Friday brought crushing news for allegedly conservative Democrats hiding out in the hills of West Virginia. This paltry demographic may, at this stage, include only one person: Senator Joe Manchin. Manchin announced that he will not be running for president in 2024, as the “No Labels” candidate or in any way, shape, or form. Since even the people of West Virginia have been flagging their enthusiasm for the last of the Blue Dog Democrats, this is no great loss. Still, it does raise the question: in this year in which the large majority of Americans express disgust with the presumptive presidential candidates of the two major parties, why couldn't a third party or independent candidate break through and win it all?
One is tempted to answer: because it's never been done, and indeed, the Democratic and Republican parties have maintained a stranglehold on Congress and the presidency since the 1850s. This is puzzling because few democracies, no matter how they are structured, have maintained stable two-party systems for so long. And yet, in America, the two parties enjoy so many advantages in terms of perceived legitimacy, preferential access to the ballot, media exposure, fundraising, and the like that it often seems that the task of building a new party that could compete at the highest level is a fool's errand.
On the other hand, the fact that something is unprecedented does not mean that it is impossible. Few imagined that an actor could become president before Ronald Reagan made it happen in 1980 or that a brash real estate baron turned game show host could win the highest office in the land, but Trump proved definitively that it could be done in 2016.
In point of fact, we live in a time when robust levels of public cynicism (and poor knowledge of history and current events) make the violation and overturning of norms fairly easy. Witness the fact that impeachments at the federal level, which used to be extremely rare, are now almost yearly events and are expected political maneuvers. Likewise, while it was once virtually inconceivable that a former president would face criminal charges, now President Trump is wrestling with 91 felony charges all at once! It would seem that, nowadays, when we decide to break with convention, we go all out.
Be this as it may, the biggest argument against a third party or independent run for the presidency has always been: why would anyone vote for such a candidate when they would have no chance of winning? Why “throw away” your vote? That is to say, Americans perceive third-party and independent bids as futile, and they do not enjoy voting for candidates destined to lose – except, apparently, when voting for Democrats in a red state or Republicans in a blue one, which they do all the time!
When one considers that a single voter casting a single vote has, statistically speaking, essentially zero leverage over the selection of the next president, the popular concern with a candidate's viability makes little rational sense. Still, it is an important psychological factor that any ambitious third-party or independent candidate would have to overcome. Either he/she would need to convince the American people that voting for a “protest” candidate – that is, a loser – was a respectable and principled thing to do, or he/she would need to convince voters that this time, unlike every other time, the third party or independent candidate could win the big prize. Changing such ingrained perceptions about American politics would be no easy task.
If we look at the polls, we see that, currently, when Americans are prompted to choose between Biden, Trump, Kennedy, Stein, and West – the declared candidates for president – they give, on average, only 13% of their support to Kennedy, and 2% each to Stein and West. Those are historically high numbers when one considers the long-standing dominance of the two major parties, but they are nowhere close to winning numbers. Hence, there is, as yet, little statistical evidence to support the idea that a partisan sea change is upon us. The next president is likely to be neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
Probably the biggest hurdle that a third party or independent candidate faces is the fact that absent a political vacuum that needs filling, new political constellations are speculative, at best. To put it another way, unless one of the two major parties collapses, it is hard to see why a new party or a new political movement would, could, or should arise to take its place or assume an important and permanent role in American politics.
We know that in 2020, Joe Biden and Donald Trump received, respectively, the most and the second most votes that any presidential candidate in U.S. history has ever gotten – and that in 2020, we notched the best turnout rate since at least 1960. While the public does not seem to hold either Biden or Trump in especially high regard, the ability of their respective party apparatuses to turn out massive numbers of voters on their behalf is not in doubt – and, in fact, seems to be improving with every comparable election cycle. The Democratic and Republican parties, in other words, are alive and well – and can afford to sneer, for now, at those candidates, parties, and movements that dare to challenge their dominion.
And so we confront the essential, inexplicable contradiction that looms over our country's political life: never have the parties themselves, the presidential candidates who they select, and the key institutions of our constitutional system in general been less popular and esteemed by the voters – but, at the same time, never have those same voters been more willing to turn out to vote in huge numbers for the major parties and their candidates, and to write checks and to otherwise signal their loyalty and devotion to these immensely flawed and in many ways outmoded organizations.
If, as they say, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” then what level of madness is America's current political modus operandi: we do the same thing over and over again, expecting bad results, but hoping that, if we keep at it, we'll at least avoid something even worse. You would think that this strange species of political fatalism might be conquered by the right kind of third party or independent candidate, right? No, apparently not. Or maybe yes. But probably not.
All we can say for sure is that Joe Manchin will not be the man to save us from ourselves.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.