With six months to go until the election, it is too early to tell whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate, will prove to be more than just a spoilsport.
He starts with around 10 percent of the vote and is one of the most famous names in American politics. It is enough to at least think about whether he will be one of the third candidates who leaves a lasting mark.
Even without winning the presidency, third-party candidates have often played important and even healthy roles in American politics.
They can raise new issues, represent marginal constituencies, and sometimes even win big votes: Since the rise of the two-party system, six third-party candidates have either won states or reached double-digits in the statewide vote. They can be much more than just spoilers.
The survey shows that many prerequisites for a successful third party candidacy could be present. Voters don’t like both candidates. They have been dissatisfied with the state of the country for 20 years, but much of the election campaign was not focused on solutions to the usual, long-standing problems. Suffice it to wonder whether this may be the first time since 1992 that a third-party candidate has gained meaningful traction.
To understand the Kennedy campaign, it’s worth looking at how similar third-party offerings have garnered support or failed to make a splash in the past. For convenience, I have divided the third-party candidacies into three groups that Mr. Kennedy plausibly reflects. The groups are not mutually exclusive – historically, many candidates exhibit characteristics of multiple categories, and this is also true of Mr. Kennedy. The taxonomy also mostly applies to temporary third-party bids like Mr. Kennedy’s, not to the campaigns of established smaller parties (Greens, Libertarians, Constitution, etc.). The categories could help understand what it would take for Mr. Kennedy to be more than just a spoilsport in this election.
The movement candidates
Every now and then, new problems and issues come to the forefront of American politics—and the major parties are simply unable to address them. In these cases, the new topics do not fit exactly with the existing political orientation. In fact, they might be so orthogonal to the usual political divide that it would be deeply painful and divisive for any party to attempt to address them. An issue might even risk breaking up a major party, as was the future of slavery in the 1850s (the Whigs no longer exist).
When important issues are not addressed, a third party candidate often comes in to bring them to the forefront. Historically, these third parties have been rather fleeting. Their problems are disappearing, either because the situation improves or because the major parties ultimately do enough to meet their demands. (The famous exception is the period before the Civil War.) But until it fades, these movements seem like a large third party. They’re usually for something, something big, that has significant support, be it free silver or deficit reduction.
Very special circumstances are required for such a third-party movement to emerge – usually when no party can meet the movement’s demands. This was routinely the case from the end of Reconstruction through the Great Depression, as the two-party system was still shaped by the legacy of the Civil War and slavery rather than the immense challenges presented by industrialization. With the exception of the Progressive Era, the two parties have typically been led by relatively conservative wings, providing the opportunity for frequent progressive, populist, and socialist candidacies aimed at breaking corporate power and protecting workers and farmers. These campaigns often attracted significant support until the emergence of the New Deal style of modern liberalism, which, combined with postwar wealth, primarily satisfied the issues and constituencies of the time.
These types of progressive outsider candidates have become rarer since the rise of a liberal Democratic Party. Instead, third-party movements have recently emerged from the populist right, which was alienated by the newly liberal Democratic Party but has never had a comfortable home in the classically liberal, elitist Republican establishment. As a result, there were opportunities for nationalist, conservative populists, from George Wallace to Ross Perot, who appealed to Democrats and Republicans alike. There are echoes of these campaigns in Donald J. Trump, who could ultimately represent the final integration of their demands into a newly created, populist Republican Party.
Mr. Kennedy doesn’t fit this particular mold, but can he lead another third-party movement? On paper, there are plausible possibilities. Neither party has credibility when it comes to spending and debt, which can lead to inflation and high interest rates. Neither party focuses on the various crises of isolation, obesity, homelessness, addiction and mental illness, which do not fit the usual left-right divide and are perhaps as important as any material challenge in American life.
Since the election campaign has just begun, it seems premature to declare that Mr. Kennedy cannot become the movement’s candidate. He’s already talking about some of these issues, and this is not an exhaustive list of plausible possibilities for a vigorous third-party bid – think of other issues like the cost of childcare, education and housing.
