And the salty tears of Bloomberg’s dream slowly die:
A Statement from Americans Elect
There is a desire among Delegates and millions of Americans who have supported Americans Elect to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.
However, the rules, as developed in consultation with the Americans Elect Delegates, are clear. As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June. The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.
Americans Elect, from the outset, has been a rules-based process, with the rules publicly available and open to debate by the Delegates. Our key priorities have been to: 1) honor the trust Americans Elect has built with the Delegates and American public; 2) require candidates to earn the nomination by building support among the Americans Elect Delegate community and American voters; and 3) create a basis for a solid future for the Americans Elect movement.
This decision honors these priorities.
And away they go, at least until 2016, when a bunch of aging white millionaire and billionaire nitwits convince themselves that what the country really needs is a President Tom Friedman.
redshirt
They should try again in 6 months or so.
Roger Moore
So I guess that visiting their website is a sign you support American Select; I can’t think of any other way they can claim to have millions of supporters.
Rey
Who will go down in history first American president to have a cabinet entirely composed of cab drivers and who conducts all state business from the back seat.
Zifnab
What happens if you held an election and nobody showed? I guess we have our answer.
Jager
Did they give the money back? And what about that expensive website?
jl
@Roger Moore:
I visited the site once and laughed. They brought a moment of joy to one American. That should give them some comfort as well, that they did do some good.
Made some internet developer happy too, from what I read here awhile ago.
Why didn’t I try to make a bet on them folding? Was that ever on one of the trading sites?
Villago Delenda Est
Who were these “millions of Americans” who supported this, erm, “movement” of a handful of hedge fund managers terminally embarrassed by the GOP clown car?
Citizen_X
Nice way of saying that they haven’t built up any trust.
piratedan
i.e. because you saw us as a centrist scan supporting politicians that are egregiously in the pockets of lobbyists more than the currently elected group, we’ve decided to buy our politicians wholesale… tyvm… find us at our new location at the Political Outlet Mall, out by the Interstate bypass…..
Keith
It’ll be a sad Tom Friedman clogging up a neighbor’s toilet tonight…
balconesfault
Do these guys just love their tax cuts so much … and the Republicans who protect them to the death … that they’ll never admit that Obama is pretty much the candidate they want?
David Koch
well it wasn’t just dickheads like the mustache giving AE a handjob, but even “liburels” like cenk and Lawrence lessing were wanking away, saying AE would solve all of the country’s problems.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Villago Delenda Est:
Millions of Americans named George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, etc. You know, Dead Flat Printed Green Americans. Hey don’t be a bigot, if corporations are people then Dead Flat Printed Green Americans are people too!
Mark S.
I can’t believe these jackasses raised tens of millions of dollars.
Stuck in the Funhouse
The era for left leaning republican light DLC DC sugar daddy boutique ideologies, is over. It died when the conservative movement died as a full blown political creature, when Hank Paulson went begging hat in hand to democrats running both branches of congress. For a little cash to clean up the mess the wingnuts made in Isle 6, that turned out to be the first second non depression.
We are in a political free fall, at the moment, in a death grip with wingnuts threatening to not pull the ripcord, if they can’t be in charge again.
And there is little market for money grubbing DINO dipshits, because there is no money to grub. To siphon off from the gaggle of conservadem bag men for the plutocrats. It is us and the wingnuts, no holds barred, match to the pol death, and that is all there is. We want to feed the poor, they want to feed the rich. Nice and simple.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
A process where the elites chose to ignore the rules. I can’t imagine a group that is more tone deaf. The polls on their site overwhelmingly leaned left of center, like in hippy territory. They ignored what everybody preferred and made up their own agenda.
jl
And I’m wondering, did anyone here even think of trying to get Tunch nominated? Maybe that would have made a difference.
And now we are doomed to lack Very Serious Centrism because of BJ slacktivism.
And the fatcats who ran this thing will miss the privilege of making a great sacrifice for their country, since Tunch would have etted them up, but good and quick.
