Third Party Candidate? We Need Independent Voices

THIRD PARTY

• A Third Voice for 2012 (By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times) I know what I’d pay good money to see: an intelligent independent candidate just taking part in the presidential debates, because it would make both Obama and his Republican opponent better. One independent I’d like to see play that role is David Walker.
• We Need More Independent-Minded Voters (David M. Walker, Former Comptroller General of the United States; Author, 'Comeback America'; Huffington Post) I was honored and humbled that syndicated columnist Tom Friedman this week suggested I consider running for president, putting me forward as a third choice to voters. But our need is bigger than for me -- or any other third-party candidate. And his column taps into a need that goes far beyond my work on fiscal responsibility and government transformation. Every day, I talk with people around the nation who take their vote seriously enough to not align themselves with one particular party. They are the new independent-minded voter. And we need more of them.
• The Radical Center We Don't Need (Robert Kuttner, Co-founder and co-editor, 'The American Prospect'; Huffington Post) We already have a centrist party. It's called the Democrats. Obama's Democrats are to the right of Richard Nixon on most domestic economic issues. If Democrats had not joined Republicans in financial deregulation, we never would have had the economic collapse of 2008.
• The Third-Party Myth (By Josh Kraushaar, National Journal/ 2012 Decoded) But in reality, third-parties only thrive when there's a political vacuum to be filled. Despite being a nominal independent, Bloomberg's views aren't much different than your average Democrat. Walker's stand on entitlement reform is embraced by many of the leading Republican pols, led by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan.
• What makes a strong third-party candidate? (By Jonathan Bernstein, Washington Post/ PostPartisan) Near as I can tell, every third-party presidential candidate who took 5 percent or more of the vote was reasonably well known before the campaign (Anderson became well known in losing the nomination). That’s not to say that Walker or Goode couldn’t possibly “succeed” in some way, but neither of them really fits the profile of past successful third-party candidates. The truth is that the way it really works most of the time is someone with a big ego and the resources to make it happen decides to run and probably then fills in whichever issues seem to resonate. Starting with the issues is pretty much getting the whole thing backward. If you want to push some set of issues, try to get a major party candidate to adopt them. It’s a lot easier.

Cutting Through the Democrat/Republican Reality Fog-Machine

2012
How Obama Can Be a Non-Partisan President (Jacqueline Salit, Huffington Post) Both President Obama and the Republican-led Congress seem to be grappling with this very tension in the budget negotiations going on now. Republicans won control of the House in 2010 because independent voters put them there. Obama won the White House in 2008 because independents chose him. Yet the budget negotiations -- both in their form and in their content -- are thoroughly rooted in a Democrat/Republican reality.
President Pushover (Paul Krugman, NY Times/The Conscience of a Liberal) Even people who are supposedly well informed believe that there was a vast expansion of government under Obama, when in fact there wasn’t. So we’re supposed to believe that independent voters will actually be able to cut through the fog — the deliberate fog of Fox, the he-said-she-said of most other media organizations — and give him credit for spending cuts?
Is Obama seizing the political center? (By Julian E. Zelizer, CNN) Obama has aggressively moved forward on an issue that has caused concern for many moderate and independent voters. By allying with some Senate Republicans, he has made the House GOP look like extremists who are more interested in tying up Congress than in reducing the deficit.
Report: On Debt, Democrats Rebel Against Compromiser-in-Chief (Ari Melber, The Nation) Obama has made Republicans "look bad," Drew concludes, but he is not actually getting much for it.  I'd go even further. By fully caving on this stand-off, where the White House is backed by the general public and large swaths of the GOP (the financial community and the well-informed), Obama would not only fail to impress independent voters, he'd ensure a drubbing on a series of future fights, large and small, with his unreasonable opponents.
Obama takes political, policy gamble on ‘big deal’ (By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Washington Post/Business) Unlike congressional Republicans and Democrats, who have to worry about what primary voters think of a deal when they’re up for reelection next year, Obama is focused on the views of independent voters in the general election. In polls, independents still show support for Obama, but his numbers have come down significantly since he took office.
Matthews Panelist Predicts Obama Will Use the ‘Politics of Fear’ to win re-Election (Fox Nation) New York magazine’s John Heilemann warned Matthews that this time around in 2012, the “hope” is very much gone and Obama’s strategy will be the “politics of fear.”

Americans Elect: Online Democracy for Nominating a 2012 Presidential Candidate

FreshDirect.com's founder Peter Ackerman has bankrolled a new petitioning drive/ internet presidential nomination process that hopes to bring forth a "centrist" or bi-partisan 2012 candidate. Americans Elect participants go online and create a profile of their priorities and will eventually create the debate, make choices for candidates, and hopefully influence the 2012 race. Whether the Unity '08 strategy of a bipartisan ticket can be revived this year, and whether there even is such a thing as a political "center" in America, remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, the group's on-the-ground petitioning drive is already impressive! 50-state access by an independent ticket to the Presidential ballot has been done twice before in the past 25 years -- Lenora Fulani in 1988, and Ross Perot in 1992.

Unfortunately, however, the very issue that can free us up from the partisan gridlock -- political reforms such as open primaries, nonpartisan redistricting, initiative and referendum, etc. -- is not an available choice on the Americans Elect profile at the moment. We would urge Americans Elect to include STRUCTURAL POLITICAL REFORM as a choice for priority. Working along side Jackie Salit's independentvoting.org networks and other extra-partisan efforts could be powerful.

Whatever the outcome of the American's Elect process, The Hankster wishes the initiative all the best.

AMERICANS ELECT

• Make Way for the Radical Center (By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times) Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. … (President Obama should dump the Democrats and run as an independent, which he is, at heart, anyway.)
• The Web’s Stealth Presidential Race - Big names have quietly launched an Internet presidential race that will offer the winner a real election ballot spot in all 50 states. Will this be 2012’s spoiler? (John Avlon, The Daily Beast) That’s the idealist vision driving a new group, Americans Elect, which has quietly collected enough signatures to secure a 2012 ballot line in eight states, including Arizona, Michigan, and Missouri. They will soon submit an unprecedented 1.6 million signatures in California… The money behind Americans Elect understands disruptive business models. The group’s founder, entrepreneur Peter Ackerman (father of Elliot), started FreshDirect.com… He and some 50 other initial donors have loaned the organization $20 million, out of an eventual $30 million budgeted, to be repaid if small donors join on.