Ed Kilgore posts today at The Washington Monthly on the failure of Americans Elect to nominate a presidential candidate via it’s much-trumpeted on-line nominating process by it’s Monday deadline:

…The organization is publicly admitting that under its own rules it won’t have a candidate for president, due to a lack of interest among potential candidates and “delegates” alike…It’s pretty shocking that even with the bait of general-election ballot access in 27 states and counting, AE couldn’t attract a candidate capable of getting 1,000 online votes from 10 states. Kinda makes you wonder about its foundational belief that the only barrier to a victorious presidential ticket embracing a vague if deficit-hawky “bipartisanship” was the entrenched opposition of the major parties.
…Presumably AE could delay its timetable and hope someone (Buddy Roemer?) eventually crosses the bar to become a nominatable candidate. It could lower its already pathetically low threshold for candidate viability. Or it could just make a mockery of the entire bottom-up process that is supposedly the group’s signature and pick a candidate (or candidates) to put forward, assuming anybody even remotely credible out there would accept the damaged goods of a nomination.

Kilgore then suggests tongue-in-cheek that AE go ahead and nominate a “Very Serious Ticket” topped by Thomas Friedman, with another “centrist” pundit veep candidate, such as David Brooks, Richard Cohen or Robert Samuelson.
By now, however, it should be clear to most reality-based observers that AE failed because there are not any credible “centrists” midway between a moderate liberal like Obama and an extremist right-wing party like the Republicans.