TG Chicago
I have to admit I was wrong about these guys. I figured the voting/nomination song-and-dance was all for show, and they already had their candidate picked out. Either they actually never did, or their candidate backed out at some point.(*)
It’s amazing to me to believe that these people would spend so much money on this thing with no clue who they were supporting. What if Howard Stern had decided to hijack it?
Anyway, I got one thing right: the candidate with the most votes was Ron Paul. Granted, that was fairly obvious (making it all the more puzzling why they went through this nonsense).
(*)The conspiracy theorist in me still believes that there was a candidate in mind, but he got cold feet. Somebody like Bloomberg who wanted to run, but wanted to make it look like he was being “drafted” by the American people to run. When nobody showed up to draft anybody, they realized the charade wasn’t going to work, and they bailed.
The Dangerman
@piratedan:
That’s next to that truck stop with all the hookers, isn’t it?
Calouste
@Villago Delenda Est:
Dollars are people, my friend.
EDIT: Damn, ThatLeftTurnInABQ was quicker on the draw.
mk3872
You’ve fallen for the grift, Cole. They WON’T be back in 2016.
Clinton, Bayh and other “centrists” will run for the Dem ticket, making Americans Elect irrelevant.
This was all a ruse to divert support away from the Kenyan Socialist Ursurper.
No different than Tea Partier’s hatred of a black president, just with a lot less naked racism.
jl
@The Dangerman:
” That’s next to that truck stop with all the hookers, isn’t it? ”
At least it’s not a van, down by the river.
@mk3872: You forgot about ol’ working class Fighten’ Joe Biden, who will pick up light sabre as ObamaWan vanishes into that mythic realm where ex presidents go, and forge ahead, for his last adventure. It’ll rock. I’m writing up the treatment now. It’ll make the Avengers look like a bad hemorrhoid commercial.
BC
@balconesfault: I think it’s more that they love their nonpartisanship so much that they can’t look at Obama being the candidate who espouses the same policies they do. There’s the conservative ideology, that tax cuts are always good and then there’s the centrist ideology that they and people who think like them are the majority in this country and the political parties are so hung up on their left wing and their right wing that they can’t meet the needs of the centrists who are the majority in this country. That the ideology of both conservatives and centrists are contra the reality never occurs to them . . .
The Bearded Blogger
Democracy makes billionaires used to buying everything they want uncomforable. It’s not that you can’t buy it, but it’s a very uncomfortable process and sometimes the proles mess it up.
balconesfault
@BC: I got a headache just reading that. On multiple levels.
David Koch
but that would mean he’d have to give up his seat in the knesset
Joseph Nobles
@Jager: I think the plan was that they had the money, but they were soliciting donations so that they could pay that money back to their angel investors.
So basically, if you believed enough, you could send cash to the nice rich man and get a better pony with incredibly luxurious locks flowing from its mane.
Amir Khalid
This is sad in its own way: these Very serious People and their rich friends built a Potemkin political party on the Intertoobz and managed to fool no one but themselves. Yeah, cue the world’s smallest violin.
But Krugman’s analysis had me wondering: as he put it, Americans Elect essentially want something more or less like Obama’s policy agenda, only implemented by some President other than Obama and a party other than the Democrats. Is there something, maybe, personal about this? Or were they just hoping to displace the Democrats?
fasteddie9318
@mk3872:
I highly doubt this. It’s axiomatic that whoever runs for the Democratic Party nomination is far to the left of the American mainstream and too much of a wild-eyed communist to ever be able to govern effectively. Ergo, some “centrist” movement must be created to draw the support of “moderates” who can save the country from both parties. This, then, incentivizes the next slate of Democratic candidates to move right to capture this “centrist” support, at which time those candidates will be determined to be far left of the American mainstream, ergo we must have a new “moderate” movement to bring those crazy commies back toward the center. Rinse, repeat. Meanwhile the Republican Party shifts so far out on the right wing that it’s in freefall, but nobody outside of some pencil-necked four-eyes geeks like Norm Ornstein actually gives a shit.
This goes on because there is no “center” in American politics. It’s done in order to shift the goalposts so our overlords can redefine the “center” as something slightly to the right of France’s National Front Party, and nobody realizes that they’re being conned.
