Why no third-party alternative (again) in 2024?

It’s no secret that most U.S. voters are dissatisfied with the Biden-Trump major party choice in the 2024 presidential election. And it’s no secret that Americans wish the political system provided them with more choices than just the Democrat-Republican duopoly. Last fall, a Gallup Poll reported that 63 percent of U.S. adults said a third party was needed because the major parties do such a “poor job of representing the American people.” While this was the highest level of support for a third party that Gallup found in the 20 years it has conducted the survey, support for a third party has remained at roughly that level since 2013.

Before 2013, the Gallup data showed support for a third party dropping and an increase in the opinion that the major parties “do an adequate job” of representing the American people in even-numbered presidential election years. But that’s changed since 2012, even while the American electorate’s behavior—rallying to the two major parties in every election year—continues to mirror the older pattern.

Only in 2016, when the electorate faced the wretched choice of Hillary Clinton vs. Trump, did votes for parties other than the Democrats and Republicans tick upward. About 5 percent of those who voted in the presidential election that year chose third parties, like the Libertarians or the Greens, over Clinton or Trump.

Liberals continue to blame the Green Party’s Jill Stein for costing Clinton wins in key swing states in 2016, even though Clinton was a terrible candidate who ran a terrible campaign. It’s a bit rich for Democratic operatives to accuse Stein of throwing the “turning point” state of Wisconsin to Trump when Clinton didn’t campaign there during the general election. One could also make the case that Libertarian Gary Johnson pulled enough votes from Trump to give Clinton squeaker wins in states like Colorado, New Hampshire, Maine and New Mexico.

All these calculations flow from the absurdity of choosing a president based on state-by-state votes from an “electoral college” that over-represents sparsely populated conservative states. Clinton won almost 3 million more votes nationally than Trump did in 2016. Yet she lost the election because about 78,000 votes across three states delivered them to Trump.

Democrats are determined not to repeat the 2016 experience in 2024. But instead of focusing on giving the electorate something to vote for, they are fearmongering about Trump, and mounting a multi-million-dollar campaign to disqualify third-party challenges. The Democrats have assembled an “army of lawyers” who will seek to throw legal roadblocks in the way of third-party candidates challenging Biden.

“The legal offensive, led by Dana Remus, who until 2022 served as President Biden’s White House counsel, and Robert Lenhard, an outside lawyer for the party, will be aided by a communications team dedicated to countering candidates who Democrats fear could play spoiler to Mr. Biden. It amounts to a kind of legal Whac-a-Mole, a state-by-state counterinsurgency plan ahead of an election that could hinge on just a few thousand votes in swing states,” the New York Times reported March 20.

This campaign claimed its first major victory in early April, when the No Labels political action committee announced that it would not mount a presidential campaign in 2024. This wasn’t for lack of trying. But No Labels—the brainchild of DC lobbyists who harbor a fantasy that U.S. voters are yearning for a “moderate” alternative to the “extreme” corporate parties—couldn’t find a mainstream pol in the mold of the late (and not lamented) Sen. Joseph Lieberman who would agree to head its ticket.

The Democrats are now training their sights on the independent run of environmental lawyer and anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) Despite Kennedy’s membership in the famous Democratic Party Kennedy clan and his history of working on environmental issues, he is mostly known today as a leading purveyor of vaccine misinformation whose profile received a boost during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democrats fear that he can play on his name and raise enough money to pose a challenge to Biden at the state level.

Some polling last year suggested that Kennedy could draw double-digit support—even reach the levels that crackpot billionaire Ross Perot reached in 1992. [Perot drew about 19 percent of the national vote in the election against incumbent President George H.W. Bush and challenger Bill Clinton.] Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that RFK Jr. will end up with support higher than 2-3 percent overall. And his campaign is only on six states’ ballots as of this writing. He earlier ran in the Democratic primary but dropped out after failing to gain traction.

Still, Democrats are taking no chances. They have enlisted about every member of Kennedy’s family to repudiate him, and they are currently running a scorched-earth media campaign against him. The Democrat-aligned liberal lobby MoveOn.org even hired a staff member whose job description includes “to help inoculate [get the pun? – LS] progressive and other non-MAGA constituencies” against RFK Jr.’s appeal. A novice candidate, RFK Jr. has provided Democratic Party opposition researchers a treasure trove of statements and media appearances that run the gamut from weird conspiracy theories to antisemitic and racist rants. And anyone thinking that he is an alternative to Biden on Israel and Palestine is mistaken.

For socialists committed to a left-wing alternative to the two corporate parties, No Labels, RFK Jr. and the Libertarians offer nothing.

But two other plausible campaigns—the Green Party run of Dr. Jill Stein and the independent campaign of activist professor Dr. Cornel West—offer vehicles to register a protest to the two-party status quo. The question will be about how viable as national campaigns these will become. To understand the Greens and West, and the relationship between them, ecosocialist and 2020 Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins’s contribution (here) is well worth reading.

As Hawkins points out, the Greens won a little under half a million votes in both the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections. But their total ballooned to about 1.4 million in the Clinton-Trump 2016 contest, and, as noted above, scored significant totals in swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan. The Greens currently are on the ballot in 20 states, while West has yet to qualify anywhere.

A joint Stein-West ticket is a possibility, Hawkins notes. A Stein-West ticket supporting an end the war in Gaza and solidarity with Palestinians, health care for all, reproductive rights and a “just transition” from a militarized, fossil fuel economy would offer a left alternative to millions fed up with the Biden/Trump status quo.

But if such a ticket does present a threat to Biden, the Democrats’ firepower currently directed at RFK Jr., will be redirected to the Greens and West. A Green-supported campaign will also face huge pressure from inside the broad left to stand down in the face of the Trump threat—or to only focus on states like California or Utah, where the Democrats’ wins or losses won’t be close.

As November draws closer, support for third parties will decline. But whether the Democrats succeed in snuffing out any alternative to a Biden-led status quo depends on political independence from the capitalist parties and building movements in workplaces and communities to challenge that status quo in practice.