Tikkun Magazine, January/February 2007
THE CONTRARIAN
The Road to 2008
Unity08
By George Vradenburg
The bottom line of the midterm eletions: the American people do not like the way their representatives in Washington are managing their country—from Iraq, to large fiscal deficits, to personal, ethical, and financial lapses. The electorate told the U.S. government that Washington seems more focused on hurting the other guy, or on ideological purity, or on maintaining personal power than on solving the problems of everyday Americans. The results of the elections demonstrate, as columnist Joe Klein argues, "why the center is the new place to be."
I believe that the time has come for a third party positioned in the sensible center, and committed to pragmatic approaches to the critical issues confronting the American people.
Imagine a nominating process for President and Vice President where the choices of candidates and political programs were made in a convention "open" to all registered voters anywhere in the country.
In today's system, party candidates are chosen primarily by a handful of party activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Candidates position their program to thread the gauntlet of "the base" then have to "move" to the center in order to appeal to the broader American populace.
This nominating system does not produce honest debate about hard issues. The voters in "the base" in early nominating states either have to vote their true beliefs, and end up nominating someone not likely to appeal broadly to the American people, or guess at which candidate is more likely to appeal to the middle and thus make a calculated but dishonest vote (e.g. Howard Dean versus John Kerry). And candidates are forced into the "I voted for before I voted against" dilemma of appealing to the base and potentially to the center at the same time.
Structuring a nominating process that compels candidates to invest heavily in appealing to very narrow voting blocs and to shift their position once nominated makes us voters feel manipulated and the candidates feel inauthentic to us, as if expertise in "positioning" for the nominating gauntlet were the test of a potential president, rather than one's political program for governing.
The disruptive Internet technologies of the twenty-first century that have become central to our social and commercial lives may offer a way out of this manipulative and unrepresentative nominating process.
An Internet-powered party called Unity08 is organizing a nominating process by which any registered voter can become a delegate to an online nominating convention in 2008, where Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates will be chosen. The issues and political program of Unity08 will be selected online by convention delegates in the run-up to the convention, based on an honest process of polling and debate. The rules will require that the candidates for President and Vice President be of differing parties. It is expected that millions of Americans will participate in this process of selecting candidates and a political program.
As a result of the organizing work already in process, the Unity08 slate will have fifty-state ballot access; a very substantial campaign fund financed by a large number of small donations; and an Internet-enabled on-the-ground team of party organizers.
The entire nominating process, in effect, will be "owned" by millions of Americans serving as online delegates to the Unity08 convention. While the outcomes of such a people-owned process are unpredictable, one would expect that the selection would be broadly representative of the aspirations of the millions of Americans expected to participate—not the choice of a few activists in early nominating states.
There are two important shifts in American political demography that make this third party effort serious and significant. The first is the plurality of Americans now self-identify as "independents," without committed allegiance to either party. Party loyalty is breaking down. Second, in the last decade the Internet has become a highly trusted means of social engagement and economic commerce. With the advent of MoveOn.org and broad-based political fundraising in the 2004 election year, these new communications technologies have become a source of political empowerment, not just political information.
Who would have thought that this Republican would be saying "power to the people"—2008 is the year!
George Vradenburg is co-publisher of Tikkun. He is a contributor to Unity08.
Source Citation
Vradenburg, George. 2007. The Road to 2008: Unity08. Tikkun 22(1): 15.
