” . . . . If you want to run for president and it doesn’t look as if your party is going to nominate you, you have two real choices. You can do what Phillips is doing: keep competing in the primaries and hope voters will embrace your message. Or you can get yourself on the ballot in November as a third-party candidate.
We’ve already got several people taking that last option. So far, fortunately, they don’t exactly look like major contenders. It’s everyone from the vaccine vigilante Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Chase Oliver, a candidate for the Libertarian line who won about 2 percent of the votes in the 2022 Senate race in Georgia.” . . . .
Gail, thank you for this magnificent column. My favorite part was: “But the third-party threat is always worrisome when it comes to messing things up, especially when elections are close. We’re still haunted by the saga of 2000, when Al Gore was pitted against George W. Bush. Ralph Nader made one of those principled third-party runs. Remember? Everything came down to Florida, which Bush won by 537 votes while Nader got nearly 100,000 — most of which would undoubtedly have gone to Gore otherwise. Nader is now nearly 90 and he’s largely dismissed the idea of third-party challenges in 2024, and supports Biden over Donald Trump. Excellent choice. But I still haven’t forgiven him.” Nor have I. And thank you for reminding us all how damaging third party candidates are in any close election.
David is an author, who blogs at InconvenientNews.net