RIP Unity ‘08
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, IndependentsJust received an email from Unity ‘08. They are ceasing their efforts to get a bi-partisan ticket on the ballots of all 50 states. They site a lack of money and members as the problem.
They also just lost two board members who’ve apparently gone to work with Michael Bloomberg. The email is long and I won’t bore you with a long quote, but after kinda-sorta taking credit for Barack Obama, they had this to say:
The past year has taught us that it’s tough to rally millions for a process without a candidate or an issue…Motivating people to fix a broken system that drives candidates to the extremes by creating something more inclusive and sensible has proven to be a lot harder than we expected.
Yeah, coulda told them that. I’ve been involved in a similar, albeit much smaller effort. We couldn’t get about eight self-proclaimed centrists to agree on much of anything. Unity ‘08 was trying to rally a whole nation.
Hey, centrism, moderation, independent-mindedness (whatever you want to call it) is not dead. It’s just not possible to organize in any large or meaningful way. That’s what makes those of us non-partisans so important to the process. We’re unpredictable. You can’t win the independents with the same song-and-dance in each election. You gotta keep evolving.
Unity ‘08 says they’re evolving too. But, really, it’s over for them. But it may just be beginning independents.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Independents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
If McCain wins the nomination, there are rumors that he might nominate Joe Lieberman as his VP. Wouldn’t that be a dream come true for centrists?
January 10th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I’m guessing it depends on whether you are an anti-war centrist. That looks like a permanent war ticket.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
This is a duplicate comment to one I posted in Justin’s post earlier. The more I think about the whole Unity08 thing, the more it sticks in my craw, and so I am repeating the comment here.
From the beginning Unity08 was a Bloomberg stalking horse, funded and staffed by Bloomberg loyalists. They couldn’t pull off the Bloomberg run within that structure, so they closed up shop to make room for the coming Bloomberg candidacy and transfered the management and money to the real campaign. The Unity08 Tombstone is enlightening:
What crap. The worst part is that I actually liked the idea of a Bloomberg candidacy, but the whole thing smells so manipulative and contrived and betrays such contempt for the Unity08 supporters that I can’t stand the thought of supporting him now.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:04 am
“What crap.”
You’ve truly captured the essence of this charade that no doubt sucked in more than a few sincere and well-intentioned people.
There is no inherent virtue in bipartisanship, especially when it’s undertaken for its own sake as much as anything else. It is an artificiality that cannot and will not last, if it ever gets off the ground in the first place.
There are logical, practical and enduring reasons why we have two major and several minor parties in this country.
The bigs reasons are well known.
We’ve got a bunch of greed-driven and power-hungry folks who want total control and maximized profits via the best government their money can buy. They’ve never met a war they didn’t like — and find lucrative — and they can scarcely wait to send other people’s young off to fight for mom, apple pie and all the no-bid contracts they can shove their big-money backers’ way. They don’t like welfare or any kind of government assistance for individual Americans, no matter how needy or deserving. Corporate welfare and bailouts are another matter, though.
It’s been said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They’re all for as much of both as they can acquire, along all the money they can get hold of, and they’ll do anything to win so they can keep on getting their fill of both.
These folks will have a political party, the Republican Party, to advance their interests and extend their power and control, no matter what.
Obviously, from the above description, it’s equally inevitable that a whole lot of folks who are not greed driven, wealthy and well connected will have a political party that seeks to keep the aforementioned party within some bounds while seeing to their own needs and advancing their own interests when given a chance. I’m talking about the Democratic Party.
No, the above descriptions don’t apply perfectly to all Republicans and Democrats. Ninety-nine percent is close enough.
As you seem to have caught on to, the Unity thing was designed as a shoehorn to help ease Bloomberg into the presidential race and the White House. Were he to do that, his campaign would become a de-facto party, adding dramatically to the partisan environment.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Interesting analysis S.W.
I have carefully considering your thesis that Republicans are the spawn of satan and that Democrats were delivered to the earth on the right hand of God.
My assessment?
What crap.
January 11th, 2008 at 1:48 am
You might consider it such, MW, but I notice you don’t risk trying to refute my charges against the GOP. I wrote my comment broadly and in a somewhat humorous vein.
I don’t in fact believe Democrats are immune to error and folly, so it’s too much to say I think they were “delivered to the earth on the right hand of God.” Let’s just say that most of them, most of the time, strive to be on the side of the angels.
January 11th, 2008 at 7:43 am
“What crap. The worst part is that I actually liked the idea of a Bloomberg candidacy, but the whole thing smells so manipulative and contrived and betrays such contempt for the Unity08 supporters that I can’t stand the thought of supporting him now.”
worth repeating. No way would I vote for him now either.CROOKS
January 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Announcing: Disunity08…
Unity08 was always a professional PR and marketing effort vs. the grass roots political movement they pretended to be. The hot air expelled and greenhouse gas burned in the short life of Unity08 probably raised the temperature of the globe by a full de…
January 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
[...] first indication of the impending Unity08 demise was the story by Elizabeth Benjamin writing in the New York Post Daily Politics blog, saying that [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Here’s an idea that actually has legs. http://www.independentgovernment.org.