Who's Behind Americans Elect and What Can We Learn About Democracy From Them?

Interesting read from Micah Sifry at techPresident on Americans Elect, focused on its financial and political backing.

AMERICANS ELECT INTERNET CAMPAIGN
Americans Elect: Can an Internet-Powered 3rd Party Transform 2012? (Micah L. Sifry, techPresident) While AE says its delegates will drive the party's policies, it isn't just the hidden powers of the executive board that concern me. In our conversation last fall, Ackerman described wanting a process that would insure that the candidates of the party would present a balanced ticket representing the middle between the extremes of the two major parties. Experts from both sides of the political spectrum, he said, would be recruited to help frame the questions that candidates will be required to answer as part of the party's virtual primary process. But what is the "centrist" position on the minimum wage, I asked Ackerman. What is the "centrist" position on Afghanistan? In both cases, majority public opinion is well to the "left" of the center, if you define that center by taking an expert from each political party (or their related policy shops) and halving the difference. But Ackerman didn't have a reply, other than to say "We're an inkblot in the middle. How big it is depends on how the two oligopolists [i.e. the major parties] respond."

Dear Hankster Friends, Bloggers, Sloggers and Others:

Inspired by my blogging/slogging friend and colleague Robert Koulish at Koulflo Memo (one of the panelists on "Blogging the World" that I hosted last Sunday morning at the performance conference/festival Performing the World), I've decided to sit down and write you a letter. It's 5:45 on Friday evening and I have just gotten home from work.

I use my "15 minutes" in the morning (and I loved Koulflo's description of sitting down with a cup of coffee... ahhhh! I love that time of the day -- and you have probably seen any number of photos from that hour taken out my window~) to alert you to news articles from the night before that are of interest to my community organizer pals around the country.

You know it as "TODAY'S NEW HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS".... [Micah "Personal Democracy" Sifry called me a "professional independent voter" on Twitter in response to my posts during Tuesday's debate hosted by Tom Brokow, which I took personally as rather snarky, but that's ok... at least he's listening....] [and BYAM (between you and me), Tom Brokow was my college (VCU) graduation speaker.... I graduated in Jan. bec. I quit in 1970 before i realized that i didn't have anything else to do ..... and went back and got a BFA and then spent the next 38 years creating a mainstream location for political radicals.]


So I'll try to incorporate what I'm "thinking" about in my daily posts... For instance, given that the old left/right paradigm is dead, where can you find a post-partisan dialogue? Are we really stuck with like-minded partisans in separatist coffee dens and sports bars? Can we have a strenuous debate among regular people who actually do disagree on everything without killing each other?

I did something new and interesting this week: I logged on to BlogTalkRadio with Jazz Shaw and others. Very enjoyable experience! Michael Sticking was a guest, along with Lady Logician... Tune in!

So all that to say, our time is up. Enjoy the sunset. See you next week! - NH

To Debate or Not to Debate: That isn't the question!

The question is, how can regular voters get in there???

Here's a fun post on techPresident yesterday offering some "debate interventions" including a MySpace/CPD collaboration (hmmm.....); Rate the Debates put up by Free Press, a media democracy group; Change the Debate, a site that allows video commentary; an invitation to an "old-fashioned IRC chat...."; and Hack the Debates, a twitter-powered #current something or other..... We should add RockTheDebate.org, which Jesse Ventura talked about recently at the Rally for the Republic event. Rock The Debate is a grassroots independent organization working for inclusion of independent candidates in the debates. RockTheDebate's co-founder Bob Sullentrup recently delivered a letter to the Committee on Presidential Debates (a company owned jointly by the Democratic and Republican parties to control the presidential debates) detailing demands to change the criteria by which candidates are authorized to be included in a national debate.

Debate Prep: How to Join In the Fun By Micah L. Sifry, 09/25/2008: We're not sure if there's going to be a presidential debate tomorrow night or not, but either way it can't hurt to highlight some of the ways viewers can participate in advance or during the actual event...