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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWall Street's Third Party - Will Americans Elect upend the presidential election?
This third candidate probably doesnt have to do all that well to affect the outcome of the presidential election. Most polling shows that the general election will be close, both nationally and in a number of swing states. It takes no great imaginative leap to envision a scenario in which this third candidate tips a key state to Obama or his GOP opponent, much as Ralph Nader tipped Florida to George W. Bush in 2000.
Only this time around, theres one signal difference: We have no idea who that third candidate will be or what he or she stands for. For that matter, we also have no idea who the donors of that $22 million are, though the organization theyve given to has published a list of leaders chock-full of private-equity executives and hedge-fund managers.
The group that is working to put this yet-to-be-identified worthy before us come November is called Americans Elect. It is the creation of financier Peter Ackerman, a 65-year-old private-equity executive who made his fortune working alongside Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1980sand who is also a leading advocate for and financial supporter of Gandhian nonviolent political change around the world. Like Ackerman himself, Americans Elect seems to have two distinct identities clumped into one. On the one hand, it seeks to update the nominee-selection process for the digital age through online voting. On the other, it looks to create a political vehicle for the socially tolerant, fiscally conservative financial establishment that Ackerman, and the colleagues hes persuaded to join the organizations leadership, personify.
http://prospect.org/article/wall-streets-third-party
This is the first I have heard of this, how do you get qualified and not be known?
BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)Wouldn't they have to be known by then? Or do they get to cloak their masked bandit until Nov 5th and declare themselves the winner?
MineralMan
(146,317 posts)denverbill
(11,489 posts)"What do I want in the ticket? asks Eliot Cutler, who ran an unsuccessful independent campaign for governor of Maine in 2010 (splitting the center-left vote and thereby helping elect a right-wing Republican) and is a member of Americans Elects nine-member board of directors. A ticket that reflects moderate politics, a pragmatic approach to politics, that looks like the Bowles-Simpson Commission in trms of approachpeople who reflect my own biases toward social progressivism and fiscal discipline."
Obama and the Congressional Democrats would have passed Bowles-Simpson's shit sandwich in a heartbeat, much to my dismay. What the hell do they need a third party for? Do they want a socially tolerant,fiscally conservative white man?
I'd be a lot less surprised if it was a progressive or conservative group doing this.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)someomne to be socially liberal "shut up Jesus freaks!"
but fiscally conservative "shut up Hippies!"