And it will never end.
NEVER.
The Democratic Party will never be able to nominate someone “centrist” enough to avoid being deemed a dangerously radical liberal by the political and corporate elite.
PurpleGirl
@Joseph Nobles: And getting money from small donors would cover the asses of the big money boys and they could “claim” they hadn’t bought the election process… “see, plenty of small people supported us and what we wanted to do”.
I’d heard about the AE idea but never bothered to look at the web site. Bloomberg is my mayor and I know well his “non-partisan” act of late. But he refuses to consider a trading charge of whatever size to help with NYC’s revenue woes. He just keeps cutting the budget and services.
MattF
I realize that it’s extremely inappropriate to suggest this, but I just wonder if these fine, serious people had an Obama problem, if you know what I mean.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Whatever makes you think Tunch is a centrist?
mdblanche
@MattF: Oh, absolutely. President Obama disagrees with them on the one issue they care about above all others: receiving the public affirmation of their self-esteem to which they are entitled, to be primarily reflected in their tax rates.
gwangung
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s so much of him that he covers ALL possible positions.
Redshift
@TG Chicago: Oh, I completely agree that they wanted Bloomberg or someone very much like him. I would have thought that a collection of “the smartest guys in the room” would have actually asked him before putting up their millions in sofa-cushion money, but apparently they didn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@gwangung: I would also have accepted “Because SHUT UP! That’s why!”
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nothing. I merely wish to spread havoc, chaos and confusion among them.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
When he’s very obviously a classic conservative fat cat.
Jay in Oregon
@The Dangerman:
FTFY.
El Cid
Millions and millions of Americans want something to be different and better about American politics, therefore, clearly, it’s exactly like them supporting the American Select center-right fetish platform, because, well, it just has to be the same thing.
Anoniminous
@Villago Delenda Est:
Those are the same “millions of Americans” who would shitty Pop Music if it wasn’t available on YouTube.
IOW: they exist only in La-La Land.
@Mark S.:
They didn’t raise tens of millions they lent tens of millions to get AE off the ground with the intention of paying themselves back when the rubes and suckers started to contribute.
Alas Step 2 never happened.
gene108
I would’ve liked to see Mayor Bloomberg in the election.
He’d look at Romney’s record as a “rich” man, write him a check and buy out everything Romney owns.
Romney’s a wannabe billionaire.
He’s rich, but not rich enough to roll with the big boys and I bet he’s trying to compensate for not racking up a 10 figure net worth.
JGabriel
Amercians Elect:
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the next group to try this in 2016, whether it be AE or some other entity, will decide that what they got wrong was having rules and an ‘open’ process.
You can almost read the subtext in that announcement: “That’s what we get for trusting you fucking proles, and what you fucking deserve. Next time, we are choosing the candidate — in secret and at our whim, goddamit.”
.
Anoniminous
@Anoniminous:
There. FIFM.
(sigh It’s been … one of them thar days.)
MikeBoyScout
If I had a mustache it would be crying now.
Suffern ACE
@JGabriel: Which is what they should have done the first time.
Frankensteinbeck
@balconesfault: and @Amir Khalid:
Ah, but the difference here is subtle, and it’s not racism this time. Well, there’s probably racism in there, too, but really. This is the Friedman Party. They don’t want so be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. They want to go back to the Reagan style Republicanism of claiming to be defending the safety net while slicing it up bit by it, all while funneling rich people whatever they want.
Romney can’t keep the mask on and Obama actually DOES support sane center-left positions. Someone really has to herd swing voters back into voting against their interests again, and AE wanted to be that someone.
Phil Perspective
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937: You do remember why Unity ’08 bombed just as much as AE, right? The top two vote-getters during the Unity ’08 internet voting were two former Senators from neighboring states. I’ll give you a hint. Their initials are BO and RF.
Daulnay
They should draft Nick Hanauer.
Jado
“…convince themselves that what the country really needs is a President Tom Friedman.”
As long as Friedman is required to resign his current position in order to run, I AM ALL FOR IT!!