by Jon Phillips*
No third Party candidate has ever won a US POTUS election except
George Washington (he ran as a non-partisan Independent and won by a
massive landslide as the Greatest Hero of the new Nation -- his opponent
may have voted for him.
A so-called realignment election has only occurred once in history when
the Republican (GOP) came into existence in 1856. The GOP supplanted
the withering Whig Party, but lost the general election to the
Democrats. In the next cycle, Lincoln was elected as the first
Republican President and the Whig Party vanished into history. Nearly
immediately, the Civil War began in response to Lincoln's progressive
platform. Republicans were progressive and Democrats were conservative
from 1856 to roughly 1930.
Then the great swap began that reversed the
Party' positions, completing during the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. A
second realignment election almost occurred in 1912 when Theodore
Roosevelt, running as a "Progressive Party" candidate, challenged Big
Bill Taft (R) and Woodrow Wilson (D). Although he beat Taft soundly,
Wilson still won the election by plurality putting an unpopular
President in the White House (he became more popular thereafter). The new "Bull
Moose" or "Progressive" Party faded away quickly after the defeat and
estrangement of Roosevelt from the GOP. The GOP bounced back and
remains to this day.
Some context about that fractious 1912
race, that entirely split the Republicans, is quite instructive given
today's circumstances. Theodore Roosevelt was arguably the most popular
POTUS in US history, other than George Washington up to that point (and
likely to this day).
Roosevelt bolted the GOP after feeling
disenfranchised by his own Party's nominating process (there was
rampant corruption in the nomination process a century ago that would make
electioneering hijinks today look like a microbe). When he won every
open primary voting State and lost every closed caucus State, TR
declared that the GOP was corrupted and trying to steal the nomination.
It was rather blatant given the lack of transparency in the caucuses
back then -- his defeat of Taft demonstrated that the nomination process
was entirely corrupted, it was not a conspiracy theory.
Recall that a
mere 4 years earlier, TR had voluntarily not run for a third consecutive
term as a matter of principle -- he had campaigned for Taft but felt
his policies were betrayed during Taft's Administration. TR ran as an
Independent and crushed Taft -- the second time a third Party candidate
displaced one of the main Party nominees from the top two. Woodrow
Wilson won by plurality and the Democrats took the WH.
The
historical lesson is that even the second most popular politician in
American history, tested as a two-term President, a Vice President,
Governor of NY State, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Political
Appointee to the Civil Service Commission (under both Parties),
President of the NYC Police Commissioners, promoter of the "Muckrakers,"
Dakota cowboy and ranch owner, writer of a huge pile of scientific
literature on natural history and military history and strategy (a
scholar), war hero (he quit his political career to join the military
when the Spanish American War broke out -- he led the famed "Rough
Riders" Calvary Unit composed of many cowboys that he knew from the
Dakotas), a brilliant orator, adventurer and explorer.
Even this person, who was a household name,
an American legend in his own time, could not win a third Party run,
even though he survived an assassination attempt while on the campaign
trail. He was shot at point blank range in the chest, but his folded up
stump speech and eye glasses case slowed the bullet down enough to keep
it from puncturing his lung. The press went wild. America's hero has
taken a bullet in the chest and simply stood back up and said, "Strong
as a bull moose," and walked off stage. Now that's Presidential behavior!
The history reads like some astonishing novel -- like the basis of a
Greek myth.
So... what's the probability that largely unknowns
have any chance of getting more than a few percent of the vote? ZERO! I
know that's a tough history lesson to accept, but unfortunately, it's
entirely true so don't fall for it. Have personal fortitude to accept
reality and understand that third party voting for a President is what
"useful fools" do in our electoral process.
If you look closely,
what third party candidates do today is what they did back then. They
put unpopular people in the WH by splitting popular sentiment. It's not
hard to find examples since the list is reasonably long. This is
particularly true when the margin of popular sentiment is less than 5%.
A glaring recent example is that Al Gore wasn't beaten by Dubya Bush,
he was beaten by idealists (useful fools) who "voted their conscience"
when they voted for Ralph Nader -- a left wing challenger. Nader picked
up 2% and that was enough to put Dubya over the top.
Dubya lost the national popular vote, but his contested win in Florida by a little over
100 votes, gave him Florida's winner take all Electoral College vote,
and he won the Presidency.
The man was a fool and created a foreign
policy disaster that killed thousands of Americans, wounded tens of
thousands, and exploded the deficit by simultaneously expanding
entitlement benefits (for a GOP constituency) and starting two wars (one
unjustified), while massively cutting taxes. He destroyed our
reputation overseas and it's taken 8 years to make headway against all
the damage he did to our foreign policy. Trump is ten times the fool
that Dubya was and entirely unqualified to be President having never
held any elected office. He's a
crooked realtor for God's sake!
The right wing media spin and smear machine (both sides have one)
is simultaneously promoting a two-pronged approach: 1) a false
equivalence campaign, linked to 2) encouraging undecideds to either not
vote, or to vote third party. Why?
Donald Trump is an obvious
disaster and a clear and present danger to the country, but culture
warriors and right wing (vs center right) conservatives would rather the
country take that risk (falsely believing they can control Trump's
idiotic behavior) than risk Hillary making court appointments that could
have decades of impact on their anti-progressive agenda. They're also
trying to limit or destroy any coattails Hillary may have down-ballot in
the event that she wins. They hate the Donald, but he's their
narcissistic dangerous idiot since they nominated him. What to do?
Well...hmmm. Hillary has this amazing superpower of projecting
unlikability (whatever that is) and elitism on TV. It's like some kind
of intrinsic property that seems to ooze from her pores. Her
impressive resume seems unable to paint over it -- it just keeps seeping through.
