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As you probably know, the start-time for the online “primary” being conducted by the shadowy if much ballyhooed “centrist” group Americans Elect has come and gone, and the organization is publicly admitting that under its own rules it won’t have a candidate for president, due to a lack of interest among potential candidates and “delegates” alike.
It’s pretty shocking that even with the bait of general-election ballot access in 27 states and counting, AE couldn’t attract a candidate capable of getting 1,000 online votes from 10 states. Kinda makes you wonder about its foundational belief that the only barrier to a victorious presidential ticket embracing a vague if deficit-hawky “bipartisanship” was the entrenched opposition of the major parties.
AE’s CEO Kahlil Byrd has put a statement up on the group’s web site with this characteristically vague information about next steps:
[U]nder the rules that AE delegates ratified, the primary process would end today. There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported AE to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.
Every step of the way, AE has conferred with its community before making major decisions. We will do the same this week before determining next steps for the immediate future. AE will announce the results of these conversations on Thursday, May 17.
Hard to say what this is supposed to mean. Presumably AE could delay its timetable and hope someone (Buddy Roemer?) eventually crosses the bar to become a nominatable candidate. It could lower its already pathetically low threshold for candidate viability. Or it could just make a mockery of the entire bottom-up process that is supposedly the group’s signature and pick a candidate (or candidates) to put forward, assuming anybody even remotely credible out there would accept the damaged goods of a nomination.
Assuming AE is unlikely to just call the whole thing off, I’d suggest they cut to the chase and nominate their most prominent backer, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, as the nominee. Under AE’s elaborate rules, he’d presumably have to disclose a party affiliation and then choose a running-mate from a different party. But he could certainly self-identify as a member of the Friedman Party, and then choose a running-mate from the Party of Richard Cohen or the Party of Robert Samuelson or the Party of David Brooks. It would be a Very Serious Ticket.
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retr2327 on May 15, 2012 12:05 PM:
And his election is just one Friedman unit away!
[and will always be so, fortunately]
The war that killed Achilles on May 15, 2012 12:14 PM:
Amusing Mr Kilgore . It leaves an Arte Johnson vacuum though .
Anonymous on May 15, 2012 12:20 PM:
"There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported AE to see a credible candidate emerge from this process," therefore I, Kahlil Byrd, humbly accept the nomination conferred upon me by the six financial backers. If elected, I promise they will all be in my cabinet.
Bort on May 15, 2012 12:28 PM:
I think they should nominate Friedman. He can find his running mate by going outside and hailing a cab.
cmdicely on May 15, 2012 12:33 PM:
Do the rules governing ballot access for political parties in all of those 27 states allow a party to change its nominating rules without restriction? Or is changing the rules going to reduce the number of states where a candidate from AE will have ballot access?
esaud on May 15, 2012 12:40 PM:
For a running mate for Friedman, he obviously needs a woman. For possible VP's I'm thinking Kathleen Hall Jamison or Cathy Young. Both of these women have made careers out of making false equivilences between the left and the right, pretending only they can tell us in their vaunted wisdom what the one true path is.
And as for a party name, how about the Broderites? The party mascot? Unicorn? Dolphin? Jackalope?
zandru on May 15, 2012 1:06 PM:
"as for a party name..."
I think "Mugwump" would fit the bill perfectly.
Dave Wales on May 15, 2012 1:08 PM:
T. Friedman showed he has the same awareness of commerce as the average carrot, in his column this Sunday that boils down to "I had no idea" that anything and everything is considered fair game for corporate sponsorship. I think it would be a much more seriouser, and as electable, if the AE ticket is Kinky Friedman & John Anderson.
I admit it, my first presidential vote was for Anderson. Living in Minnesota it seemed the best use of it at the time.
c u n d gulag on May 15, 2012 1:09 PM:
esaud,
I like Broderites.
And the mascot could be the "Push me-Pull You," because it's about as make-believe as bipartisanship.
exlibra on May 15, 2012 2:00 PM:
[...] millions of Americans who have supported AE [...] -- from Byrd's website statement.
Typo alert! Obviously he meant to say: "(few) Americans who have supported AE with their millions"
Anonymous on May 15, 2012 2:18 PM:
What a pathetic joke. Here's an excerpt from Krugman's takedown of this whole farce:
What went wrong? Well, there actually is a large constituency in America for a political leader who is willing to take responsible positions — to call for more investment in the nation's education and infrastructure, to propose bringing down the long-run deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. And there is in fact a political leader ready and willing (maybe too willing) to play that role; his name is Barack Obama.
So why Americans Elect? Because 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.
Tomm Undergod on May 15, 2012 2:27 PM:
Is there any reason why Obama cannot be a candidate for this party, in the way that New Yorkers routinely find the same person on more than one ballot line?
gdb on May 15, 2012 5:25 PM:
zandru and wales. You besmirch the good names and better policies of TR and Kinky, respectively.
Ken on May 15, 2012 6:05 PM:
Oh this is not good. When you set up a pyramid scheme, you have to have at least a couple of rounds of participation. Otherwise the initial investors won't get paid back, and without those success stories you'll never get new money coming in to keep the thing going.
I think the problem is that they were trying to market politics, which no one wants to buy. They should have stuck with a more traditional product for these schemes, like beauty care or vitamin supplements.
pjcamp on May 15, 2012 9:54 PM:
Is Broder dead? Doesn't matter. You don't have to be alive to be VP. Dig him up and run Friedman/Broder -- the middle of the middle.
Ralf on May 16, 2012 1:02 AM:
The Mustache of Electability!
Love it! (The concept, not the putative candidate)
HMDK on May 16, 2012 8:49 AM:
I nominate Amy Sullivan for Veep.
She's a perfect Friedmanite.