Friends, my latest article reflects on the pathetic, abortive presidential pretensions of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, and more fundamentally on the strange, stubborn refusal of American voters to consider any choice other than a Democrat or a Republican (both of which they despise). What a country, huh?
No Labels=No Hope for Victory...Or
Does It?
Friday
brought crushing news for allegedly conservative Democrats hiding out
in the hills of West Virginia – a paltry demographic that may, at
this stage, include only one person: Senator Joe Manchin. Manchin
announced that he
will not
be running
for president in 2024, as the “No Labels” candidate or in any
way, shape, or form. Since even the people of West Virginia have been
flagging in their enthusiasm for the last of the Blue Dog Democrats,
this is no great loss, but it does raise the question: in this year
in which the large majority of Americans express disgust with the
presumptive presidential candidates of the two major parties, why
couldn't a third party or independent candidate break through and win
it all?
One is tempted to answer: because it's never been done, and indeed
the Democratic and Republican parties have maintained a stranglehold
on Congress and the presidency since the 1850s. This is puzzling,
because few democracies, no matter how they are structured, have
maintained stable two-party systems for so long. And yet, in America,
the two parties enjoy so many advantages, in terms of perceived
legitimacy, preferential access to the ballot, media exposure,
fundraising, and the like that it often seems that the task of
building a new party that could compete at the highest level is a
fool's errand.
On the other hand, the fact that something is unprecedented does not
mean that it is impossible. Few imagined that an actor could become
president before Ronald Reagan made it happen in 1980, or that a
brash real estate baron turned game show host could win the highest
office in the land, but Trump proved definitively that it could be
done in 2016.
In point of fact, we live in a time when robust levels of public
cynicism (and poor knowledge of history and current events) make the
violation and overturning of norms fairly easy. Witness the fact that
impeachments at the federal level, which used to be extremely rare,
are now almost yearly events, and are expected political maneuvers.
Likewise, while it was once virtually inconceivable that a former
president would face criminal charges, now President Trump is
wrestling with 91 felony charges all at once! It would seem that,
nowadays, when we decide to break with convention, we go all out.
Be this as it may, the biggest argument against a third party or
independent run for the presidency has always been: why would anyone
vote for such a candidate when they would have no chance of winning?
Why “throw away” your vote? That is to say, Americans perceive
third party and independent bids as futile, and they do not enjoy
voting for candidates destined to lose – except, apparently, when
voting for Democrats in a red state, or Republicans in a blue one,
which they do all the time!
When
one considers that a single voter, casting a single vote, has,
statistically speaking, essentially zero leverage over the selection
of the next president, the popular concern with a candidate's
viability makes little rational sense, but it is, nonetheless, an
important psychological factor that any ambitious third party or
independent candidate would have to overcome. Either he/she would
need to convince the American people that voting for a “protest”
candidate – that is, a loser – was a respectable and principled
thing to do, or he/she would need to convince voters that this
time,
unlike every other time, the third party or independent candidate
could win the big prize. Changing such ingrained perceptions about
American politics would be no easy task.
If
we look
at the polls,
we see that, currently, when Americans are prompted to choose between
Biden, Trump, Kennedy, Stein, and West – the declared candidates
for president – they give, on average, only 13% of their support to
Kennedy, and 2% each to Stein and West. Those are historically high
numbers, when one considers the long-standing dominance of the two
major parties, but they are nowhere close to winning
numbers, so there is, as yet, little statistical evidence to support
the idea that a partisan sea change is upon us, and the next
president is likely to be neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
Probably the biggest hurdle that a third party or independent
candidate faces is the fact that, absent a political vacuum that
needs filling, new political constellations are speculative, at best.
To put it another way, unless one of the two major parties collapses,
it is hard to see why a new party, or a new political movement,
would, could, or should arise to take its place, or to assume an
important and permanent role in American politics.
We know that in 2020 Joe Biden and Donald Trump received,
respectively, the most and the second most votes that any
presidential candidate in U.S. history has ever gotten – and that
in 2020 we notched the best turnout rate since at least 1960. While
the public does not seem to hold either Biden or Trump in especially
high regard, the ability of their respective party apparatuses to
turn out massive numbers of voters on their behalf is not in doubt –
and, in fact, seems to be improving with every comparable election
cycle. The Democratic and Republican parties, in other words, are
alive and well – and can afford to sneer, for now, at those
candidates, parties, and movements that dare to challenge their
dominion.
And
so we confront the essential, inexplicable contradiction that looms
over our country's political life: never have the parties themselves,
the presidential candidates who they select, and the key
institutions
of our constitutional system in general, been less
popular and esteemed by the voters – but, at the same time, never
have those same voters been more willing to turn out to vote in huge
numbers for the major parties and their candidates, and to write
checks and to otherwise signal their loyalty and devotion to these
immensely flawed and in many ways outmoded organizations.
If,
as they say, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results,” then what level of madness is
America's current political modus
operandi:
we do the same thing over and over again, expecting bad results, but
hoping that, if we keep at it, we'll at least avoid something even
worse. You would think that this strange species of political
fatalism might be conquerable by the right kind of third party or
independent candidate, no? No, apparently not. Or maybe yes. But
probably no.
All we can say for sure is that Joe Manchin will not be the man to
save us from ourselves.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2024/02/18/no-labelsno-hope-for-victoryor-does-it-n2635387
