efore long we’ll know just how the midterm elections turned out. And journalists will feel free to marinate themselves in rich speculation over the 2024 Presidential tilt. They’ll be like alcoholics at an open bar. I’m not foolish enough to make any prediction about a 2024 winner, but I do feel confident about one thing: the entrance of any viable third-party candidate will deliver that election to Donald Trump.

It might seem that the presence of any other candidate on the ballot…collecting just a few votes here and there…would be inconsequential. But history says otherwise:

1912, Teddy Roosevelt.

As young men in Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft were best friends. As President, Roosevelt identified Taft as his preferred successor, and Taft became just that. But as President, Taft was judged by Teddy as insufficiently committed to Roosevelt’s programs, so Teddy turned on him. He formed what was known as the “Bull Moose” third party, which in 1912 divided the former GOP vote sufficiently to usher Democrat Woodrow Wilson into the White House.

1992, Ross Perot.

A bantam rooster out of Texas, billionaire Ross Perot upended traditional presidential campaigns with loud squawking and half-hour infomercials. Those programs called for a balanced budget and imposing Congressional term limits. He rose to the top of the polls at one point…then he suddenly dropped out of the race. Then he just as suddenly jumped back in. On election day, he took a surprising 19% of the popular vote. It’s impossible to say for certain, but his siphoning of conservative votes probably allowed Bill Clinton to grab the Oval Office from incumbent George W. Bush.

2000, Ralph Nader.

Nader was a consumer crusader who irrationally thought he could actually win a presidency. He could not. He tallied less than 3% of the national vote, but that was enough to swing the election to George H.W. Bush. The pivotal balloting came in Florida, where Nader collected about 100,000 votes. That may not seem like much until you realize that Bush carried the state by less than 600. Without Nader, perhaps half of his 100,000 voters would have just stayed home. But none would have switched to Bush. If even 10% of his votes—10,000—would have shown up for Al Gore, there would have been a different President. And with that, maybe no Iraq invasion— maybe even no 9/11.

2016, Jill Stein.

Bernie Sanders may have groused his way back to the Senate after losing the Democratic nomination, but many of his voters found a left wing substitute in physician Jill Stein. She was a controversial, far-left progressive from the get-go, properly defining Donald Trump as, “a magnet for crime and extortion.” But she also blasted Hillary Clinton as, “more dangerous than Trump.” She was actively supported by Soviet media (whether she wanted that or not.) She took only a million and a half votes nationally--but on the state level, many of those votes were conclusive in razor-thin counts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. There, her votes exceeded the margins of victory for Trump. Meanwhile, libertarian candidate Gary Johnson took even more votes, making it impossible to positively conclude that Stein alone stole victory from Clinton. But it is safe to say that the presence of third-party candidacies uncoiled the electorate and made predictions meaningless.

hich leads us to the impending 2024 race. Nothing really seems certain. Is Joe Biden entirely committed to running again? Could some legal proceeding disqualify Donald Trump if he decides to run? But more to the point, who might jump in as a third-party choice—and what impact could that have?

The first possibility is Liz Cheney. She has vowed to do whatever she can to prevent another Trump presidency. Let’s hope. Because running against him could seal his victory.

A Cheney third-party candidacy would steal exactly zero votes from the MAGA base—they despise her. However, for the remaining “mainline” Republicans, along with countless independents, she would promise an answer to Washington polarization. And those are exactly the voters who were decisive in Biden’s victory. Without them, he would be doomed.

In addition, it seems likely that some crank on the delusional left will jump in, screaming that Biden “just hasn’t done enough!” Even a small number of voters grabbed from the Democratic base could be fatal—see Ralph Nader, above.

And if both appear on the ballot—a “mainline” Republican and an ardent left-winger—Biden will be left for dead on the side of the campaign trail. Hello Trump II.

One more thought on this. In the end, the worst outcome for Trump (and America) may come if he doesn’t run. This calculation is based on the difference between Trump himself and “Trumpism.” In other words, another less offensive GOP candidate could easily borrow from the Trump playbook of lie, cheat and steal—but put a more civil face on it. That’s a scary prospect.

What would happen then? On one hand, there could be some number of devoted Trump cultists who might just stay home out of spite. On the other, how many of the non-Trump Republicans and Independents would be lured to a Trump fill-in?

Which leaves everything up to guesswork—just like it will be all the way to the morning of election day in 2024. What seems clear (to me) is that the nation’s best hope is another clean race pitting just Biden against Trump. Biden beat him once, and I believe would win by more a second time around. While fighting over the large number of undecided/unmotivated voters is vital, equally important is for people preferring the Democrats to actually vote Democratic. There’s no excuse for sitting on the sidelines. As a popular slogan proclaimed back in the 60’s, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.“

In any case, over the next two years, you can expect several trillion words of analysis on all this from the political media. And many of those words will be devoted to potential third-party challenges—because that ramps up dramatic conflict. It’s coming. Buckle up.

Issue 20

Third Party Nightmare