Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election despite receiving 2.87 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. He won because of our impossibly antiquated and anti-democratic electoral college system – his 46.1% of the popular vote translated to 57.3% of the electoral vote – but that wasn’t the only infuriating deciding factor. Also playing a key role was someone you may never have heard of: Jill Stein, the nominee of the Green Party, who won enough votes in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – votes that almost surely would have gone to Clinton – to hand Trump the White House.
I’ve written here before about the devastating effect ego has on our body politic. The process of running for state legislature, much less president, involves an invasion and examination of one’s life that only egomaniacs and truly dedicated public servants would dare undertake – the current Catch-22 of US politics. Previously, I focused on how ego keeps politicians in office long after age has robbed them of the physical and intellectual energy needed to be effective. What I failed to mention are arguably the most harmful egos around: third-party candidates such as Stein.
In 2000, the unbridled ego and misguided political passion of consumer activist Ralph Nader gave us the disastrous George W Bush presidency by getting nearly 100,000 votes in Florida, a state Bush won by 537. Nader famously opined throughout the campaign that there just wasn’t much difference between Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore. If they could speak, my guess is the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Iraq War would vehemently disagree.
America’s political system is indeed broken, and the heavy-handed pre-eminence of the two main parties has done much to break it. But the potential nail in democracy’s coffin – another four years of a Trump presidency – is too precisely poised to make an impractical vote of conscience anything but insane. Sadly, instead of a sober assessment of this reality, followed by a semi-selfless decision to give the nation a desperately needed break by not running, third-party candidates are lining up to take a shot at claiming, post-election, that Trump winning wasn’t their fault.
Those running to the left of Biden include whoever wins the Green Party’s nomination, and progressive activist/college professor Cornel West, who announced a run on the People’s Party ticket.
The Libertarian Party will also field a candidate capable of getting on many state ballots, but it’s hard to blame them, because the party takes votes from both sides. The X factor this time is the folk at No Labels, an extremely well-funded bunch of self-proclaimed moderates – and since they aren’t a formal political party, they don’t have to disclose their funding sources – who think “we can do better than a Trump-Biden rematch”. With all due respect, which frankly isn’t much, a reasonably well-informed nine-year-old could tell you that.
No Labels leadership says they’ll form an “independent unity ticket” unless one of the major parties sees “the growing voice and leverage of the commonsense majority, and nominates candidates and releases policy platforms that cater to the needs of this majority, instead of the wants of a partisan minority”. If you can figure out what the hell that means, please tell them, because I’m quite confident they don’t know.
Atop No Labels’ list of possible candidates is Senator Joe Manchin – google his name plus “narcissist” for a quick assessment of his personality. No Labels claims to be the voice of reason and moderation – qualities antithetical to the Maga millions – and so will most assuredly drag votes away from Biden and thereby send the nation into chaos.
Eventually, a legitimate third party will emerge and be a positive force, making both major parties more responsive to the needs of the vast majority that does not make six-figure political action committee donations. But elections have consequences – witness the Trump-erected Supreme Court’s recent assault on decades of progress – and in 2024, these fringe candidates can hasten democracy’s fatal crash by handing its keys to the drunkest of drivers.
