Even supporters of Bret Weinstein’s Unity 2020 plan are largely recognizing that the idea was dead on arrival. So, what went wrong?
[Spoiler for those of you wondering if this is just going to be a huge dump on Bret’s plan: No. Lots of that, but I’ll conclude with my own pie in the sky idea so as to not be a negative Nancy simply shitting on other people’s ideas and offering nothing of my own for others to likewise shit upon.]
I think Bret had a nice idea of getting someone from the moderate left and someone from the moderate right to join together for a sort of unity ticket. And the timing couldn’t be better with the country facing a déjà vu moment of having two extremely weak candidates representing the Republicans and Democrats. Bret also got a nice kickoff being able to discuss the plan on Joe Rogan’s podcast as well as briefly on Tucker Carlson’s show – quite possibly the two biggest platforms for such an announcement.
But, the plan was fatally flawed from its conception. The whole thing was started too late into the process to gain enough traction, though I’m not going to blame Bret for not having the idea sooner. That’s just the nature of ideas. That said, he didn’t seem to appreciate how fast things would need to move. He announced the plan mid-June, but waited until August 9th to begin crowdsourcing nominations. By that point, the deadline for ballot access had been missed in 29 states. On August 20th, the six finalists were announced, missing another 8 states. At this point, it appears Bret is still working on developing (or having someone develop) a secure online platform for ranked choice voting. Assuming that can be rolled out and the ‘primary’ held by the end of the month, only Delaware, New Hampshire, Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Rhode Island will remain, though after September 4th, every state’s deadline will have been missed.
Never fear, Bret has hinted at some secret process for getting on the ballots, but don’t ask! If he told you, it’d ruin the plan. [My guess is there either is no plan, or it’s something dumb like ‘we’re going to collect a bunch of ‘ballots’ online and use that to persuade a coup by faithless electors.’]
That’s not even why the plan was flawed from the start though. Bret’s co-president idea needlessly complicated the idea and just made the whole thing sound kooky. If the most important thing is breaking up the Rep-Dem duopoly, then you don’t introduce a co-president poison pill into the plan knowing it’s going to just cause voters to scratch their heads and move on. You give them something tangible to think about, like a McRaven-Yang ticket. That gets people excited. “And then in four years, they’ll trade spots, and continue swapping until one is term limited at which point—” just gets folks to change their mental channels.
The plan then continues to go downhill with repeated over-hyping and under-delivering. There was supposed to be some exciting technological roll out that turned out to be the Campfire YouTube show that’s not really distinguishable from his normal Dark Horse podcast format. He hyped the first guest for his show, but it turned out to be his brother, and the two entertained ideas like Glenn Loury or Joe Rogan being on the ticket.
And finally we got to the six nominees: Jessie Venture, Tulsi Gabbard, Dan Crenshaw, Andrew Yang, William McRaven, and Jocko. This list reads as if it were compiled by people whose sole source of political news is the Joe Rogan Experience.
Where is Jon Huntsman in this picture? He was an extremely popular governor of Utah, hitting over 90% approval at times and leaving office over 80%, he served as an ambassador under Presidents H.W. Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Trump and as a deputy trade representative for President W. Bush. Plus, he has presidential ambitions.
Or what about Ryan Costello? He doesn’t have as lengthy a resume as some other contenders, but he served two terms in the House representing Pennsylvania and resigned in disgust over the direction of the Trump administration.
On the left, there’s Joe Crowley who served in the House for 20 years before being primaried and defeated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Or what about Democrat Doug Jones from Alabama who defeated Roy Moore in a special election and is now likely to be replaced by Coach Tommy Tuberville?
In short, where is the serious discussion about non-meme candidates? I like Yang, but he’s publicly said he won’t run as a third party and is instead focused on helping Biden defeat Trump. Crenshaw has said (to Bret) he has no interest in higher office. Ventura has been spending his post-governor days peddling conspiracy theories. Gabbard was the only Democrat in the primaries to earn double digit net negative ratings.
