I predicted back in November that No Labels would fizzle, but it's remarkable to see the lack of interest. Despite widespread media coverage and a December launch event that drew numerous high-profile politicians, the group has only managed to attract 18,697 signatures for its No Labels Declaration ("We are not labels -- we are people"). It's the same tepid response we saw to Unity '08 (124,000 members in twenty months) and Draft Bloomberg (11,600 signatures in six weeks) during the 2006-2008 period.
To put these results in perspective, here's how the No Labels, Unity '08, and Draft Bloomberg efforts compare to a petition asking the videogame company Blizzard Entertainment to include a LAN option in Starcraft 2, which reached 250,000 signatures in a little over a year*:
As you can see, No Labels is barely outpacing Draft Bloomberg, though it is doing better than Unity '08. All three, however, are dwarfed by the Starcraft 2 petition, which just underscores a point I've made many times before -- despite all the media hype, these groups have little popular support and almost no chance of changing the system.
* I constructed these lines using time-stamped blog posts by myself and others noting the number of signatures on each petition.
Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster.
Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com.
Follow Brendan Nyhan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brendannyhan
1. Enact Fair Elections Now Act. $100.00 maximum donation
2. FCC mandate that all TV political advertisinÂÂÂg is a public service and therefore free
3. PermanentlÂÂÂy ban anyone who has served in federal office from becoming a lobbyist
4. Enact The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and SimplificaÂÂÂtion Act of 2010 – Eliminate $1 trillion in tax giveaways. Change the top individual income tax bracket to 70% to pay down debt
5. Break up the big banks and strengthen the Volker Rule
6. End ALL wars and reduce the bloated defense budget
7. Reduce health care costs by adding the public option. Allow Medicare to purchase drugs. Allow drug re-importaÂÂÂtion. The Medicare IndependenÂÂÂt Payment Advisory Board be given a broader mandate for cost control.
8. National InfrastrucÂÂÂture Bank – Run by engineers, not politicianÂÂÂs. Find $2 trillion over 10 years to create jobs now and increase productiviÂÂÂty later. Put millions back to work. Fund with millionairÂÂÂe's tax
9. Federal government invest 6% of GDP yearly on R & D to create quality jobs long term in areas like biotechnolÂÂÂogy, alternativÂÂÂe energy, IT, materials, science, alternativÂÂÂe-fuel automobileÂÂÂs, clean technologyÂ, etcÂÂ. Fund with 7% nationial sales (innovatioÂn) tax
10. Raise educationaÂÂÂl standards through a national core curriculumÂÂÂ. Advocate the firing of the bottom 10% of teachers nationwide and replace them with good teachers. Make higher education free to families that can't afford it to encourage upward mobility. Fund with financial transactioÂns tax
* Go one further - no donations, period. Candidates are exposed to the public only through a series of weekly public debates. No op-eds, endorsements, election PACs... none of that.
* Again, go one further and just axe ALL that noise. If a candidate wants to get elected, they'll show up at the mandatory debates.
* Nah. I don't like restricting a public servant after they've left service. They're private citizens again, and if it's legal for 'em to lobby otherwise I don't have a problem with it.
* I favor the abolition of the income tax and the implementation of a national sales tax, personally.
* Nah. Big banks offer stability to the financial system provided they're overseen correctly. If we had a bunch of littler banks we'd be increasing the risk of systemic failure or committing ourselves to more bailouts.
* Hear hear, brother. War is for anyone too stupid to competently express their beliefs. Or, barring that, make everyone fight bare-handed. No tanks, guns, bombs, helmets, etc. Just bare knucks.
* Ain't gonna lower healthcare costs until we directly lower the costs incurred by healthcare providers. It will probably require strict anti-gouging laws (like on gasoline, but MUCH tougher) and partial nationalization.
* Engineers tend to make lousy bookkeepers. I'd rather have bankers running the money part and engineers doing the work. But I think we have something similar to this already.
* I'd invest 15%.
