Unity '08 Fails

Many of you probably didn't know about the movement to create a bi-partisan "unity" ticket in 2008. This movement, called "Unity '08", sent out a notice yesterday informing its members that their founders have resigned and the remaining board members were, in so many words, incapable of continuing the effort.

How did the effort to create this ticket in all 50 states fail? The main reason cited in the e-mail is funding, and how the FEC placed caps on individual donations to the effort.

This is utter non-sense. And for an organization trying to "mix things up", its the same kind of non-sense you would hear from the two parties who currently dominate the American system! Every other email from a party says "we don't have enough funding to do this new action, please give us more of your hard earned dollars!" I commend Unity '08 for not sending out those kinds of emails, but funding is not why the movement failed. Its their thinking that they needed funding in order to do anything major that caused the movement to fail.

A true political movement, like the one that led to the founding of our nation, is led by the people. Not by a board of directors. Not by people pulling a salary from what little fiscal resources are available. Yes, Unity '08 had operating costs. Server hosting costs, literature costs, website development costs. But with the FEC donation limit of $5000/person, just a few wealthy people donating the maximum would have funded those specific operating costs all the way through Unity '08's inception to the 2008 election. That's if the movement acknowledged limited fiscal resources. I have a feeling, and I do not have any real data like IRS returns to back it up, that they did not. So much money was probably spent on events and inefficient marketing strategies that they ran out quick. Membership likely dwindled as people heard more and more about the Democratic and Republican primaries in the news and not a thing about the Unity primary.

From my personal experience with the site, I would say that they likely spent substantial sums of money up front in website development. They likely hired an outside firm. I know that they did not even attempt to appeal to their membership base for internal talent to defuse those development costs. That mistake up front likely ate up a lot of their initial funding.

There were also no details provided as to their strategy for creating a third party ticket in all 50 states. This is a major undertaking that I don't believe has ever been accomplished by any third party in my lifetime. This lack of transparency could have cost them membership, and their assumption of needing huge amounts of funding to accomplish it was probably the death of the organization. I firmly believe that what would be needed to accomplish this is citizens in each state supporting your organization so much that they petition their state elections commission to allow your third party on the ballot. Instead, most of Unity '08's time was spent fruitlessly battling the Federal Elections Committee. If the states follow you, the federal system will fall in line. Try to go the other way around and you'll wind up another Unity '08.