RIP Unity '08

Just received an email from Unity '08. They are ceasing their efforts to get a bi-partisan ticket on the ballots of all 50 states. They site a lack of money and members as the problem.

They also just lost two board members who've apparently gone to work with Michael Bloomberg. The email is long and I won't bore you with a long quote, but after kinda-sorta taking credit for Barack Obama, they had this to say:

The past year has taught us that it's tough to rally millions for a process without a candidate or an issue...Motivating people to fix a broken system that drives candidates to the extremes by creating something more inclusive and sensible has proven to be a lot harder than we expected.

Yeah, coulda told them that. I've been involved in a similar, albeit much smaller effort. We couldn't get about eight self-proclaimed centrists to agree on much of anything. Unity '08 was trying to rally a whole nation.

Hey, centrism, moderation, independent-mindedness (whatever you want to call it) is not dead. It's just not possible to organize in any large or meaningful way. That's what makes those of us non-partisans so important to the process. We're unpredictable. You can't win the independents with the same song-and-dance in each election. You gotta keep evolving.

Unity '08 says they're evolving too. But, really, it's over for them. But it may just be beginning independents.