* I think a more complete overhaul
When given the choice between a $40,000 dream kitchen and solar panels Americans overwhelming choose the kitchen even though they most certainly will suffer terribly for the choice.
The kitchen in the short term will win the admiration and envy of their friends while the solar panels will brand the as left wing eco freaks.
Only a small minority will choose to suffer social alienation in order to live sustainably and more independently. Humans are sadly pack animals, which might not be so bad if they weren't pack rats as well.
Happily if the Bible is to believed we are soon to by visited by others outside of our world who have both the power and the love too save us from destorying both ourselves and our planet.
Clearly most of us are going to see if this "myth" is the real deal or if our species will simply(again?) self destruct either to thousands of scattered tribes or finally to complete extinction.
Even the Bible foresees a third of mankind dying off in the coming decades even with a second coming. Signing petitions is absurd.
Also, who those supporters are can be important. If they have the attention of a bunch of politicians, as they seem to do, that could mean they're relevant enough in the inner circles of Washington.
But hey, if you REALLY want me to "give up politeness" we can do that. :-)
Overall, then, the 'no-labels' will just end up shifting things even further to the right than they currently are.
Civility doesn't necessarily mean that one has to be a 'moderate'. Moreover, 'no labels' doesn't make any sense, because it quite obviously is a label.
Though to be honest, I don't see how an article like this would hold sway with anyone of reasonable intelligence unless they were already prejudiced in their opinion against the movement in question. I mean, really. A video game petition? I could make a stronger argument that pickup trucks have terrible cargo capacity based on the cargo capacity of a C-131 Starlifter simply because at least I'd be comparing a base attribute shared by all three trucks and the plane - cargo capacity.
Video game petitions and political movements don't have any common attributes, and this comparison is no exception. The political movements are all American and progressive/moderate in nature, whereas the SC2 petition is global in reach and has broad appeal among Asian teens and young adults.
If you don't like the concept, that's fine, but it would be really nice if you would do your hatin' with a better argument.
30 years of right wing talk show vehemence and they were "nowhere in sight".
But let liberals or progressives start speaking up...
And its..."oh, can't we be civil"
If you really think agitating for a stronger social safety net for the most powerless among us, or screaming for relief for the shrinking middle class is "hyper-partisanship", and therefore equivalent to armed nutcases screaming about "socialism" at health care town hall meetings, or insisting that Obama's not really eligible to be President, then the end result is a very tepid bipartisanship-as opposed to legislation-devoid of any effective policy changes that benefit the majority of people.
Civility towards the always irrationally irate far-right elected Congressional Reps and Senators will NOT result in better, stronger legislation that benefits the majority of voters, civility is seen as a sign of weakness from the anti-intellectuals currently populating the Republican Party-and far too many Democrats as well.
When, thanks to "civility", Reps like Michelle Bachmann or Steve King vote for legislation that strengthens the social safety net, or extends, rather than shrinks, Constitutional rights, I'll be happy to admit how wrong I was regarding "civility"
We don't need a 'civility' force - we need an 'honesty' force. It is things like 'government takeover of HC" and 'jobs killing HC bill" that need to be addressed - and the Mark Mikininon's of the world don't do that.
* It is often said that one tends to find only what they're looking for, Mr. Nyhan, and it appears from your previous tweets on the subject that you have been actively predicting - or looking for - the "failure" of No Labels. It's therefore unsurprising to see you declare your personal opinion as reality.
But you have a chart. So let's take a look at it.
* How very scientific - a comparison of online petitions. I notice the SC2 petition is a global one about a game that's hugely popular worldwide, whereas the other three are related to American politics.
These last three graph entries, being comparatively limited in scope (something of an understatement), are therefore obviously going to be dwarfed by a completely unrelated and much broader petition.
So, in sum, the graph demonstrates that a lot of people worldwide want SC2 to have LAN, and No Labels is outpacing both of your related examples.
