Last night’s close Kentucky race and the specter of Tulsi Gabbarb running as an independent led me to consider the effects of having a third party candidate in a close presidential election.
I was watching MSNBC which was covering the state returns as they came in last night and it struck me that hotly contested race for governor in Kentucky had still not called for Democrat Andy Beshear even as he was about 10,000 votes ahead of his Republican opponent incumbent Matt Bevin. On the screen I saw that was a third party candidate, John Hicks running as a Libertarian, with easily enough votes to swing the election so important to Trump he held a rally there the day before and made it all about himself.
This is the rally with all the t-shirts that said “read the transcript.”
Perhaps there will be local polls which will tell us whether the more than 28,000 people who voted for Hicks would have voted for Beshear or Bevin if they were the only two choices. It is difficult to make an educated guess from his positions. Read Meet Libertarian Candidate John Hicks, A Third Choice For Kentucky Governor.
Here’s the excerpt about Trump:
When asked about his thoughts on President Trump, Hicks said he didn’t vote for him, but said there are parallels between the president and Bevin. “Both of them do have a libertarian streak in that they understand that regulation can get in the way and that business is important to prosperity. Trump seems to be playing a game where he’s sort of - he’s manipulating the press to a great extent with his statements and it’s hard to really read between the lines and to see what he really stands for,” Hicks said. He added that Libertarians believe Trump tends to be politically expedient, which happens to be Libertarian to an extent. He said he believes Bevin’s “main problem” is how he delivers his rhetoric and how he engages with people who disagree with him.
It doesn't sound like he was a big supporter of the president, but he easily could have assured that the candidate Trump supported in Kentucky won.
Thankfully, Democrat Beshear won in a state where Trump won by 30 points. The is hugely significant and should worry Trump big time. On The Rachel Maddow Show election guru Steve Kornacki said that Mitch McConnell, who is from Kentucky and up for reelection can’t be happy about this result.
Here are “5 things to know about Amy McGrath vs. Mitch McConnell in the 2020 Senate race.”
McConnell’s opponent :
Amy McGrath is a 44 year old Marine fighter pilot with 89 combat missions. She is married to Erik Henderson, a former military service member who is lifelong Republican, and they have three children.
After serving more than two decades in the military, McGrath, who hails from Georgetown, Kentucky, soon returned to run for Congress. Her campaign began with a an announcement video taped in front of a fighter jet and wearing her bomber jacket, which went viral.
You can sometimes get a good indication of how McConnell’s reputation is faring by looking at how quickly a hashtag abut him trends. If took mere minutes after Joe Scarborough to call him Moscow Mitch to trend on Twitter. Now there’s a new one that is trending. I don’t know who came up with it, but it can’t be making him happy: Moscow Mitch is Next, below:
In Virginia Democrats won the governorship and just flipped the state senate and house
What with the specter raised by Hillary Clinton of Tulsi Gabbarb running as an independent we really need to consider the effects of having a third party candidate in a close election. We may never know what Gabbard’s intention was. Appearing on Fox News, on Hannity of all shows, and calling the investigation of Trump partisan suggests she was trying to undermine the Democratic Party.
It is possible she never considered running as an independent and it is also possible Hillary wanted to fire a shot across her bow to deter her from doing this. She has had supporters among Democrats, polling in the low single digits, and if even a small percentage of those supporters were so loyal to her they would have voted for her in the general election as an independent — again this is all theory — she could have made Trump the winner in a few very close states.
In April 2017 Daily Beast published Libertarians to America: Don’t Blame Us for Trump.
Excerpt:
On the day before the 2016 election, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson sent a note to his supporters. “Whatever happens tomorrow, understand we won,” he said.
But on the day after the election, with Hillary Clinton vanquished and Donald Trump declared the president-elect, the main things Johnson and his fellow Libertarians had won were about 3 percent of the vote and the unmitigated rage of angry liberals and journalists looking for someone to blame for Trump’s victory.
As Trump’s numbers began to come in Tuesday night, Clinton supporter Seth MacFarlane tweeted, “How is that Gary Johnson protest vote treating you?” When the votes were counted the next day, Vanity Fair declared, “Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump.” Jezebel went a little further: “Fuck Gary Johnson,” they wrote, “And fuck Jill Stein, too.”
The math behind liberals’ gripes is pretty obvious, even if the logic behind it isn’t. Overall, Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump managed to win the White House by scoring surprise wins in states where he wasn’t expected to win. In the states with the closest results, votes from Libertarians would have more than put Clinton over the top if they had gone for her instead.
I wish I knew more about what the Libertarian Party vote actually does to the Republican and Democratic Party candidate. It is hard to determine this from their website. According to Wikipedia “it is currently the third largest political party in the United States by voter registration, it currently has no members in Congress, or governorships, and over the past decade, has had less than 10 members elected to state legislatures or other state office.”
Ron Paul is one of the best known Libertarians although he was also member of the Republican Party he held Libertarian Party views.
He is the father of the Trump sycophant Rand Paul who also spoke at the Kentucky rally for Matt Bevin and said he knew who the whistle blower was and wanted the name released — which apparently Russia has just done.
Ron Paul served as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, and for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013.
An article in Medium doesn’t answer the question as to whether Libertarians would swing an election to the Democrats or Republicans in a close election. I can't figure it out, perhaps you can: Left or Right — Who is the Ideal Ally of Libertarians?
Any third party or independent theoretically can swing a close election. Evan McMullin was a never-Trumper. He received 21.5% in Utah taking third place in that state behind Trump and Clinton. Nationally, he received 0.53% of the popular vote. Wikipedia
McMullen has been a fairly frequent guest on the various MSNBC talk shows.
I think we need to be very leery of any third party candidate who declares for 2020. Even someone who ostensibly is an anti-Trump Republican can and likely would pull a certain number of independent votes from the Democratic Party candidate.
There are a small but potentially significant number of voters who will be casting their first vote ever for a Democrat, and to put it crudely will be saying in interviews that they hate Trump so much that they are holding their noses and voting for whoever the Democrat is. On the other hand some may say the opposite and say they hate the Democrat so much they are voting for Trump. Remember how prevalent this trope was in the 2016 election?
Going back in less recent history no piece about potential spoilers can be complete without at least a mention of Ralph Nader who ran as both as an independent in one election and for the Green Party in another. Some historians say he was a spoiler in Bush v. Gore. Ross Perot ran in 1992 where in June he led in the polls, and in again in 1996. Historians do not consider him to have been a spoiler. And of course there’s the notorious George Wallace.
Hopefully there won't be any third party candidates. If there are I anticipate the press and the Democrats in the House will be trying to determine who the Russians are supporting. It is highly unlikely we can count on Barr’s Justice Department and the GOP controlled Senate to do anything to stop them if they think Russian cyber interference will help Trump.
It will take political scientists and those far more savvy than me to weigh in on how a potential third candidate may effect the coming presidential election. However this doesn’t stop us from thinking about it and offering our opinion here.