{"id":15050,"date":"2024-12-10T23:50:37","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=15050"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:50:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:50:37","slug":"throwing-up-roadblocks-in-the-name-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=15050","title":{"rendered":"throwing up roadblocks in the name of democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thankfully, it\u2019s December 2024; the next presidential election is 1,426 days away. Because I\u2019m not a fan of what recent elections have fueled in our country (i.e. denigration, polarization, binary thinking, massive spending, assumptions of moral high ground, political attack ads, total lack of respectful dialogue \u2014 and that\u2019s just a start), <\/em>I\u2019m grateful this election was not close. That\u2019s not because I\u2019m a fan of President-elect Trump, but rather because I am not a fan of how our country responds when the results are less conclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lest we digress, the point of today\u2019s post is not to examine why what happened. We\u2019ll save that to the analysts, who always need something to talk about and who currently seem all over the place pending personal perspective (i.e. sexism\u2026 racism\u2026 elitism\u2026 fascism\u2026 too moderate\u2026 too progressive\u2026 too radical\u2026 Biden got out too late\u2026 she\u2019s a bad candidate\u2026 low turnout\u2026 super PAC alignment\u2026 the assassination attempts\u2026 the trans issue\u2026 FOX News\u2026 shift in Latino vote\u2026 immigration\u2026 inflation\u2026 it\u2019s the economy, stupid\u2026 people are stupid\u2026 the prosecution of Trump\u2026 the lying about Biden\u2019s decline\u2026 the VP debate\u2026 the working class\u2026 women\u2026 \u201cThe View\u201d\u2026 Rogan\u2026 Liz Cheney\u2026 no Josh Shapiro\u2026 Israel\u2026 etc.. etc. etc.).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one aspect of the recent race, though, that especially disturbed me. As long articulated, the Intramuralist was not a fan of either presidential candidate (including Biden, prior to Harris, primarily due to his clear mental decline). My sincere concern about competency and character prompted me to be increasingly involved in No Labels, a 14 year old centrist organization focused on common sense problem solving (see past conversations about who they are<\/a>, how they are different than the other parties<\/a>, and their 2024 Unity Ticket<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Unity Ticket was a plan only to be invoked if one, Biden and Trump were again our nominees and two, the ticket had a path to victory \u2014 not just spoiling the chances of one. The ticket would be one Republican and one Democrat; they would model for the country how to work well together. When the short window of time came in which such a scenario presented itself, meaning the primary votes were in and nominees were confirmed, No Labels was unable to attract a candidate. Now that the election is over, as reported by many, it has become clear how some worked tirelessly to ruin them. As written by The Washington Post <\/em>last week: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026 leaders of No Labels are fighting back in three federal courtrooms with a sprawling legal-discovery effort aimed at exposing the secret machinations they believe led to their project\u2019s demise. Leaders of the moderate Democratic group Third Way and of Investing in US, a political operation funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, are fighting to limit the document production.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But documents already unsealed by the courts reveal remarkable details about private proposals for a wide range of hard-nosed tactics that would go beyond public efforts like ads, op-eds and meetings to discourage the No Labels campaign. The documents include emails exchanged between various Democratic strategists involved with efforts to oppose No Labels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Our main focus should be brand destruction but, where possible, we also need to throw up any and all roadblocks to stop them from being successful at signature-gathering,\u2019 Lucy Caldwell, one of the anti-No Labels strategists, wrote in a document uncovered during the legal battle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A separate \u2018Direct Action Campaign\u2019 proposal, which was never fully adopted, called for the personal harassment of No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson and her husband, Mark Penn, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposal to \u2018socially stigmatize\u2019 Jacobson and Penn, according to documents revealed in court, included plans to hire clowns \u2018to hangout on their block\u2019 in the Georgetown area of D.C., post fliers in the neighborhood attacking the couple, send a \u2018truck carrying musical performers\u2019 to wake them up at 6 a.m., and fly banner planes over Harvard University\u2019s graduation attacking Penn, who does a poll for the university as chair of the Harris Poll and CEO of the marketing company Stagwell. Penn did not play a role in the No Labels presidential bid, according to the group\u2026.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wow. Note the manipulation, duplicity and lack of decency. Clearly partisans don\u2019t want another party to usurp their perceived power; established parties aren\u2019t all that welcoming of other options. The hypocrisy, however, is that they intentionally were working to destroy the voters\u2019 options, all while claiming the desire to protect and promote democracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s see what more we learn\u2026 at least in the next 1,426 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Respectfully\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thankfully, it\u2019s December 2024; the next presidential election is 1,426 days away. Because I\u2019m not a fan of what recent elections have fueled in our country (i.e. denigration, polarization, binary thinking, massive spending, assumptions of moral high ground, political attack ads, total lack of respectful dialogue \u2014 and that\u2019s just a start), I\u2019m grateful this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “throwing up roadblocks in the name of democracy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15051,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050\/revisions\/15051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}