Personally, I'd have used a Tea Party membership comparison instead of a video game petition as a benchmark. (Especially one with broad appeal among Asian teens.)
* Wayne Gretzky once said "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take". So, as much as I'd like to listen to the defeatist attitude of a blogger too timid to allow posts before they are vetted, I'd rather take my shot.
And if I miss?
I shoot until I
I shoot until I DON'T miss. (Don't you hate it when a dramatic closing's negated by word cutoff?)
This was always such a silly, superficial idea---that you could just have some "Feel Good" PR campaign to convince people that if you don't call you group anything, or give it a "label", then this "Enormous Majority" who felt "unrepresented" would just suddenly appear.
Complex realities of politics, and how people think about the political, were absent when this group was started.
But beyond that, this is a largely conservative/corporate group, as evidenced by the prominent role played in it by the snarky and mean-spirited John Avlon, the speechwriter for Rudolph "Exploit 9/11 At Every Opportunity" Giuliani.
Who funds "No Labels"? Is there no conservative money being put into this group? Is there no corporate money---directly or indirectly?
And why would Rudolph Giuliani's speechwriter and campaign operative be a major part of this group? Have John Avlon's politics really gone through a sincere sea change? Wasn't he responsible for writing some of Giuliani's most execrable and demagogic speeches?
And doesn't Avlon still equate the hate-speech of Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter with the progressive politics of Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore? It's deceptive and shameful.
People can stand strong for their principles without demonizing people who believe differently. People can push for something they feel strongly about without resorting to name-calling and personal attacks. That is a sentiment I agree with. But building some amorphous, murky "Don't Try To Classify Us Because We Just Believe in Being Civil" doesn't make a coherent statement and doesn't move our society forward.
Sorry, no disrespect is intended. I just don't see where "No Labels" is making a genuine contribution to anything except for perhaps a slightly more civil tone in our political discourse.
The No Labels "movement" has not caught on, and won't whether they adhere to their civility-issue or not. Recently they aligned with Peace Alliance which angered some and planted more doubt in others. No Labels appears to be little more than a Corporation with the ability to funnel campaign funds.
Also Brendan, don't you think it's a bit early to be making predictions of failure? According to your own chart, No Labels is more popular already than it's comparable movements (of which, video gaming is not!).
Check us out again in 6 months or a year from now. I'll be interested in your results then.
Sorry for the snarkiness, but that is my point. At some stage, labels are appropriate and necessary, or else you spend all your time just figuring out what other people are talking about, rather than getting to debating points on their merits. For example, I am a Keynesian. Now that you know that, we can have a (yes, civil) debate on the merits. Without the label of "Keynesian" it could take me hours to explain where I am coming from; this way, one word did the job.
And compromise is only possible if both sides are willing to give, if it's only one side giving, that's not compromise, it's capitulation. And in some cases, compromise is genuinely not possible. For instance, I am categorically against the death penalty. No compromise. And no compromise is possible--either we execute people, or we do not.
* I wonder if you've ever heard of the maxim "Do unto others as you would have done unto you". And, if so, I wonder if you realize that you're the individual who fired first. Try not to be so upset if someone takes a gentle swing back.
Because if you are, you probably won't want to talk to some of us that like to treat people exactly as they treat others.
* On a very broad and generalized level, sure. But only for ideas, not for the people presenting or believing in them. It's patently absurd to engage in attacking a person because you don't like an idea.
Unless, of course, that's how a person shows they want to be treated by doing that to others. Then I guess a person has to.
* Ever stop to think that maybe we're all in this together, and that petulant bickering between "sides" isn't going to get anything accomplished? I ask this only because history is replete with examples of bickering sides failing like all get-out. Lots of wars. Lots of death. All of it wholly unnecessary, because there is no valid excuse for killing another human being.
Note that I said "human being". Some humans just ain't human, and that usually becomes evident the second they try to kill you. Agree or disagree?
In sum: Would you like to have this discussion without attacking each other? I'm game if you are.