Partisan Free Politics

Earlier this summer I had the pleasure of attending a taping of Hardball with Chris Mathews. The guest was none other than Sam Waterston of Law and Order. He was talking about this new movement called Unity 08. I was excited, I wanted to help, to jump on board the Unity 08 express and shake the two-party system to the core.

After months of offering my services I have attended a Jungian marketing session with Cloitiare Rapelle, started a DC based Unity 08 meet-up group, helped create the “New American Agenda”, attended an online ballot access discussion – but still, I have no damned clue what Unity 08 is doing.

On its face, Unity 08 is the solution for people like me. Moderates want leadership around critical issues, without the endless partisan bickering about social issues. Moderates do not really care who is running the country so long as they have vision, acumen and integrity. If that is the case, then why does Unity 08 only have 113,000 registered members?

People that I talk to about Unity 08, especially the disenfranchised, are typically very excited about the possibilities of a moderate third party. With that said there are some major problems:

The only communications that come from Unity 08 are E-mail blasts from Unity 08 asking members for paltry donations and small favors. The latest request was an e-mail asking people to post this flyer in public places, unfortunately, these requests are intermittent, disjointed and fail to utilize available technologies.

If Unity 08 were a real presidential campaign, like Clinton’s, Giuliani’s, Obama’s, Huckabee’s, or Ron Paul’s – people would scoff at the centralized unremarkable way that the campaign is using the Internet (I keep waiting for Micah Sifry’s post on the TechPresident about Unity 08 to no avail). Despite the fact that it is an Internet based campaign, there is general a lack of social cohesion (something which the Internet can only facilitate, not replace), which is necessary for Unity 08 to succeed.

Finally, if Unity 08 is going to be a legit moderate third party movement, then its leaders need to increase visibility by promoting ownership – otherwise the “peoples movement to take our country back” will surely fail. Thoughts?