a non-partisan effort is lying.

But what else do you expect from a party organized by the 1%? How about calling itself non-partisan while organizing itself as a party:

AE states that it is “non-partisan” in its approach, and also claims that it is not a political party. However, to get a ballot line in some States you have to identify as a political party. Also, their draft by-lawscontain this section:

“Section 7.2. Transition to National Organization. Pending the formation of state committees, the Board of Americans Elect shall be deemed to be acting in each state as an authorized state committee and to perform and exercise all duties, powers and responsibilities of a state committee as may be required by state law. In states where Americans Elect has met all statutory requirements to form a minor political party, such organizations shall be considered separate legal entities from Americans Elect, and shall be governed by the Board pending qualification as a national political party in accordance with law in the 2012 election.

You can expect secrecy and total control by its directing board:

This board is to have unfettered discretion in picking a committee that can boot the presidential ticket chosen by voters if it is not sufficiently “centrist” and even dump the committee if it doesn’t like the direction it’s heading.

Campaign finance reformers have already condemned Americans Elect for switching its organizational status under the Tax Code from political organization to 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. This change allows an organization to shield its donors. The group, which says it has raised $22 million of its $30 million goal, insists that it doesn’t have to be registered as a political organization, with publicly disclosed donors, because it is not a political party.

So it defines itself as a party to get on the ballot, but with a legal invention to fund itself as a "social welfare org" to keep its donors secret. It is known, however, that its $5M seed money came from a hedge funder. Its founding board has people who were Bush's EPA Director and previous FBI and CIA directors, among similar backgrounds.

Note that I am not saying that's any different from the other parties. In fact, I'm saying it's not any different.

Re:Good in theory

[tqk]

The problem being that the corporations who own capitol hill benefit from the current system, and own the media outlets. They will try as hard as they can to keep things exactly the way they are.

So what? I don't understand what's wrong with you Yanquis these days. On the one hand, you're arguably the most powerful nation on Earth. On the other, you're the most defeatist too.

The Internet opened up information transfer vectors to the masses even more than Gutenberg did. So use it! "The Media" is no longer just ABC, NBC, CBS, and the NY Times.

Case in point, Reddit is strategizing on the how, and which, politicos to try to unseat/replace with anti-SOPA/PIPA candidates. The last I heard, it was getting a lot of traction (for the record, I'm not a "redditor"). With the advent of "crowd-sourcing", it could concievably make a difference. All you need is one success, and they'll start to sit up and listen next time.

"Social Networking" is the de jour buzz-phrase of the decade. Do you really believe it's a toothless dragon, after it's ignited the Arab Spring?!?

Another case in point: a candidate for the CA governorship with the most bucks behind her lost once the electorate learned of her two facedness. Money is not all powerful! Stand up on your hind legs, FFS! Leverage all this neat stuff at your disposal. Get all your friends involved, and get them to get their friends involved, and just maybe you can effect real change(tm).

Re:Good in theory

[null etc.]

It's much more subtle than that. Did you click the link above? Do you notice how CNN chose a picture of Ross Perot where he looks goofy as hell? MSM wants you to read the term "independent party" and then immediately see a picture of a goofy nut, making it so much easier to discredit the serious need for a non-two-party system.

They did the same thing in 2008 with their election poll. All the candidates had dignified, diplomatic headshots in the poll, except for Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel, who all managed to look like they escaped the loony bin together.

It might attract old-school moderate Republicans

[billstewart]

Before the current Right-wing machine took over the Republican party (people like Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, and the neocons), there used to be moderate Republicans, nicer than Nixon and farther left than Barry Goldwater. People like my mom, who care about good government, want fiscal responsibility but aren't scared of taxation if it goes to worthwhile programs, think that you shouldn't start wars just to keep defense contractors in business, and think that the job of religion in politics should be to tell politicians to be honest and to care about the poor. They've pretty much all been kicked out of the party, and she didn't vote for either Dubya Bush or his father, and she was really annoyed when Christine "Not A Witch" O'Donnell beat moderate Mike Castle for the Republican nomination in Delaware.

The most traditional Republican presidential candidate at the moment is Jon Huntsman. He's too far right for me, and too far right to really call a moderate, but he's not part of the right-wing crazy machine, and thinks that the fact that evolution and climate change are real is more important than what voting blocks they attract or what corporate donors would be affected by laws about them (which is to say, "he doesn't have a chance of getting the nomination.") Ron Paul's not far-right, but he's a radical, not a moderate. Romney's relatively moderate, but he's doing deals with the machine, and if you look at the current Republican debating process, it's really a circus designed to convince the right-wing voters that they'll have to pick Romney to beat Obama. (Donald Trump was the comedy warm-up act, and Gingrich is the biggest of the clowns, as well as being personally opportunistic, but a lot of the process was Perry replacing Bachmann and still being an obvious non-starter.)

Will Americans Elect end up attracting more Republicans than Democrats? Probably not, but at least it's an interesting experiment in politics, and it might end up being as influential as Joe Trippi's online organizing for Howard Dean, which led the way for Obama's broad-based campaign. Alternatively, it could end up like a mirror to Ross Perot's campaign, which attracted enough Republicans to give Bill Clinton the election, and then fizzled out because Perot wouldn't let go of it and let it grow into a bottom-up party.

Re:Good in theory

[CowboyBob500]

Don't know about Nixon, but as a European I can tell you right now that your two parties would be categorised as right wing (Democrats) and far right (Republicans) over here. Certainly neither are left wing.

Re:Good in theory

[BlueStrat]

America should be broken up into several countries, with no overbearing power-hungry Federal government to fuck things up.

America used to be like that, with many strong and relatively independent country-like entities called States, with a small and weak Federal government to do those things only a national government can do, like negotiate treaties, provide common defense against foreign aggressors, and control/defend the national borders.. It's how the Constitution was written and how it was until the Civil War/Lincoln, FDR, and Wilson, continuing into the more recent administrations, morphed it into just the opposite and centralized most government power.

Instead of redrawing all the maps, I think it would be simpler and easier to just return the Federal government back to the Constitutionally-limited & weak central government it used to be.

Same effect.

Strat