Maybe its Not Me!

        With a burgeoning swell of third party, “Green” and otherwise, chatter, it might be useful for the ardent, young (usually) idealists among us to reflect on the reality of third parties and their impact on American politics. This came to a head in a discussion with a former student (where else, on Facebook) regarding the impact of the Green Party (Nader) votes in 2000 and parallels between that scenario and Jill Stein, also “Green,” 2016 votes.

       Looking back a bit, it really started because I re-posted a 2016 op-ed essay in support of Senator Liz Warren. My young acquaintance, responded with a sort of “Yeah, she’s Ok, but Jill Stein is the real deal.” While having no animus to Dr. Stein, I made the simple and categorically true statement that we’d perhaps be better off today if the Stein voters had voted for Mrs. Clinton, because historically third-party candidates draw voters from the major party they would otherwise support. I cited  Roosevelt/Taft/Wilson in 2012 as providing a text-book example, wherein TR, not nominated by disaffected Republicans as too “liberal” ran on a “Progressive” (“Bull Moose” Party) ticket, Taft, the incumbent, as Republican nominee and Wilson,  history professor and bigot, as a Democrat. Wilson won with less than half the popular vote (42%) because Taft and Roosevelt, both Republican reformers at heart, split the majority, giving a massive electoral vote edge to Wilson.

   

        My young stalwart, was highly offended by my suggestion that a Stein vote had somewhat the same effect as a Trump vote, and so began a rather ugly discourse, during the course of which it was claimed that “dimpled” or “hanging chads” were the real culprits in 2000 and deteriorated with  the odd insertion of  disjointed facts like Ross Perot’s vote percentages in 1992 and 1996. This was then couched to me as an “inconvenient truth” disproving my assertion that third parties, historically have always drained votes from the major party with whom they most closely align, while never electing a President. I also believe that there was some impression, certainly unjustified, that I was “dissing” Jill Stein, who while a board-certified MD, has yet win any elected office above city council. And thus, it began:     

        “It's not an inconvenient truth relative to the topic, which is that third party votes are wasted in a Presidential election. The scholarly article I posted, if you read it, proves that point historically. Not arguable, but simply historically factual."

  ( ed. note The referenced article is “linked” below) 

(https://www.history.com/news/third-party-candidates-election-influence-facts?fbclid=IwAR1qpBRB9iHd3fGKDzZ4YuDlLTnc6_ut9KbGjyap2U9vfZyWh86EFL6fCM4)  

       "What you allege as factually relevant re: the 2000 FL election is neither factual nor relevant.   I’m not sure why you even mention Ross Perot, but yeah, he polled 18.9% of the popular vote (in 1992!) Even that, yielded him exactly zero electoral votes! (I know you think there’s a point in there somewhere, but damned if I can find it. That was in 1992. in 1996 he did worse (8%  of popular vote), again producing no electoral votes. Perot was also an anomaly in that his voters came from both parties.

        But, back to your erroneous and grossly under-informed Florida 2000 claim: It is almost a certainty that no Nader voters who voted Green would have chosen Bush over Gore. No sane individual would claim otherwise. It is reasonable to assert that they would have voted Gore (actually "green" anyway) vice Bush. The "chad' dispute only arose because of the recount. If there had been no recount, we wouldn't even know what the f**k a "chad" was. Ralph Nader received 97,421 votes! In the absence of a Nader on the ticket, at least half, and more likely all, of those voters would have cast votes for Al Gore, vice Bush.  Bush would have lost Florida by over 96,000 votes! There would have been no recount, Gore would have been President and, almost certainly, no Iraq War (maybe even no 9/11 disaster). Yes, a third-party candidate's supporters made that much difference. If all the Florida Green voters had voted Gore in 2000, the world would be different. I know you don't like it, but THAT is the inconvenient truth.

       One can also consider that, in 2016,  Libertarians polled significantly better than Greens but it’s difficult, if not impossible, to even make an educated guess how Libertarian voters would have voted if only the two major party candidates were on the ballot. I do feel that the one valid assumption is that if Green voters had not had a candidate, they would have voted Clinton.

       As to the rest of it:  All the bullshit that went on inside major parties is irrelevant come election day, Superdelegates, convention infighting, etc., just don't matter once candidates are chosen.  On election day there were two candidates on ballots nationwide who had a chance of winning - Clinton and Trump. Third party voters took votes from whichever party they most closely identified with, as they always have. In this case, Stein especially, almost all were closer to the Democratic platform and point of view. I’d bet a year’s beer money than Stein cost Trump not a single vote.

        In the 2016 election, considering just the Green party (there were as many as seven candidates in some states,) if only the Green votes had gone to Clinton in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, she would have won the presidency by an electoral vote of 278-260 (it’s possible that the same might have happened in several other states, but after doing the math in these three I had enough data).

        All this is simple mathematical reality, and the point, if one is to be taken, is this: As long as the two major parties in America control state legislatures (which is where essentially all election law is made) there will almost assuredly never be a foothold for a viable third party. Most states make it far easier for the two majors to control who gets on the ballot and to preserve the two major party system. Those with other points of view would fare far better by concentrating on winning state and local races. A “Senator Stein” or “Governor Stein” would have been far more effective these past four years than “fourth place finisher Stein.” (she lost to the Libertarian, too.) As of October 2016, one hundred and forty three  officeholders in the United States were affiliated with the Green Party, the majority of them in California, several in Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with five or fewer in ten other states, however no Green party nominee has ever been elected to a federal office.

        Third party supporters can, sometimes,  be effective in generating positive change by state and local efforts at those levels, but until state legislatures act against their own self-interest (don’t hold your breath!) to allow third party candidates the same exposure and ease of ballot access which Democrats and Republicans enjoy, the federal election process will continue to be controlled by two major parties. Perhaps it isn’t what one might want, but it is what it is.

       On the other side of the issue, however, is the argument that can be made, and verified globally, that multi-party (three or more parties) governments are generally less stable and successful and more subject to wild stress, as supports and coalitions wane and grow randomly from issue to issue. Washington warned against the “divisiveness of Party” in his farewell address yet, just 4 years later, during the campaign of 1800,  Jefferson and Adams were (figuratively) at each other’s throats. In hindsight and historically no one would argue that either was immoral or of unsound character, yet supporters of each made such claims and others even more outre at the time. Dirty politics isn’t new, sadly. For the foreseeable future in America, two major parties will control the Federal Government. It seems to me far better and, most of all, pragmatic to attempt to do the right thing and effect positive change from inside the one which most closely aligns with your values. But that’s just me, almost 77 years old, and an active observer of US politics, good and bad, through thirteen presidencies and counting. Yet, I guess I need to be “schooled” because I still, according to some, have no idea of where I speak. Wait! Maybe it’s not me who’s confused!