When I read of the convening of these old hands with their not-so-subtle threat of a third party Unity ticket challenge, several thoughts crossed my mind:

1) Almost exclusively, these are conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, most of them retired from elective office and most of them unable to compete successfully for higher office previously. Stymied at gaining public acceptance, most have gone to think tanks, consultancies or private business. So exactly what is the dog they have in this fight?

2) Speaking the language of ‘middle’ and bipartisan, they would seem like a natural constituency for the Obama campaign or even the McCain campaign. So I expect to hear outrage from blogging supporters of other campaigns that this is designed to keep votes away from their preferred leading candidates. Check around after dawn and see how well this prediction bears up.

3) This sounds straight out of the DNC playbook. The middle’s not such a frightening place till you recognize how far right today’s middle has become. That’s the status quo they’re after, protecting conservatism and fleshless corporatism under the false claim that they’re representing the center.

What would instigate such a large group initiative?

Fear.

The bigger question: fear of what?

The nation’s not imperiled by some superpower opponent. China and Russia acting in concert could pose such a threat, but that’s never been a unity possibility. Extremist Muslims? Puh-lease. There’s not a person running with 3% in the polls who is dismissive of global terror organizations. Some may view that threat as a potential for inflicting serious pain, instead of a potential for national defeat, but no one is promoting appeasement with the likes of Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri. So it can’t be the threat of some foreign foe’s military potential that provokes such fear.

So let’s consider the major candidates, to see what they might fear there. Xenophobia, racism, greed, ego, hawkishness, stupidity. Nope, that’s standard Republican fare. Hillary. Obama. One plays the middle and nonpartisanship. The other is middle, pro-corporate, more hawkish. Still can’t see anything there to inspire fear.

Edwards. Really?

Think of it: Carter was right of middle. Mondale was middle. Dukakis, a little left of middle. Clinton, right of middle. Gore, square on the middle. Kerry, a little left of middle. Not a big liberal in the bunch. The boldest liberal proposal of any of them was national healthcare or a tax increase. And this Unity group wasn’t feeling any need to run a third party.

What would Gary Hart fear? A weak Republican field? The others might fear that, but Hart? It can’t be because Hillary’s a woman or Obama’s Black. That wouldn’t matter to Hart or Whitman, at least.

Do they fear the polarity that Hillary’s name triggers in Republicans? Or the anti-corporate populism of Edwards? Out of all the possibilities, those last two are the only possibilities for the group to consider going the third party route. On the Republican side, Rudy’s going nowhere and he’s not a real conservative. Romney’s a stiff who only has gotten extreme in his hawkishness for the campaign. McCain’s a conservative. None of those three stands out as especially different or scary compared to Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Dole and Bush.

Huckabee’s religiousity? Really? It’s worse than Dubya’s?

Yet, weighing all the major candidates, Hillary, Edwards and Huckabee are the only three possibilities that might provoke some fear.

I don’t understand the notion that a candidate that many people react to negatively could cause a problem to the nation that this group should fear. All but Whitman have a national security background. Do they think any in this group are going to go soft on Bin Laden, North Korea, the Taliban? Or won’t be able to get military bills passed? Sorry, I just can’t see it.

If enough of the country was feeling the economic pinch and was really fed up with status quo politics, well then, yes, the type of populist revolt that’s spread across South America could genuinely frighten this group. But if that were the case, Edwards would have at least 45% support, so that seems unlikely, too. Especially with Bloomberg looking a bit concerned about the impoverished, too.

The best I can come up with is they’re there for different reasons. The Republicans dislike all their leading candidates, but could tolerate McCain. Bloomberg and Hagel clearly want an end to the Iraq occupation. The conservative Dems must also think the Iraq occupation needs to end, but have some concerns about other factors with Hillary and Edwards. Hart? Who knows? He’s solid on fighting terror and otherwise should have no problem with healthcare proposals. His participation remains the biggest mystery.

But if this group launched a third party bid, who would they hurt? I think they’d pull far more from the GOP than the Democrats. Is that what they’re trying to accomplish?

Update: Digby goes through the history of polarity in this country, especially in recent years. I think that point’s been well-made repeatedly. That these are almost entirely politically washed up people is a point we both made. Bloomberg’s got the bucks to pull some points, but unless he goes whole hog on an immediate Iraq withdrawal - which will maintain party polarity - the major point stands: he can only hurt the GOP if he gets in. Maybe his goal is to have a Democratic winner. Maybe it’s designed to shock the GOP away from its extremist path of the last 13 years.

But there’s no way his ticket will surpass the Democrat, nor cause them as much pain as he could to the Republican.