Alot of people already are frustrated with the prospective choices for president next year. Maybe you are one of them.
You think President Barack Obama has been a pathetic failure, but Mitt Romney strikes you as an unprincipled shape- shifter while the rest of the Republican field has turned so hard to the right they have landed in an alternate universe.
You know there are other parties besides the Democrats and Republicans, but frankly, they are living out on the political fringe.
There is a “party” that is not a party that is looking for you.
It is an organization called Americans Elect, and while it has no platform or positions on the issues it has quietly collected more than 1.9 million signatures and raised $22 million, and it is well on its way to ballot access in all 50 states in 2012.
With the slogan “pick a president not a party,” Americans Elect (americanselect. org) has positioned itself not as a traditional party with a prevailing ideology but as a vehicle for frustrated Americans who feel shut out of a presidential nominating process dominated by the two big parties.
Americans Elect plan to hold an online convention next summer in which all registered voters can take part in nominating a candidate for president.
I find myself more and more convinced of the need for a strong third party to represent the “missing middle” of American politics. I’m not sure Americans Elect fills that role, but it is an intriguing concept.
According to a recent Associated Press report, Americans Elect grew out of a failed 2008 eff ort to provide an alternative choice in the presidential race and is backed by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans who want to open up the political process.
“ The system is broken and the traditional parties are only making a bad situation worse,” Republican strategist Mark McKinnon told the AP in explaining his involvement.
Whether the Americans Elect concept catches on remains to be seen.
I’m old-fashioned enough to worry about the security and integrity of a computer voting system and I fear the process could easily be hijacked by a narrow interest group that concentrated its resources on the online convention.
And with a few exceptions, Americans are historically reluctant to embrace third parties.
One reason is Americans don’t like to “throw away” their vote, which is why they often settle for “electable” candidates rather than someone they really like but who stands little chance of winning. American voters are leery of “spoilers” (Ralph Nader in 2000, Ross Perot in 1992) whose presence on the ballot might tilt the result to a candidate they despise.
Another reason is when third parties do start winning mass support ( like the Progressives of the early 20th century), the two main parties have moved to pre-empt their positions.
However, the two main parties are so beholden to the ideological purity of their activists today that I am not sure they are capable of reaching out and embracing alternative ideas.
With public dissatisfaction with both the Democrats and Republicans growing, with more and more Americans identifying themselves as independents, and even Republicans dissatisfied with the options their party has produced to oppose President Obama, a lot of people are growing extremely frustrated with an election process that doesn’t work for them. It is a group some have called the “alienated major-ity.”
It will be interesting to see what alternatives develop to try to appeal to this huge slice of America.
— Jim Timmermann is The Sentinel’s opinion page editor. Contact him at jim.timmermann@hollandsentinel.com.
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