Why are third party candidates a threat to Biden in 2024?
2023-12-08 00:24:55
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
This is The Guardian.
This week, President Biden admitted that he probably wouldn't be running for re-election if Donald Trump wasn't the likely Republican nominee.
He is running and I have to run.
The thought of a Biden-trump rerun in 2024 has many Americans dreading next year, and some are looking for any other option.
People are sick and tired of what they're seeing and upset about all they see is turmoil and havoc. And we can do better than this, and people expect us to do better.
Third party candidates and independents the likes of Jill Stein, Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are campaigning as the alternatives to a flawed two-party system. That offers all too few options for such a diverse country. So why hasn't an outsider been more successful in the past? Is running independently of the Democratic and Republican parties, providing a legitimate and necessary choice for voters?
Or is it nothing more than an election spoiler? And if it's the latter, why is the one who should be worried Joe Biden? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.
Yeah, that was a little editorial series we ran, called too bad, about third-party candidates.
This is Nitish Pawar, a writer on business and technology for Slate. Back in the summer, he and his colleagues put together a series looking at the history and likely future of third-party candidates in the U.S.
I looked at the Green Party specifically and how, for this round, the Green Party seemed to be putting its hopes on Cornel West as its prospective nominee. Yes, I'm trying to push toward the finish line. Why? Because I want to reintroduce America to the best of itself. This was causing a lot of anxiety in liberal political circles. Because, I mean, Cornel West has been a famed academic, you know, staunch socialist voice and activist for decades now.
And I mean, he was also a huge surrogate for Bernie Sanders, especially when Bernie Sanders was running in 2016 and 2020.
Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate who can actually beat a gangster in the White House named Donald Trump, you know, leading to the left of the Democratic Party campaign. And to add more, insult to insult, I guess you would say Cornel West had Jill Stein as his campaign manager. Things have changed a lot since then.
Cornel West is now no longer running on the Green Party ticket. He's struck out on his own. This apparently came as some surprise to his campaign manager. JIll Stein. All right. The Green Party officially nominating progressive activist Jill Stein as its presidential candidate for 2016, who now is launching yet another presidential campaign of her own for the Green Party ticket.
Over 60 percent of us now say the bipartisan establishments failed us.
And we need a party that serves the people. This is at a time when there are other non-democratic, non-republican forces vying for seats in this race. So it's a mess, it's a complete mess all around.
Yeah, I mean. And we should say that the name Jill Stein, for a certain kind of American liberal or progressive, or supporter of the Democrats, is a kind of kryptonite. It can drive people mad because people do think it was just a few thousand votes that decided the 2016 election. And in several states, Jill Stein won more than the margin that would have handed those states to Hillary Clinton. To the extent that Jill Stein is now a sort of figure in popular culture. I'm thinking of the TV series American Horror Story, which had a character who wanted to torture and eventually murder her wife because she voted for Jill Stein.
I mean, people get very unforgiving when it comes to this. The fact that Jill Stein it could be back in 2024 is going to revive some of those memories. But let's just stay with Cornel West. In particular, because there was some interest in him, the idea that he was a man with a huge intellectual pedigree and a long history in progressive politics. What accounted for this change? Where, as you say, he's a campaign manager and he a party company. And she might now instead be the Green Party nominee.
I think there are a couple of reasons for this one. While the Green Party is on plenty of state ballots, it's not on all of them. And there are a lot of Green Party folks who were kind of banking. That Cornel West would eventually bring enough voter turnout to actually make the Green Party competitive, whereas I think Cornel West was looking at the Green Party as his ticket to help him be competitive. So there is a little mismatch of priorities there.
And he also, he's always been his own person, he's a very controversial, fiery figure. He famously does not tend to vote either Democrat or Republican. He tends to view both parties as sides of the same coin. I don't hate Brother Trump.
I just hate mendacity, I hate gangster behavior, I don't hate Brother Biden. I just hate hypocrisy. On very rare occasions, you know. He voted for Joe Biden in 2020 to keep Trump away.
But now he's like, Well, both of them are terrible. So you know, I'm the one who can really do something. And he's hoping now, in an independent column, can just snatch him. A lot of people from a lot of different areas.
