NYT: Make Way for the Radical Center (Americans Elect)

[Renew Deal]

There is too much for me to post, so I suggest reading the entire thing. It's worth understanding the concept.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24friedman.html

<snip>
As the group explains on its Web site, www.americanselect.org: “Americans Elect is the first-ever open nominating process. We’re using the Internet to give every single voter — Democrat, Republican or independent — the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012. The people will choose the issues. The people will choose the candidates. And in a secure, online convention next June, the people will make history by putting their choice on the ballot in every state.”

Here is how it will work, explains Elliot Ackerman, an Iraq war veteran with a Silver Star, who serves as the chief operating officer of Americans Elect, and whose father, Peter, a successful investor, has been a prime engine behind the group. First, anyone interested in becoming a delegate goes to the Americans Elect Web site and registers. As part of that process, you will be asked to fill in a questionnaire about your political priorities: education, foreign policy, the economy, etc. This enables Americans Elect to put you in contact with others who share your views so you can discuss them and organize together. Then you will be invited to draft a candidate or support one who has already been drafted and to contribute to the list of questions that anyone running on the Americans Elect platform will have to answer on the site.
<snip>

Any presidential nominee must conform to all the Constitutional requirements, as well as be considered someone of similar stature to our previous presidents. That means no Lady Gaga allowed. Every candidate will have to post in words or video his or her answers to the platform questions produced by the Americans Elect delegates. In April 2012, the candidate pool will be reduced to six through three rounds of voting. The six, assuming they all want to run, will then have to name their running mates. The only rule is that a Democrat must run with a Republican or independent, and a Republican with a Democrat or independent.

“Each presidential candidate has to pick a running mate outside of their party and reaching across the divide of politics,” said Ackerman. In June 2012, the online convention will choose who among the six will run as the Americans Elect candidate — automatically on the ballot in all 50 states. If President Obama wants to run with John Boehner on the Americans Elect platform that would be fine — provided they go through the process. (President Obama should dump the Democrats and run as an independent, which he is, at heart, anyway.)
<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24friedman.html

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. Didn't Sam Waterston (Law & Order) try this in like 2005?

[gratuitous]

2. Tom Friedman drops another turd, the Times publishes it

Damn, I wish we had a real Fourth Estate in this country.

[Renew Deal]

5. I thought it was pretty informative.

:shrug:

[gratuitous]

9. I guess there's just one thing wrong with Friedman's idea

That would be "everything." Alex Pareene at Salon fills in the outline:

Thomas Friedman, riding in, with Michael Bloomberg in tow, from Aspen, on the winged stallion of radical centrism, inventing a plan to fix ALL OUR PROBLEMS by misidentifying them and making the actual problems worse. Thomas Friedman's Sunday column was dumber, somehow, than the last 1,500 identical columns he's written on the same subject. Faced with a legislative system with too many veto points and a polarized national electorate regularly splitting their votes between the right-wing party and the incoherent party of "everyone else," Friedman suggests that we elect a third-party president via Web poll. Yes!!! THAT WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING. Someone with no power base in either party, selected by Reddit users. Can't you just imagine how President Maru the Box Cat would be able to cut through this "partisanship" and get things done with "leadership" from the "radical center"?

[OHdem10]

3. Oh the Elites are at it again.

[Dawson Leery]

4. Tommy Friedman again. This is another "third way" campaign.

which means undermining the social safety net and regulation (as well as opposing high taxes on the wealthy).

[Renew Deal]

6. Maybe this suits you better?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1581933

[Tansy_Gold]

7. same turd

different bowl

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. We already have a Third Way, neolib, party.

[SteveM]

8. Sounds like another 3rd Way or the Hiway approach...

I heard about this early today, the NPR commentator described it as a way to somehow get past the "left-right" stalemate. Hell, I was under the quite distinct impression that the stalemate was between:

The Right, the Far Right, and the Shit-in-your-Pants-and-go-to-heaven Right

with an occasional objection shouted in the background by some centrist Democrats.

Left? What Left? Once again MSM sends us on a sojourn through the Land of False Equivalency where terms are not defined, and a miraculous Third Way will part the seas, or something....