I know many supporters of his plan will say that the point is the idea, not the specific candidates and ask what’s wrong with the fact that it’s not viable? After all, no one ever though it could work, it’s about starting a conversation, etc, etc. Where’s the downside?
The downside is in the opportunity cost of not developing a more realistic, actionable plan, and in the harm to Bret’s reputation as his hype begins to look more and more like deception. Fans of Andrew Yang will recognize something similar to how Yang described being an entrepreneur: Whenever anyone asks how things were going, the only answer is “great!” Doesn’t matter if things are awful, you’re bleeding money, and know you’ll fold the very next day, you grin and lie and say things are just awesome, never been better. We can forgive some unearned optimism and a fair bit of harmless puffery, but eventually a series of vague promises of big things to come and secret plans will erode a person’s credibility. We’re less likely to believe Bret when in 2024 he says he’s got an even better plan that might actually work.
Gang of 2022
Now that I’m done with my pre-mortem autopsy of Unity 2020, I’ll suggest my own damn foolish idea for you to mock: Members of the Senate and House should be asked to sign a pledge stating that they will not support any bill that does not have some requisite number of supporters from the minority party. Just as a hypothetical starting point, let’s say 20%. Essentially, it’s a pledge to vote Nay on anything that is projected to be a straight party-line vote. It’s a rejection of the “elections have consequences” winner-take-all approach where the majority tries to seize as much legislative territory as possible and the party that may have 48% of the seats gets 0% say in governing.
It all starts with the voters, of course. If a representative thinks they’ll get primaried in retaliation for voting against the party’s agenda, they’ll never do it. A significantly large block of voters would have to promise to not hold Nay votes (made specifically due to lack of bipartisan support) against their representatives. If a representative’s constituents want them to go maverick, they can go maverick all they want.
But doesn’t this just give the minority party a veto? That’s dumb!
Well, the plan comes with an important caveat: The pledge is only in force if enough members of the minority party are willing to bargain in good faith. We see similar temporary truces pop up from time to time in the form of a “Gang of Howevermany,” so the concept is not entirely novel. And the minority party has a strong incentive to negotiate – the alternative is a more extreme version of whatever plan is being voted on. Of course those minority reps will also need the support of their voters and not get punished for crossing party lines, but at least they can point to tangible gains by saying “it was going to pass anyways, and I helped tone it down a bit.”
What I like about this plan is that it’s a simple message, easily digested by the average voter: We shouldn’t act as if the 52% who won get to ignore the 48% who lost. Our government basically sits at a 50/50 split that slightly shifts one way or the other, so let’s start act that way when we govern.
The problem, of course, is the voters. So long as we like the winner-takes-all model of Washington politics, we’re going to keep getting precisely what we vote for.
So how would this actually happen? I’m not entirely sure, but I’m not going to promise a secret strategy that only works if I don’t tell you about it. We’re probably not going to see Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, or Tucker Carlson holding a friendly guest’s feet to the fire to extract a pledge from them. But, we can start by writing to our representatives and telling them we have their back if they work for bipartisan reforms and will not support them if they engage in traditional partisan governing.
I know political nihilism is trendy and all, but people who’ve worked on campaigns or in Congressional offices will attest that constituents can move the needle on issues, especially when they’re active, vocal, and organized.
If the situation is so dire that it’s worth going for a Gabbard-Willink ticket on a Hail Mary pass where there’s not even a receiver in the endzone, then surely it’s at least worth occasionally reminding the people who actually win elections that you expect them to be courageous, patriotic, and not a completely partisan shitheel hack.
You don’t even have to wait until 2022 to start. We’re in election season right now.
Prof Detox is spot on as to why Unity 2020 didn't solidly take. But, the proposal was a breath of fresh air. It's worth clinging on to for the next term.
I like how the professor thinks outside of the box (as Prof. Weinstein has). (Even if at this point I'm skeptical about seeing the Gang of 2020 theory evolve into practice).