This is a question you could apply to all third party candidates. But let's start with Cornel West. Does he think he could actually win, or does he think that? Just, you know, making a principled stand and winning a few thousand votes is an end in itself. And the reason why I ask is, in this particular case, you've told us he was against Donald Trump being president in 2020..
He voted for Joe Biden. If he still wants to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, surely he can do the basic arithmetic that says. A few thousand votes siphoned off from Joe Biden could imperil some of those key must-win battleground states where the margins are so close. You know, we think of Georgia or Arizona, or Michigan, or Pennsylvania. What does he actually intend here, given, as you've said, he does want to keep Trump out of the White House?
For my original Green Party piece, I talked to Jim Hightower, who's a very prominent progressive journalist here, and he had formerly spoken at a Green Party convention in 2000.
And what he told me back then, Ralph Nader was the nominee, he was like, Look, I mean, none of us were fooled that Nader could actually win. But what we were hoping for was that this would be an expression of, you know, mobilization on a certain platform with certain voters. That could get the other parties to change their own stances and adjust to what we were asking for. Hightower did not continue voting green after that election.
You can look at example. You know, we've talked about Bernie Sanders a little bit. But you know, when he ran his insurgent campaign in the Democratic primary, you know, he was always an independent. But he ran as a Democrat. Because he wanted to, like, change the party from within. You'll also find that a lot of people will say, well, it's anti-democratic to tell me that I shouldn't vote third party, that my vote is held hostage to these two candidates, these two institutions. I do think Cornel West, like, wants to rally more people about him and thinks he can get an actual coalition. That will cause Biden to step away and then have himself be the choice against Donald Trump. I don't think that's going to work, obviously, but I do think he is in this to win.
I think his party hopping is evidence of that. And I mean, again, history just points to the fact that that's not going to happen.
Yeah, and I was saying that these people are often larger than life characters. True, but what you just said there suggests there is also an element in which they are delusional. Because, you know, as you just said, they are in it to win. What history suggests is that if you're there to make some kind of stand, you can do that in the primaries, you know, like Bernie Sanders did in 2020 and 2016..
It's running as a third party, that's the problem. I mean, the ultimate example, the paradigmatic example, is always 2000, which you mentioned. It was George W. Bush against Al Gore.
Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd President of the United States.
It turned into an absolute nail biter. It came down to 500 odd votes in the state of Florida, which gave it to George W. Bush. But Ralph Nader, consumer rights campaigner, was on the ballot if George W.
Bush is elected, I would be disappointed If Al Gore is elected, I would be disappointed. Because they're really racing for the White House to see who takes the marching orders from their corporate paymasters and the corporate permanent government in Washington? And constantly winning more votes than the difference that separated Gore and Bush. And I always thought that after that, people would learn that lesson you never want to make that mistake ever again.
Yet Jill Stein did do it again in 2016, with exactly the same outcome, keeping the Democrat out by a hair's breadth. And so that's what makes you think, OK, the candidates who still want to do this. It can only be for some sort of ego trip. And I know that. Many have criticized Cornel West, saying that he's using a presidential campaign as a kind of performance art. And he himself almost agreed with that when asked, saying, It's jazz all the way down. I mean, do you encounter people on the progressive wing of politics who are, you know, just not in any kind of mood to indulge this sort of exercise? Given that they've seen that this can come at a very high cost.
Yeah, 100 percent, I mean, after that, Ralph Nader's name became somewhat nuclear. You know, the Green Party itself as an institution, got boxed out of a lot of various organizational spaces. And you know, Nader, who, famously, as you mentioned, big consumer Rights advocate, had done a lot to influence various pieces of legislation over consumer safety with automobiles.
Yeah, it was down to him that Americans use seatbelts, safety belts. He campaigned for that, I mean, so his reputation was ruined by it in some ways. But what about the Green Party itself?
I mean, because Jill Stein is seeking to be the Green Party nominee, people are familiar with green parties in Europe and in Britain. What is the sort of standing of it in the United States? Is it a serious political party with, you know, organization and infrastructure? How is it seen?
Or is it too tainted by the memory of that spoiler effect that Jill Stein had in 2016 opening the door to Donald Trump?
