In the beginning, Americans Elect said its
purpose was to "Break the gridlock and change politics
as usual - No special interest. No agenda. Country before
party." And now, two years and many post mortems
later, there is plenty on why, after spending $35 million
and getting all the fawning publicity money could buy,
they have called the whole thing off.� I think most of
obits are off the mark
A couple of months ago I suggested that the
third party internet candidacy process being fostered
by Americans Elect might be called the Catfood Party because
it seemed to suggest the same approach to vital social
programs for seniors and people with disabilities as the
much ballyhooed Simpson Bowles scheme. Activists had taken
to calling the latter the Catfood Commission, in reference
to the fact that many seniors succumb to eating pet food
when their meager incomes are depleted.
My thinking was prompted by New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman�s nomination of former U.S.
Comptroller General David Walker, a former senior executive
at PWC auditing firm and currently the chief executive
of something called the �Comeback America Initiative,�
to be Americans Elect�s standard bearer. And what does
Walker propose to do to �get �America�s fiscal house in
order�? You guess it � �entitlement reform.�
Walker, apparently a willing candidate, accuses
the Democrats of being �still in denial about the need
to renegotiate our social insurance contract� and complains
that President Obama �is not talking about the fundamental
reforms in Medicare and Medicaid that we need, and he
is not ready to touch Social Security.�
��We need to re-impose tough budget controls,
constrain federal spending, decide which Bush tax cuts
will stay, and engage in comprehensive reform of our entitlement,
healthcare and tax systems,� Walker wrote in 2008. �A
bipartisan commission that would make recommendations
for an up-or-down vote by Congress would be a positive
step to making this a reality.�
Since that time very little light has been
thrown on the true aims of Americans Elect. Reportage
and commentary has concentrated on the fact that some
Wall Street heavy hitters were financing the operation,
that the list of their names was being kept secret, and
that those running the show reserved the right to ultimately
overrule any choice the online voters might make.
One person is quite unhappy the Americans
Elect gambit failed. �As a Clinton White House veteran
who has touted the virtues of an independent candidacy
to shake up the system, I�d like to clear up some confusion,�
wrote Washington Post columnist Matt Miller last week.
�The reason I�ve wanted an independent candidacy has nothing
to do with faulting Democrats and Republicans equally.
It has to do with changing the boundaries of debate,�
he continued.
What the Democrats are proposing �are not
nearly equal to the challenges we face,� wrote Miller,
a former Clinton Administration staffer.
�The renewal agenda we need partly involves
reallocating public resources from outsized projected
spending on programs serving seniors to big investments
in the future � a reallocation Democrats won�t pursue,
or won�t pursue on anything like the scale required, because
they�re afraid of how elderly voters will react (and because
they are reluctant to give up the political club that
protecting current arrangements affords them),� wrote
Miller.
�If you think we need to slow the growth
of Medicare and other health-care spending substantially
(by bringing it more in line with other advanced nations�
per capita health spending), and use some of the savings
to shrink tuition at public colleges to an affordable
level (and not just save ten bucks a month on indebted
students� interest costs, which is what we�re debating
today) � who�s your candidate?� asked Walker, a co-host
of public radio�s �Left, Right & Center,�
�Even if Americans Elect had gotten traction,
there was no certainty that the ideas I�m sketching would
have been given voice,� wrote Miller. �But the right kind
of independent candidacy could have been a platform to
start explaining and building a constituency for the new
policies and trade-offs that an aging America in a global
economy needs.�
Miller says something he calls �the math
of American renewal� requires that we �reallocate resources
from projected outsized growth in programs serving seniors
to future investments.�
Miller�s statement about healthcare spending
is misleading to say the least. The problem is not the
cost of Medicare and Medicaid; it�s the cost of health
care, which consistently increases faster than the cost
of everything else.� He�s right that this differs from
the situation in other �advanced� countries, but that
is primarily because all them have some form of universal
healthcare or a �single payer� Medicare type system that
the rightwing and the self-proclaimed centrists oppose
and which most Democrats are too cowardly to even propose.
Of course, the notion that the choice we
have is either forcing people to work more years and cutting
services to the elderly and disabled or making education
affordable is both silly and outrageous.
One thing is becoming clear to me now. I
have for some time been perplexed as to who some centrists
who prattle on and on about the essential importance of
education � about which there can be no denial � remain
so quiet when school budgets are being slashed, teachers
laid off by the hundreds of thousands, and college tuition
cost skyrocket. It is because they wish to hoodwink us
into thinking that it�s because resources are being sopped
up by people over 60 years old.
The people behind Americans Elect are claiming
that they folded their tent because the people they signed
up on the net wouldn�t support any candidate. Of those
2.5 million people who visited their website, only 5 percent
are said to have indicated support for any candidate.
Libertarian/Republican Ron Paul got the most votes and
former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer reportedly came
second. One report I saw said Lady Gaga actually got the
most �delegate� votes � but that�s probably an urban legend.
�So like many dreams, Americans Elect turned
out to be too good to be true,� said the San Francisco
Chronicle in a rater sophomoric editorial last week.�
�Perhaps voters were suspicious of an enterprise that
would not disclose the identity of all of its big donors,�
said the paper. �Maybe some could not shake their fear
that the third-party nominee could not win, but only serve
as a spoiler. Or perhaps the group's many rules and caucus
schedule struck participants as too complicated or too
contrived.�
Actually it was a faulty conception from
the start.
It would take more information than I have
to say definitively why Americans Elect went up in smoke.
But my hunch is that people � especially the most motivated
to explore such an option � are not inclined to support
a party when they have no idea what is stands for, or
to name a candidate when they haven�t the foggiest notion
what the campaign�s platform would be. Did anyone really
think the supporters of Ron Paul would turn around and
vote for Michael Bloomberg if the New York Mayor got the
most votes in the Internet primary?
The best answer I found to the collapse of
Americans Elect came from Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow
at the liberal leaning Brookings Institution, and Norman
J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American
Enterprise Institute.
�The third-party fantasy is of a courageous
political leader who could persuade Americans to support
enlightened policies to tax carbon; reform entitlements;
make critical investments in education, energy and infrastructure;
and eliminate tax loopholes to raise needed revenue,�
they wrote in the Washington Post May 17.
�But there is simply no evidence that voters
would flock to a straight-talking, independent, centrist
third-party candidate espousing the ideas favored by most
third-party enthusiasts. Consensus is not easily built
around such issues, and differences in values and interests
would not simply disappear in a nonpartisan, centrist
haze.�
The centrists have an idea they want to get
across and, while scribes like Friedman and Miller sometime
let the cat out of the bag, the centrists usually don�t
want to spell it out loud. They prefer working in back
rooms on some kind of �grand bargain� and presenting it
to the public as if there is no other choice. Flat earth
Friedman spelled it out the other day: �It�s because we�re
leaving an era of some 50 years� duration in which to
be a president, a governor, a mayor or a college president
was, on balance, to give things away to people; and we�re
entering an era � no one knows for how long � in which
to be a president, a governor, a mayor or a college president
will be, on balance, to take things away from people,�
he wrote.
Which is, of course, hogwash. But that�s
austerity, U.S. style. And it won�t fly.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member
Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of
the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for
a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.
