Americans Elect: Obama's Third-Party Tar Pit

[Geee]

American Thinker:

Anyone with the remotest interest in replacing Barack Obama as America's president in 2012 should take his eyes off Iowa and the boring ups and downs of the race for the Republican nomination.

The real action that may well decide our next president is quietly going on elsewhere, in the state offices that qualify candidates and parties for the November 2012 presidential ballot. You may not have heard much about a shadowy group called "Americans Elect" (it does not disclose its contributors because of alleged concerns that they might suffer loss of business or social contacts, and because it fancifully but only occasionally declares itself to be a 501[c] [4] tax-exempt organization [though it has qualified as a political party for ballot position in multiple states including Ohio, California, Nevada, and Arizona, which should deprive it of tax-exempt status]). But if you haven't heard of Americans Elect, you soon will.

Given the organization's original moneybags founder and current "chairman," Peter Ackerman (mega-rich Wall Street 2008 Obama supporter), its stated goals, and the nature of American politics, it bids fair to decide who will prevail for the presidency in 2012.

Americans Elect is presently a tax-exempt organization (or a political party, at least in the states where it has qualified for the ballot -- one can't be sure which) with the stated goal of promoting a centrist third-party presidential candidate, to be selected from a nomination process that at least in part winnows candidates through internet voting. It plans to gain access to the ballot in all 50 states, and it has already qualified in multiple states (see above for partial list).

At present, the organization has raised $22M (the first $5M from Wall Street heavy Peter Ackerman, about whom more later), and it is aiming for $35M, the sum its string-pullers believe will be needed to get its candidate on all 50 state ballots.