The U.
S Green Party began around like the mid-1980s, inspired by the success of green parties in Europe, like in West Germany. At the time, Ralph Nader's run was like, kind of the Green Party's big debut. And I think chance to prove themselves. And I think they almost proved themselves a little bit too well in just sucking up a little too many votes from Al Gore and then throwing the election to bush. Another problem with the Green Party, I mean, besides just that image thing, is that they have not done on-the-ground organizing that you need to do in these campaigns.
You know, they have normally depended on, like a big, famous name like Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, Cornel West, to come in and draw in voters. But really, what they need to be doing was doing more organization. In the states where they have a ballot presence or don't have a ballot presence, or where their ballot presence may be challenged by other legal forces.
No, that is indeed the critique that they should be doing it bottom up rather than top down and doing some local ballot initiatives and to get green measures. And only then, after decades of work, could you run a presidential candidate. We've talked about the Green Party, we've talked about Cornel West's independent bid. Let's look at the other big independent name, and I stress the word name. Who's running? Former Democrat with one of the most storied names in American politics, namely Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. We declare independence from the corporations that have hijacked our government. He did initially tilt for the Democratic nomination. He was a thorn in the side of Joe Biden and now says instead he's going to run as an independent. He really is right in there with conspiracy theories about all manner of subjects, including famously make his name with Covid and the vaccine.
What is his game in running as an independent? Is he, you know, my rather unkind description? Is he, in that company of people, delusional enough to think he can actually win? Or does he actively want to act as a spoiler? Siphoning off votes from one of the big two to help the other one? And if so, who does he want to help, and who does he want to keep out, Trump or Biden?
What happened was, I think people in his campaign and just all around him saw that he was getting a lot of support from Republicans. And you know, there are a lot of Republican voters out there who, like, you know, they may be tired of Donald Trump. Like they want desperately for an alternative to him, because they don't see themselves voting for Joe Biden in any circumstance. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with his vaccine conspiracies. With his railing against Anthony Fauci, he really endeared himself to a more right leaning flank. And I think his campaign thought, OK. So the institutional Democratic Party is not going to help us at all, obviously.
And we're getting a lot of interest from these Republican leaning voters, so we might as well just solidify them in our column by going full independent. I do think he could still run on being a Kennedy, and also, I mean himself, a pretty famous Kennedy. Someone who was a famed environmental lawyer and Democratic Party surrogate for decades before taking his more crankish turn. I think he thinks he can run on that and make it there.
As part of your series for Slate, you did also include no labels. This new group that's formed with the founding chairman of Joe Lieberman, who was actually Al Gore's running mate back in 2000, just missed out on being vice president. Thanks in part to Ralph Nader. No labels. We've mentioned them a couple of times on the podcast.
The group, which registers as a non-profit and declines to disclose its donors, plans to raise $70 million for a candidate in waiting.
Just tell us who makes up that group, what niche they spot and what objective they might have.
You could very much point to sort of the new Democrat centrist blue dog DLC era of politics from the 80s and 90s. That always looked for this mode of triangulation. That was famously Bill Clinton's way of putting it. Straddling between more traditional liberal priorities and also new conservative consensuses on economics and crime and other such issues. Their whole thing is, you know, we've been in politics a long time, we have a lot of money, we have these big networks. And we think that Biden is too beholden to the progressive flank of his party. And that is as divisive as the right wing is to, you know, its own section of America and the voting coalition. So we are trying to find someone who unifies.
We're here to make sure that American people have an option.
And the option is, can you move the political parties off their respective sides? They've gone too far right and too far left. Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia who announced that he'll be retiring. He's often been floated as a name because he has, for you know, for a long time now, been a Democrat. Elected from a pretty what is now a pretty deep red state. Frankly, I think Manchin would be No label's best hope. I don't think any other candidate they would get would be in that square column of like, Oh yeah, I vote evenly with Republicans and Democrats.
I think that both parties have gone off the rails and we need to find the vital center again. That is also just not going to be an appealing message to more than maybe 10 of voters.
The question that arises, whether we're talking about no labels, or Jill Stein, or Cornel West, or Robert Kennedy Jr.
