On the website of Unity08, which insists on calling itself a “grassroots” “people’s movement”, visitors — the little blades of grass that they are, the “people” in the “people’s movement” — have been asking Unity08 to get its act together and form an agenda:
When are we going to start building our actual platform? Given the tone of the posts I’ve seen on this site, there are a lot of issues that we need to hash out and come to an agreement on. And the way the race is moving now, we need to start building our platform now, so that we can get a candidate moving as soon as possible. When are you guys going to get on that?
Ok, I saw the Sam Waterson thing on CSPAN, signed up on the website, and…? WTF is the problem here people? I’m wandering around the website and what most stands out is… I have no idea what this Unity08 group is for or against, or even what the hell it is, a party or waste of time website? You are not going to attract and keep any people in anything unless it is clearly defined, understood, accepted and agreed to, and some action on the person’s part will result in something they desire. Put another way, without some sort of offering how do you expect anyone to decide “yeah or nay” and to then follow up that choice with actions? People need purpose and plan in order to act. A vague suggestion that things are screwed up is neither a purpose nor a plan.
I don’t have a clue what Unity08 is or what a Unity08 delegate is? Who’s running this thing? We’ve been arguing about this same old stuff on blogs for years. What are we doing here? MoveOn has 3.5 million loyal members. MoveOn makes it clear what they are doing and why.
The aphorism “Eat your own dogfood” is used when someone has advice or holds a position that they do not themselves live up to. So, after reading through the discussion with Steve and some of the members here, I want to know something:
Premise:
1. Unity08 contends that it is a “People’s Movement to Take Back Our Country”.
2. Its “people” appear to be overwhelmingly in support of getting off the dime on issues and actions.
3. Unity08 continues to reject this approach and in effect reject the will of its “people”.
Question:
Exactly what does “A people’s movement” mean when the leaders refuse the will of the people they would lead?
The recourse offered in our Republic is to select new leaders or simply tune out. Results (slow growth in delegates, and poor retention) seems to indicate that folks are taking this recourse seriously. From my perspective, we either need new leadership at Unity08 or I need to find something better to do with my time.
You can delete as many posts as you like Steve, but you haven’t answered the basic questions posed in this discussion nor those I posed in the deleted post:
What does “people’s movement” mean to Unity08?
How do you really plan to attract 1 million delegates by November of this year given the current dearth of ideas and leaders presented herein?
Again, seeing is how at that point (after the R and D conventions, so around June 2008) we will have no candidate and no platform, what will we have to attract them to us? Ever heard the phrase, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. If we have nothing to offer but empty promises, we won’t have much of a movement. Especially if we don’t have the resources now to get ballot access by the primaries.
I agree!! Unless this whole Unity thing is just a stalking horse for some other Repub/Demo candidate, we need to have something more on the issues/platform and moderate orgs and potential moderate candidates (not running now in the primaries) to build on. Time to get the Show on the Road!!
This question has been up for almost 3 weeks and yet no Unity 08 founders have attempted to answer it. This non-responsiveness is going to turn off a lot of people who would otherwise be very active. We are going to need a platform soon. Maybe we should draft one on our own.
Me: Come join my new party, Unity 08
Friend: Really, what do you stand for?
Me: Bipartisian cooperation.
Friend: OK. What’s your position on (issue X)?
Me: Well, we believe that both parties should work together to come up with a solution to (issue X).
Friend: Um… that’s not really a position; its more of a method… Are you guys for it or against it?
Me: Well, right now we’re trying to get a candidate; but when we get one, he’ll let us know if we should be for it or not.
Friend: Wow. What conviction. Count me out.
What the few remaining participants in the Unity08 message boards are asking Unity08 to do is exactly what Unity08 itself promised it would have already done by now. In the fall of 2006, Unity08 declared that a new website called American Agenda (at the web address of americanagenda08.com) would be publicly released in December of 2006 or January of 2007 in order to permit the American people to draft a Unity08 platform. On this last day of April 2007, the website and the effort are entirely nonexistent. So the “people” in this so-called “people’s movement” are only asking Unity08 to keep its promises.
What has Unity08′s response been? Staff member “Steve” spent some time trying to convince the little people they were wrong, and when it became clear that he had failed to move them from their position that Unity08 should have an agenda, he started to delete posts on the thread that he decided were not sufficiently “respectful” of Unity08. Then he wrote:
I’m going to close the discussion on this topic since it seems to be going in circles.
You can’t post on the topic now. Discussion closed. Voices censored. Project American Agenda shuttered.
They’ve hit on the right way to end the endless bickering: shut those little bickering fuckers right up when they have the gall to talk back to you.
How very grassroots. What a grand return to people-centered politics.
They’re doing a whole lot of deleting over there. I just noticed they finally removed your post at
http://www.unity08.com/node/584
I thought they would have removed that one sooner.
They have deleted both “Why Hasn’t Unity08 Registered As a PAC as Instructed by the Federal Election Commission?” under “Ask Unity08 founders” and “Questions on Unity08 Financial Status and Transparency” under “U08 – Help Us Build It”, although both articles still appear as the “Top Rated Post” when you go to “shoutbox” table of contents.
Down the memory hole. That whole site is now nothing but a email collecting machine. Good thing I created a new email address when I signed up instead of giving them the one I use all the time.