The Sound of One Hand Fapping, No Labels Edition
By 
Daydream believing about third parties from the left is misguided and potentially disastrous, but the underlying impulse is at least understandable. From the elite center, on the other hand, it’s just pathetic. I give you Mr. Jim VandeHei and his belief that America’s overpaid and underperforming elites need a DISRUPTIVE vanity candidate to call their own pretend represents any constituency beyond themselves:
Here are my two big takeaways: Normal America is right that Establishment America has grown fat, lazy, conventional and deserving of radical disruption. And the best, perhaps only way to disrupt the establishment is by stealing a lot of Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s tricks and electing a third-party candidate.
Who knows, maybe this will be the first time a good idea is announced by tying it to “disruption?” I don’t like the odds but…
Take it a step further and force the wealthy to forfeit their entitlement benefits. And everyone loves socking it to Congress. Mandate that lawmakers go home after serving instead of profiting off their service. Also force them to get outside of the D.C. bubble by holding months-long sessions in different sections of Normal America.
Faux-populism that 1)does nothing for the poor or middle class in the short term and 2)probably leaves them worse off in the long term as the elite have even less incentive to preserve entitlement programs.
The candidate has to be authentic and capable of having a rolling, candid, transparent conversation with voters on social and conventional media.
What ordinary Americans crave above all is good jobs financial security dignity and security affordable health care Authenticity! What an amazing coincidence that elite Beltway centrists are obsessed with which candidates can best fake it.
The ideal candidate would write a very specific agenda in normal, conversational language, not whatever nonsensical language today’s political class was taught to speak. He or she would engage voters daily on social media, with fun and flare. (Think Trump with impulse control and better spelling.) The candidate would inundate voters with transparency and specificity, even when it hurts. And exploit cable TV’s addiction to whatever is hot and new. Mr. Trump has shown how technology has made money less important in modern politics.
There are many words here that don’t mean anything. Are we going to get to the “very specific agenda” at some point?
Exploit the fear factor. The candidate should be from the military or immediately announce someone with modern-warfare expertise or experience as running mate.
Apparently not.
Learn from the mistakes of Messrs. Trump and Sanders. Anger has its limits. The fringe can win primaries but it can’t win national elections
Be like Trump and Sanders — who are very similar! — but not too much. Very useful.
Use the Internet revolution for the greater good.
It will be a totally proactive new paradigm! Like this:
Right now, millions of young people are turned on by a 74-old-year socialist scolding Wall Street; millions of others by a reality-TV star with a 1950s view of women. Why not recruit Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg to head a third-party movement? Maybe we can convince Michael Bloomberg to help fund the movement with the billions he planned to spend on his own campaign—and then recruit him to run Treasury and advise the president.
What Americans furious at American elites want is a party led by immensely wealthy people running on no particular agenda! What an amazing coincidence that this is also what I’ve always wanted!
And now, the punchline:
I will even throw out a possible name for the movement: The Innovation Party.
How many times can satire be killed in one op-ed?