To be clear upfront, I am not advocating that anyone other than a Democrat win an elected office.
As is well known, if Ralph Nader’s Florida voters had voted for Gore in 2000, we would have had a President Gore. And if Jill Stein’s voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, we would have had a President Hillary Clinton. Such are the vagaries of the Electoral College, which will exist as much in 2020 as they did in 2000 and 2016.
In most parliamentary systems, the government is formed by a coalition of parties who come together to form a governing majority. The party with the most votes usually produces the Prime Minister, but the other parties get ministers of various departments in accordance with their importance. Even the smallest parties, if needed to form a majority, get something.
While not garnering much attention, the Green Party presidential primary is in full swing. It goes without saying that none of their candidates has even the slightest chance of winning the presidency. That isn’t the case when it comes to the potential of being a spoiler, yet again. The election is far away and no one really knows what will happen between now and then. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that votes for the Green candidate could again spoil the Democratic candidate’s chances in one or more key states.
The Greens don’t like Democrats for a variety of reasons, but they’ve also never been offered the chance to have a real voice at the federal level. So how is this for an idea: Whomever wins the Democratic primary pledges to nominate a Green for EPA Administrator. That’s a Cabinet-level position that attends Cabinet meetings with the president like the other Cabinet officers. Think about the following:
- Climate change and the environment is one of the main areas that Green Party members care about.
- The Green Party’s platform on environmental issues is fairly radical compared to current environmental policy, but it shares a lot of aspects with the Green New Deal on the Democratic side. For example, the Democrats’ Green New Deal aims to have renewable energy comprise 40%-60% of energy used by 2030, and 100% by 2050. The Greens want renewable energy to be 100% by 2030. Those positions really aren’t so far apart, and certainly both the Democrats and Greens share the general goal of getting more renewable energy on line as quickly as possible.
- The Democrats who support the Green New Deal would likely also support much of the Green Party’s environmental platform, thus potentially yielding an additional benefit in further energizing that group of Democrats. The centrist/moderate Democrats would likely take the pragmatic approach of accepting the move in order to win the presidency and get rid of Trump, even if they don’t agree with some Green positions on the environment.
- Ultimately the president is the EPA Administrator’s boss, and can stop any planned EPA action if needed. When push comes to shove, actual national environmental policy will still be controlled by Democrats.
There have been similar arrangements, most notably recently with Bernie Sanders. While he has spent his entire Senate career as an Independent, he has caucused with the Democrats. In turn, he received committee assignments (including his current stint on the Senate Budget Committee) that he could not have received without support from the Democrats.
The hope would be that if offered the opportunity to gain a real voice in the government, on an issue they care about, some Green voters would support the Democrat. I fully realize that many Greens are too hostile to Democrats to ever vote for one, but I think some might. Nader received 97,488 votes in Florida. If Gore had peeled away a little less than 1% of those voters, he would have won the presidency.