“third-party candidates could be on track for unusually consequential performances” in 2024

“The data suggest third-party candidates have more votes available to them than at any time since the mid-1990s.”

“What’s clear is that this is all looking potentially significant.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/27/presidential-election-third-parties/

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The message of the above article is almost identical to that of the editorial in the forthcoming Green Horizon Magazine (which should be arriving in mailboxes in a couple of weeks):

Another chance to break the grip of the duopoly

1992

The Democratic Party candidate, Bill Clinton, was not well-known. The Republican Party candidate, George Bush (the incumbent) was not well-liked. In the wake of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts federal deficits were soaring. As globalization gained steam, jobs were increasingly being off-shored to lower-wage countries. The populace was discontented and the electorate was willing to consider a systemic outsider named Ross Perot.

Perot said he knew how to rein in the deficit. He was a straight-talking Texan who ran as an independent and was able to appeal across party lines. He was actually leading in the polls during most of May and June of that year. If he had made it a three-way race and then went on to found the Reform Party from a position of gravitas, we might now look back on 1992 as the year when the American political system started to accommodate “more voices and more choices.” But Ross Perot had a temperamental personality and very little in the way of political savvy. He failed to assemble an effective campaign team and he wavered in his commitment to the race. He wound up with less than 20% of the vote in November.

Perot was a loner rather than a party builder. His Reform Party never settled on an ideology or a vision. There’s a tendency for third party initiatives to fade into obscurity after about ten years of wheel-spinning. That was the case with Barry Commoner’s Citizens Party, Tony Mazzocchi’s Labor Party, Rocky Anderson’s Justice Party, and Ross Perot’s Reform Party.

2000

The Ralph Nader campaign had notable momentum during the late summer and fall. Nader was holding “super-rallies” that were filling the largest municipal arenas across the country. And he was starting to see the potential to build the Green Party into a real force. Those who worked closely with Ralph during the thrilling crescendo of that campaign (I was privileged to) were aware of how he was making plans to keep barnstorming after Election Day in order to galvanize the growth of state party chapters and Campus Greens locals. But the momentum withered after the December Debacle in the state of Florida (where governor Jeb Bush managed to “adjust” the vote total in favor of his presidential candidate brother, George). Vilification was heaped upon Nader for “spoiling” Al Gore’s ascendancy.

After that Ralph got preoccupied with deflecting arrows. Some Greens became reticent about having such an impact and pulled back from the relationship. So when the anticipated breakthrough of 2000 failed to materialize and the Demonization by Democrats accelerated, the Green Party found itself again consigned to the margins. Nader received about 3% of the vote in 2000, but the Green presidential candidate in 2004 barely got 0.1%.

Yet the Green Party did not disappear, as so many others have done since the only-two-significant-choices system became ingrained 150 years ago. Its endurance under adversity has been notable. It can be attributed to the fact that the Greens offer a distinctive and resonant alternative to all the old ideologies. Such is evident in the growth of the Green politics movement worldwide. It indicates that the Green Party is here to stay.

2024

A Gallup poll released in October 2023 showed that 63% of US adults agreed that “the Republican and Democratic parties do such a poor job of representing the American people” that the appearance of alternative parties on the ballot would be welcome. That 63% was the highest figure since Gallup first started asking the question twenty years ago. A number of relatively high-profile alternative campaigns have emerged to offer the clearly desired additional choices. That includes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West running as independents and a centrist group called “No Labels” — in addition to the persisting minor parties, the Libertarians and the Greens.

One could imagine a scenario where Kennedy and West, by critiquing the duopolistic system, help move the electorate toward thinking outside the box, and then the “build something enduring” message of the Green Party is able to take on a special resonance. Moreover, there has been a consistent background current of advocacy in favor of the idea that the Greens, uniquely, could start to serve as the umbrella electoral vehicle for the leftist social change movement in general.

In a recent interview Jill Stein said: “The American people have been hungry for options … so get ready. What we’re seeing is a voter rebellion. It’s been a long time coming.” If any of the alternative candidates is able to poll high enough to force their inclusion in the televised debates next fall, 2024 may be remembered as the breakthrough year that opened the door toward eventual full multi-party democracy for the long-suffering American electorate.