The Centrist Project is meeting in Chicago, April 1-2. See this story. The group hopes to back independent candidates for U.S. Senate in 2018 in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. They have been joined by Joel Searby, who was Evan McMullin’s campaign manager in the presidential election of 2016.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This reminds me of the AmericansElect movement of a few years ago, hopefully it doesn’t suffer the same fate.
There’s already a centrist party in America. It’s called “The Democrats.”
I would classify the current Democrat party as somewhere in the left-authoritarian region
Basically I think both SocraticGadfly and Brandon L are correct. I agree with the authoritarian classification, but the neoliberal wing of the Dems has no qualms with accepting corporate donations and making legislation at least somewhat favorable to corporations. The biggest evidence of this is the ACA, in which private health insurance plays a major role in it instead of a Single Payer system. The Democrats’ progressive and neoliberal wings cancel out (if we give the progressives equal weight, which might be generous), leaving the Dems economically centrist but authoritarian.
As for the topic of Richard’s post, I think it’ll be interesting to see if they can get someone elected, or if the effort fizzles when they confront the realities of ballot access and spoiler theorist fearmongering, leaving the Libertarians and Greens to fight on.
Brandon – yep, Evan McMullin’s cadre will suffer the same fate as AmericansElect (which I suspect actually has some of the same players).
SocraticGadfly – You’re comment is obviously an April Fool.
And nope, no centrist independent will be newly elected to the Senate in 2018. The two independents who are serving today in the Senate are Bernie (a socialist) and King of Maine (probably the closest to the concept of centrist independent). The possible election of no-party-affilated or minor party candidates in Maine will be one of the most important things to watch for in 2018 because of the adoption of RCV (assuming TPTB don’t kill it via judicial fiat/activism).
Don Willis–the difference between Evan McMullin and AE is the 750K vote total McMullin got in November. AE didn’t even make it to that year’s November election. The Centralist Party will go the way of the Reform Party and Anderson in 1980.
Wang Tang-Fu at Independent Political Report is reporting that Trump has had it with the Republicans and their inability to lead and will go back to the Reform Party, which he was a part of in 2000. Together with the Centrist effort to elect moderate independents to Congress, Trump could create a new governing coalition, triangulating between the Democrats and Republicans.
Michael – there is a huge difference between “The Centralist Party” which implies registering as a minor party and all of the bureaucratic nonsense and bickering that ensues. Running as an independent – like Bernie and Angus King – is a totally different animal, with a much higher probability of success in any single race.
It would seem to be very interesting. Is it posted somewhere that it can be read?
I’m not sure how “centrist” McMuffin was/is. It seems to me that his candidacy was designed to appeal to Social Conservatives who couldn’t abide Trump. The only “accomplishments” of his campaign were (a) to arguably deny Trump Minnesota, (b) to prevent Gary Johnson’s campaign from taking off and (c) to be generally annoying.
I like the idea of a third alternative, but it seems to me that the Libertarians are much better positioned to fill this role.
McMuffin’s campaign was run by republican insiders and was a thinly veiled ploy to keep 3rd party candidates from gaining any foothold. It is no coincidence that he filed ZERO ballot access lawsuits after telling people he would, since that would make it easier for people to challenge the duopoly in the future.