Really Bad Idea of the Year
If you enjoyed how Ralph Nader put George W. Bush into the White House in 2000, you may love what a group called Americans Elect is trying to do in 2012.
The well-financed effort wants a “wide-scale draft movement for presidential candidates,” but it looks more like hammering a “broken” political system and smashing it to smithereens.
Americans Elect aims, not to create a new party, but hold a “convention on the Internet,” to take the choice away from primary voters and turn it over to the wisdom of those who select “American Idol.”
Presumably, this would bring a process that has survived two centuries, including a civil war, into a new technological democracy that would truly reflect the will of the American people.
Loopier still, the group wants “a mixed-party ticket,” requiring its presidential candidate to pick a running mate from the other party.
All this overlooks the fact that technology can’t fix a mess that was created, depending on ideological bias, either in 2008 by the election of Barack Obama or in 2010 of Tea Party zealots who are holding government hostage in Congress or some combination of both—-or more likely still, a generation of voters that keeps throwing tantrums for instant gratification in hard economic times.
Americans Elect assumes only a minority of Republicans have gone mad, lurching from Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich in their search for a plausible candidate as some Democrats hold back enthusiasm for the reelection of their standard bearer. But there is no evidence that a Silent Majority out there knows better.
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5 Responses to “Really Bad Idea of the Year”
In the mid 80′s, moderates controlled about 60% of the seats in congress based on voting records. In the 90′s, this had shrunk into the 30% range. Today, there are no moderates, except maybe a handfull, in congress based on voting records.
The same appears to be happening with the choice of candidates for president. The far left picks the democratic party candidate, this being Obama, and the far right picks its candidate, which appears to be Gingrich at the moment, but is anybody but Romney. What is left out of the mix is the independant voter that has to choose between the lessor of two evils and one that really does not support their position on issues facing the country, nor does the candidate view compromise an acceptible alternative.
So the question becomes, how does the 60% of centrist view voters in this country get a candidate in the race that supports their views and not the minority views on the left or right that supports the lobbyist on that side of the issues?
And here I thought having to limit choices to just Democrats and Republicans was the really bad idea of the year.
RP touches on the bigger problem: a moderate president cannot help the nation if the Congress is polarized.
Any third party, or “draft the candidate” movement, will not succeed unless it’s broad-based and involves getting moderates into all levels of government.
Better than sticking with a broken system and hoping it suddenly starts working. I’m not sure I think this is the best way to go, but at least they are trying something. But then I’m not sure choosing people by a random lottery wouldn’t be better than what we have now.
Well, either American have all suddenly gone insane or the system isn’t working. If it is the latter, then we should work to fix it. If it is the former, then it doesn’t matter anyway.
“Loopier” is right. Sure, we’d all like to see the system work better (as it was intended to work from the beginning) but so many of these proposed “fixes” are useless gimmicks. The most useful “fix” imo would be instant runoff voting, something which would have saved us from GWB in 2000 had it been in place, and would have also given us an accurate idea of just how many people are truly fed up with the corporatacracy. IRV would be a win win for American citizens. If it wasn’t kind to the 2 party status quo – too bad.