Is, first of all, in a way, why are they all doing it, given that everything suggests they can't possibly win? But the other question that arises is this assumption that they are all a problem for Joe Biden. Nobody seems to say they could siphon off votes from Donald Trump and hurt him. Why is that?
I think the only person who's ever been mentioned as potentially causing any trouble for Trump is Robert F. Kennedy, again because of the more right-leaning voters he draws. But what you see in all these other instances in the Cornel West? Jill Stein They are appealing to people who traditionally have voted Democrat, or at the very least, their ideologies lie within that sphere. And I think another reason that people are worried about Biden in particular is, I mean, his polling is still awful right now. You know, he's not had net positive approval for years.
At this point right now, there have been multiple polls showing Donald Trump leading Biden, even though Biden was the one who beat Trump in 2020..
And even though Donald Trump is perhaps the most unpopular man in America, I mean, both things are true at the same time.
With that polling, we're still a long way out from the election. Also, Trump is nowhere near as squarely visible as he once was. He's no longer monopolizing the news cycle in the way that he used to. So I think he hasn't engendered that sort of traditional backlash that he has, and I think it's all but inevitable.
He will be the Republican nominee, barring some sort of further legal trouble. And when that happens, I do think you will see a rise in people who turn out to vote against him. But they will not be doing so. Voting for Joe Biden, they will be voting against Donald Trump, for sure, and Biden has a substantial legislative record.
But polling has also shown consistently that no one knows about it, no one knows about the energy bills he's passed or anything. The most they know about what's gone on in the Biden era is the fall of Roe v. Wade, which obviously has been a galvanizing force in favor of Democrats. Biden has purposefully chosen to be not a super public president.
That's come at the cost of him actually sharing any bits of his record. So Biden, I think, just has so many problems in how he's approached being a public president. And if he doesn't fix those, there are a lot of other people who are willing to fill in that void.
There are lots of them, but, as we've been saying all the way through, if they do, the person likely to benefit is Donald Trump. NITISH We always do like to ask our guests on the podcast a what else? question? Something else going on we could ask you about. Kevin McCarthy announcing that he's going to leave Congress very soon at the end of the month. But instead, I thought we would ask you about the event that stood at the center of this week. And that was the TV debate among the remaining Republican candidates for president.
Not many of them left. Ron DeSantis, Nikki, Haley, Chris, Christie, they're all still there. I don't know whether you bothered to watch it or not. But who won, who lost? And in a way, what is the point? Given how far in front Donald Trump is a brief answer to our what else? question.
If you had to point to a quote unquote winner from any of these debates, it absolutely has been. Nikki Haley Well, I think it's great. Look, when you start getting attacked, that means you're surging, and we know that.
We see it in the polls in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Who's seen her polling surge consistently since every appearance? The problem is that she's still far, far behind Donald Trump, and no debate is going to fix that. You saw all the candidates recognizing this fact and going after Haley pretty relentlessly herself. Because they realize she's a threat to any chance they have. But they have no shot at this point.
All of them are vying either for vice president splot with Trump, or they're vying for a cabinet position, or they're just vying to save their own political skin. Like Ron, DeSantis has just completely shot himself in the foot, he has no popularity left. Chris Christie's political career has been over for forever now, and Vivek Ramaswamy, he's going to be around for a while.
And that's not great news for anybody who thought the Republican Party might go in a more moderate Nikki Haley direction. But that's, that's where we're at. It's it's pretty grim.
Nitish Pawar of Slate Thanks so much for joining me on Politics Weekly America.
Thanks for having me.
And that is all from me for this week. For anyone who didn't see the news that the famed fabricator himself, George Santos, was expelled from the House of Representatives last week. My colleague Adam Gabbert was on Thursday's episode of Our Sister podcast Today in Focus to explain what finally brought about the end of Santos's political career and what he's likely to do next. Meanwhile, for Politics Weekly UK, John Harris has also been looking at a man regularly accused of bending the truth. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his performance during the Covid inquiry this week.
So do make sure to search for both of those wherever you get your podcasts. But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Danielle Stevens. The executive producer this week is Nicole Jackson. Thanks, as always, for listening.
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