Americans Elect, a self-proclaimed “centrist” group that aspired to use an online nomination process to choose a candidate who could rise above partisan politics, has failed to rise to the occasion and nominate a candidate.
The organization not only suffered from a severe lack of interest, but transparency, changing its tax status from 501c to 527, allowing it to keep secret the sources of its $20 million in funding. The organization’s bylaws also allowed for the board of directors to veto any nominee that didn’t meet its critera.
Giving BMGer and state representative Dan Winslow (R-Norfolk), the benefit of the doubt, AmberPaw reported on Americans Elect back in November.
Americans Elect, the deep-pocketed nonprofit group that set out to nominate a centrist third-party presidential ticket, admitted early Tuesday that its ballyhooed online nominating process had failed.
The group had qualified for the general election ballot in 27 states, and had generated concern among Democrats and Republicans alike that it could wreak havoc on a close election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
But just after a midnight deadline Monday, the group acknowledged that its complicated online nominating process had failed to generate sufficient interest to push any of the candidates who had declared an interest in its nomination over the threshold in its rules….
It had drawn criticism for not disclosing the donors who contributed upward of $20 million to win ballot access and set up the nominating process, and also for rules that some worried could allow insiders to steer its nomination to a candidate of their choosing. Obama political guru David Axelrod once called it an “uber-democracy meets back room bosses.”
The group failed to generate interest in possible campaigns from Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lamar Alexander, and its highest-profile candidate had been former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, who declared his candidacy after dropping his bid for the GOP presidential nomination.
Krugman sees the failure of the quasi-party as a failure of professional centrists:
there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats — that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they’d just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.
Americans Elect was created to appeal to this class of professional centrists — which meant that it was doomed to go nowhere. Because outside that class, the large number of people who believe in all the good stuff the centrists claim to favor are, you know, going to vote for Obama. The large number of people who don’t believe in any of that are going to vote for Romney. All AE could ever have been was a distraction; and it turns out not to have managed even that.
One yearns to taunt the Mustache of Understanding.
Don’t merely yearn to taunt. Taunt!
You mean that you need actual people to create a political party?
@hile current technology and social media could in theory make it possible for a non-partisan leader to emerge – Americans Elect was secretive, did not allow real input, and was not responsive at all – its website merely went clunk and spend.
Usually can’t stand Krugman but he summarizes the failure quite succinctly. His conservative colleague Ross Douthat also had a good obituary for these clowns as well pointing out that no one outside New York and DC elites actually likes Bloomberg and populism not elitism drives successful third parties. Too bad they didn’t give it to Buddy Roemer whose idea on campaign finance reform should get a national audience and might pull both parties towards it, but considering they couldn’t exist without rich secret donors he didn’t have a prayer with that crowd. At least Unity 08 would have had an open vote, the more interesting question now is where do their ballot lines go and who do they go to?