The right wing spin meisters figure they can hold show trials and witch
hunts, at taxpayer expense if possible, even though they have always
ended in smoke but never fire, and then they can blow that smoke up the
public's arshole by combining it with consistent messaging using words
like "liar, liar, pantsuit and cankles on fire!" Heck, they've got a
long lead on this since they've been pursing this strategy since the
90's (and before).
They've got her type cast like an old-time Hollywood
actress. They've worked with diligence to turn Hillary's media persona
into the Jungian archetypes of the "devil" and the "trickster" rather
than the "wise old woman" or "hero", and her lack of "photogenics" and
so-called "shrill voice" play right into their strategy. Let's be fair,
her voice isn't really shrill, she's an alto and it's quite strong,
rather than soprano and wispy. The real issue is that she's assertive
and she tends to speak in active voice using imperatives, like men in
leadership typically do -- this is a challenge to misogynists who don't
like women who make demands and presume to be "uppity".
Then all they
have to do to exploit this "dislike" campaign they've been fertilizing
with BS for decades, is to constantly compare her to the Donald as
somehow basically being equal choices: both are "horrible" or "bad and
worse", depending on the audience. This is the
false equivalence campaign that they're executing this with amazingly powerful
effectiveness and coordination. They've leveraged TV and media messaging
into millions of people parroting this like robots. They've even
dispatched additional FOX News-like "fembots" as spokespersons to try
and blunt expected losses among women, while boosting the misogynistic
voters, who get turned on by the sight of dangerous and dominant "beauties"
(sort of a lite-weight version of bikini-clad super models with machine
guns).
How does this help their cause? Well, the Donald is loved
only by a minority (sizable, which is scary) of potential voters with a
statistical center that's populist, bigoted, anti-establishment, under
educated, angry, white, male, older, can be motivated by flimsy culture
war arguments, can overlook blatant lying and exaggeration when done by
orange men with terrible hair and small hands, like to watch dominatrix films
in private -- fill in other ugly descriptors here. In a big country,
that's a lot of people that are very energized by fear, hate and anger,
but far from enough to win the general election. Those voters won't
abandon Trump no matter what outrageous thing he says. Like he said, "I
love the uneducated" and "I could shoot someone on 5th Ave and not lose
support." Given his cult following, how is the GOP to make up the deficit? Two
ways...
First, encourage discouraged people not to vote. Second,
encourage other discouraged people to vote third party. Trump "owns" his
base (this is a unique sort of right-wing populist base, not the
traditional GOP base). Hillary's base is broad and fractious and is much
less tightly bound to their nominee (Hillary's personality cult is
incredibly small and Donald's is comparably "Yuuuge" -- that's all he's
really got in those tiny grasping orange hands). The media based spin
and smear campaign being executed by the right, as described above, is
partly aimed at the centrists and leftists in Hillary's base, in
addition to maintaining the right wing base by "identifying their common
enemy" through the process of "branding" that I described above.
Discouraging people from voting by saying that both candidates are
horrible or bad and worse, removes more voters from Hillary than from
Trump (he benefits) since her base is less tightly bound to her.
Encouraging third party voting benefits Trump as well. Why? Because the
only two very modestly visible third party runs include the Green Party
(the decidedly leftist party of Ralph Nader) and a Libertarian ticket
that is sort of center right with a few liberal elements in the social
agenda. Any vote for the Green Party is one less vote for Hillary (this
is obvious since they're a left wing challenge, just like Nader was to
Al Gore when Nader helped the Republicans secure the Presidency by
trimming the Democrat's polls from the left).
More of the votes for the
center right Libertarians remove votes from Hillary because she's making
a huge effort to "capture the middle" and because of their few liberal
positions. Moreover, many of the people in the middle are former or
disenfranchised establishment Republicans (that have been relabeled
RINOs by the new populist "Freedom Caucus") who can't yet bring
themselves to jump ship and vote for their traditional "enemy." This
also slightly helps or is at worst neutral for Trump -- several polls
have been performed that demonstrate this effect in the range of a
couple percent or so.
It's sad, but this is both deeply cynical
AND true AND nothing new. That there has been no reform of the electoral
process to require top two runoffs in the absence of a popular simple
majority for a single candidate (50%+ for a single candidate) is clear
evidence that both of the main Parties are happy to game elections this
way and like to keep the option open to overturn popular national
sentiment through third party challenges that split the popular side.
This is a power game the main Parties regularly play and the country
suffers for it.
Third Parties should have sufficient ethics to see this
game is being played and to constantly call for electoral reform so that
they're not "being used" to spoil their own stated agendas. If it
looks like they cannot get near the top of the ballot, they ought to
bow out and lend their votes to the party with nearest interest (this is
why coalition parliamentary government has some advantages). I figure
they must be highly ideological, ambitious or an intentional foil to
continue forward under current circumstances.
Theodore Roosevelt
made the reasonable wager that if anyone could overturn main party
dominance, it would be the most popular and well-loved president up to
that point (not including George Washington, who was atypical). Even he
was wrong and that lesson has already been painfully learned,
historically speaking. Unfortunately, the voting public has a
statistically significant portion that seems incapable of learning from
history and they get used and the country gets abused over and over by
flimflam artists in both Parties.
Just say "we won't be fooled
again!" hold your nose if you must, and vote for Hillary Clinton. The
only way to fix the right wing is to send them packing in a big and
undeniable way.
_________________________________
Jon Phillips is a Senior Nuclear
Technology Expert at the International Atomic Energy Agency and
Director, Sustainable Nuclear Power Initiative at Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory. The opinions expressed here are his own.
