From Atrios, Unity08 is closing up shop on the way to being swallowed up by Michael Bloomberg's independent presidential candidacy. But I wonder why Unity08's board fails to see the irony of their statement below:
The past year has taught us that it's tough to rally millions for a process without a candidate or an issue. In the past, third party movements that have broken through the monopoly of the established parties have always been based on a person (Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 or Ross Perot in the last decade) or a burning issue (slavery in the case of the insurgent Republican party in 1860). Motivating people to fix a broken system that drives candidates to the extremes by creating something more inclusive and sensible has proven to be a lot harder than we expected.
So despite--or perhaps because of--the fact that at least one of the leading party contenders "has made the theme of unity and the necessity of bridging the partisan divide an absolutely central theme of his campaign", Unity08 is moving on to bigger and brighter things--like the "independent" presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg for which it was designed, whether many of its spokesmen were aware of it or not.
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