But Mr. Kennedy is not that candidate today. His arguments do not put any visible issue-related pressure on the major parties. Few ask Democrats or Republicans whether they support anything Mr. Kennedy advocates because his policy agenda and message are not particularly focused. His anti-corporatism is mostly expressed in generalities. And despite the potential for a broader message, he is best known for his idiosyncratic views on vaccines – he is a long-time critic and skeptic – and environmental protection, which so far seem to elicit more shudder than fear from the establishment.
The faction dissidents
There is another group of candidates whose demands largely coincide with the existing two-party system, but who nevertheless turn away: the faction objectors.
These candidates are supported by a disaffected faction of a major party. Often it is because the large party has done something that the group does not like. Perhaps the party has drifted too far to the center. Maybe it’s become too extreme. Either way, dissatisfaction with one party rebels and tends to get most of its support from that party. There are potential spoilers written all over it.
These candidates have risen to prominence in the age of ideological left-right party politics. There is Henry Wallace, who ran as a progressive against Harry Truman’s hostility to the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. There are Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, the white supremacist Southerners who turned away from the Democrats because they supported civil rights. Then there was John Anderson, a liberal Republican who in 1980 said his party had gone too far to the right. Even more recently, Ralph Nader could count in 2000 (although his Green Party is an established minor party), as did Evan McMullin, the independent candidate who ran for president in 2016 as a more or less traditional Reagan conservative and won in Utah 21, won 5 percent of the vote.
Faction candidates typically don’t do particularly well, and they get worse over time. The parties have gradually become more ideologically consistent, leaving fewer options for those who think differently. And with the increasing polarization of politics, the risk of “wasting” your own vote and allowing the other party to win has also increased.
Is Mr. Kennedy a factional refusenik? At first glance he looks like one. But even though he was a Democrat at the start of the campaign, he does not represent a dissenting faction of Democrats deeply upset with President Biden or the party’s majority. For example, he does not criticize Mr. Biden on Gaza; In fact, he has taken a pro-Israel stance. His main criticism of the Democrats is not that they are too centrist. His most prominent views on vaccines are not really tied to criticism of Mr. Biden and the Democrats. This is not another Ralph Nader.
The protest candidates
Almost by definition, almost every minor party candidate benefits from protest voters – people who vote for a third party candidate primarily because they dislike major party candidates and mainstream politics.
But more recently there have been relatively prominent third-party candidates who appear to have received support almost exclusively from protest voters, and not because voters wanted to send a message on these issues.
This is a relatively new phenomenon. Believe it or not, the 2016 presidential election was the first in the election cycle in which both candidates were viewed negatively by the majority of voters. Consequently, 2016 Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson may be the first notable candidate to receive a largely blank protest vote. He won 3.3 percent of the vote, and there is little evidence that most of those voters were trying to show their support for libertarians or his message. In contrast, voters who disliked both candidates but chose Jill Stein or Evan McMullin were more vocal in their ideological criticism of their usual party’s candidate.
Of all the previous categories, Mr. Kennedy fits best into this one. As the campaign begins, he is a brand candidate who is not Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. If that’s all Mr. Kennedy has to offer, his support is likely to steadily decline as the campaign progresses. (Mr Johnson also had support of almost 10 percent in the summer of 2016.)
What makes Mr. Kennedy stand out is one of the most famous names in politics. His broad anti-corporation, anti-bureaucracy and anti-system appeal could also appeal to voters who tend to dislike both parties and candidates.
Historically, there is little reason to believe that a candidate like this is anything more than a potential spoilsport. But perhaps the growing number of voters dissatisfied with American politics today creates a better chance for such a candidate to succeed. Such a candidate from a small party could be new, but may be with us for a long time. Maybe we haven’t seen the strongest of them yet.
Source link
2024-05-04 09:05:13
www.nytimes.com
