The Choice
Voting 3rd-party is dangerous and reckless again in 2024
Issue #464 The Choice Thursday, January 18, 2024
As the 2024 presidential election starts in earnest, many in the media are positing that a large number of American voters do not want a repeat of the Biden-Trump 2020 contest. Right now, it is apparent that Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be the declared candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties anyway, so what happens now?
Enter third-party candidates, who each promise to “change” the outcome of the 2024 election if people will just vote for them:
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is running as an independent and is trying to form his own political party.
- Cornel West, who first said he was running as part of the Green Party, is now running as an independent and is currently polling at about 1%.
- Jill Stein is again running as part of the Green Party and is currently polling at about 1%.
- The “No Labels” platform promises to float a “bipartisan” slate (1 Democrat and 1 Republican—not necessarily in that order) but refuses to disclose its assumed right-wing financial backers.
Additionally, two Democrats are attempting to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination:
- Marianne Williamson is running for a 2nd time and is polling at about 4.7%.
- Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, is running because he thinks Biden is too old and is polling at about 2.7%.
Neither of these two Democrats will have enough support to win or even challenge President Biden for the Democratic nomination.
As devoted as these other candidates and their supporters may be, there is no chance that they will win the presidential election, or win in even one state. (The presidential election is held state-by-state, not nationally.)
Additionally, because the presidential election is still decided by the Electoral College instead of the popular vote, these third-party candidates do have the ability to act as “spoilers” for either of the two candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties.
Here are some of the third-party presidential candidates in the 20th and 21st centuries:
20th century:
1. Ralph Nader - Ran as the Green Party candidate in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
2. Ross Perot - Ran as an independent candidate in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.
3. George Wallace - Ran as the candidate for the American Independent Party in the 1968 presidential election.
21st century:
1. Jill Stein - Ran as the Green Party candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.
2. Gary Johnson - Ran as the Libertarian Party candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.
Notice and remember that Ralph Nader kept Al Gore from getting enough Electoral College votes in 2000 so that the election had to be decided by the Supreme Court, although Al Gore had more popular votes.
Remember that in 2016, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson took just enough votes from Hillary Clinton to give the Electoral College to Donald Trump, although Hillary had more than 3 million more popular votes.
One other thing that these 3rd-party candidates and their supporters do not realize is that actually, the president is the “weakest” part of the 3 branches of government: a president’s only “powers” are the ability to veto legislation and to issue executive orders. The president is also able to nominate judges at the Federal level, but those nominations must be approved by the Senate.
- All laws must be passed by Congress whose representatives and Senators are elected at the state level, and presidential vetos can be overridden by Congress.
- Executive Orders can be reversed by new executive orders issued by the next president.
These third-party candidates have little or no “down-ballot” candidates who could win at the state level to help them carry out their declared government policies.
For 2024, we know that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee (he will not allow anyone else to be the nominee even if someone else is nominated at the Republican convention), nor will he or his supporters accept the results of the 2024 presidential election unless he wins.
However, for the Democrats, people voting for any 3rd-party candidate because of a dislike for or policy agreement with Joe Biden could very well give Donald Trump an Electoral College victory as he had in 2016.
That would be a disaster even worse than 2016, and it is not worth voting for anyone else just because you prefer their ideas.
2024 is not the time to vote “your conscience” (as a lot of people said in 2016) or for someone else who not only cannot win the presidential election but also could be a spoiler for Joe Biden.
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