Above-The-Fray Americans Want The White House
Beautiful Bipartisanship Will Bloom Promises No Labels Effort
Like ridged, humorless evangelical Christianity and touchy Christians, smug centrism and treacherous centrists in Washington, D.C. will never give up on U.S. status quo.
U.S. evangelical Christians remain a way too powerful lot with their well-monied houses of worship and suspect pastors and priests, who too often cannot keep their eyes and hands off young boys. As noted here, the nation too early on become infested with puritan nonsense, which over time has become the super wealthy and treacherous lot that it is today. There are new and corrupt televangelists, think Houston’s Joel Osteen. But the underlying themes of divide and conquer and make lots of money remain the same.
Centrist Americans are not flamboyant like their evangelical Christian counterparts, but they are large in number and harbor an insidious ideology of do-nothingism and rabid capitalist boosterism.
As The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit put it more than a year ago, centrist Americans claim to occupy an “unbiased center” and carry no “agendas, prejudices and destructive misperceptions.”
And undergirding the unbiased center:
Is the belief that things are pretty Ok now, that the people in charge should be trusted because power confers legitimacy, that those who want sweeping change are too loud or demanding or unreasonable, and that we should just all get along without looking at the skeletons in the closet and the stuff swept under the rug. It’s mostly a prejudice of people for whom the system is working, against those for whom it’s not.
It is not stunning that when indie media music darling Nick Cave touted centrism he knocked The Guardian while doing so. In smug fashion, Cave told an admiring music “journalist” that reading The Guardian is bad for your health. Cave said it is far better to navel-gaze than take a stand against say police brutality or the climate crisis that is erasing Earth.
Like evangelical Christians, however, centrists excel at whining about their lot in life and demonizing the U.S. political system.
In the case of centrist Americans they are bent on bipartisanship in Washington, D.C. as the answer to all that ails a nation going to hell as one loud-mouth partisan politician just declared.
Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman is a longtime and often annoying champion of centrism. Lieberman is not alone in pushing centrist or “third way” way policies. Though most of those people do reside in Washington, D.C., such as “Third Way” and “New America” organizations, which pump out reams of white papers defending centrism.
Nevertheless Lieberman, approaching 90-years of age and a former vice presidential running mate, is making another concreted and expensive stand to take the White House away from Joe Biden, not a leftist champion by any stretch.
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Whether Lieberman’s stand is a clout-building or serious is up for some debate.
Indeed as the Intercept noted way back in 2018 in an article titled, “Here’s a Better Name for No Labels: Republicans,” the No Labels’ platform is about capitalist boosterism.
No Labels is one among several prominent organizations that leverages anodyne centrist messaging to promote what is, for all intents and purposes, a conservative policy agenda. What’s more, as Chang put it, ‘The sensible solutions so often proposed by No Labels and its ilk have an uncanny likelihood of benefiting one particular element of our nation’s political economy: the superrich, or more precisely, the finance industry.’
Now as Biden approaches his effort to keep the White House, Lieberman is ramping up a “$70 million campaign to lay the groundwork for a potential 2024 ‘unity’ ticket — which would feature one Democrat and one Republican.”
As The Lever notes, Lieberman’s effort is taking advantage of tattered federal campaign finance law to keep secret who is funding this bold centrist effort outside of Nick Cave who likely has given at least $3,200 by now.
The Lever reports in a piece called, “America’s First Dark Money Ballot Line:”
Thanks to a 2010 court ruling [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission], No Labels doesn’t have to disclose anything about who’s funding its campaign. It’s also planning to employ a top-down candidate selection process: No Labels has indicated that candidates would be chosen by a group of people handpicked by the organization, which has close ties to corporate lawmakers like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ind.-Ariz.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Now, as No Labels pursues its own nationwide ballot line, experts say the group will likely never have to reveal to the public who’s financing the effort — not even if the organization does decide to field a presidential ticket.
Deep in The Lever reporting it is noted that while No Labels advertises itself as free of agendas and the support of billionaires, its fundraising records tell another story:
While No Labels characterizes itself as ‘the voice for the great American majority who increasingly feel politically homeless,’ the organization is best understood as a front for Wall Street and other corporate interests who want to affect policy.
Major donors to No Labels have included billionaires in the private equity, hedge fund, real estate, and oil and gas industries, according to a leaked donor list obtained by the Daily Beast in 2018. The group has also courted Republican mega-donors.
Leave it to Lieberman, a self-anointed, centrist hero, to rely on a right-wing Supreme Court majority opinion to fight to keep his “centrist” backers secret.
Centrists love that too — working in the dark like worms removing a freshly dead cadaver’s soul.
