The NPR Politics Podcast - The Enduring Appeal Of Third Party Presidential Bids

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

The group No Labels has raised tens of millions of dollars as it mulls running a third party "unity" candidate in the 2024 presidential election — the latest in a long line of notable third party bids in American presidential politics.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Susan Davis, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Brittany from Washington, D.C. I'm turning 40 this week and celebrating by riding 500 miles across Iowa on the Register's Great Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI. This podcast was recorded at 12.44 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, July 24th of 2023. Things may change by the time you hear it, but I will officially be covered by the Age Discrimination and Employment Act. All right, here's the show. Congrats on that rag-by ride. I think rag-by sounds like a particular form of punishment to me. I saw Tamara. So Tamara's also doing that ride, and she sent a picture of herself. It was like day one done. Yeah, this time of the year, we should really do the timestamp in Midwestern time.

Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And today on the show, the history and efficacy of third party campaigns. Most Americans are not enthused about the idea of a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, the current GOP frontrunner. But right now, it seems like a rematch is the most likely outcome. And supposedly, in a good faith effort to offer an alternative, a number of third party efforts have cropped up. And Ron, because these third party efforts have a long history in modern American politics. I wanted you to kind of give us a history crash course here. Maybe you can start with Ross Perot in the 1990s. Yeah, let's just

talk about Perot in 1992. During the spring of that year, he was actually ahead in the national polls of both incumbent President George H.W. Bush and the upstart Democratic challenger who was about to be nominated, a guy named Bill Clinton. And Perot was actually running ahead of both of them and he was putting up $60 million of his own money so he could get on the ballot in all 50 states and buy a lot of television time to talk about the issues he cared about. And there was enough of an appetite for a third-party candidate then to briefly at least put him out in front of the pack. Now, his campaign later more or less broke down and he pulled out and then he got back in and he wound up with 19%

of the vote, very close to what some polling says a third party candidate might expect to get in 2024. Did it throw the election to Bill Clinton? Some people on the Republican side certainly felt that it did. And we have not had anyone who was quite that big a third party threat since. But we have seen a big increase in one election, 2016, in the percentage of people who chose a candidate other than the Republican or the Democrat. That was in 2016. And they got cumulatively 5.7 percent. That was triple what they had gotten other candidates other than the major parties in 2012 or what they got in 2020. So another election like that, well, very hard to predict. So it sounds like the institutional structure doesn't necessarily lend itself that a third party candidate can easily become president. But you're describing that they can nonetheless shape the outcomes of these campaigns. When you consider how close it was in 2016 in, say, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Jill Stein's vote in those three states would have easily been enough. It had gone, had it gone,

and we all could know it's a hypothetical, but had it gone to Hillary Clinton, she would have won those three states and with those three states, the Electoral College and the presidency. So, yes, it can put a thumb on the scale. I do think that the idea of third party candidates and how they can affect the ballot has at this point in American politics actually does factor into the way voters think about their vote because of Ross Perot, because of Ralph Nader in 2000, because of Jill Stein in 2016. Even in 2020, I remember we were reporting on how minimal interest there was in third parties because of the 2016 effect and Jill Stein effect. I think that voters are very aware that these candidacies, while almost certainly no third party candidate will be elected president in 2024, that a vote for them can have a significant

effect. And I think in the narrow subset of states that will decide the next president, I don't think that the average American voter doesn't understand the severity or the potential severity of voting for a third party in this particular political climate, and also at a moment of hyperpolarization. I think people see a very stark difference between the two parties. And sure, a third party vote can be a protest vote to either party or wanting to sort of break the duopoly of American politics. But I don't think the concept is something that voters don't understand the consequence of anymore. So this time, we're seeing an organized effort from a group called No Labels. Ron, I mean, they are drawing on a long history of

these purported unity efforts. You highlighted one in a recent story from a group called Americans Elect. Well, Americans Elect is a kind of precursor to the current No Labels. It was organized around the same time as No Labels, which has actually been around from 2010. And they had the explicit purpose of trying to heal this great partisan divide and possibly get outside the duopoly. This was a noble effort in a lot of people's minds. It was started by a guy who had a lot of money. He was a Wall Street billionaire and also an internationally known peace activist named Peter Ackerman. He and a group of friends, some of whom were well-identified, others were not, put up a great deal of money for that particular cycle and got on most of the ballots around the country.

And their idea was that for the 2012 presidential cycle, that's when Obama was seeking re-election, they would let the overall electorate participate in actually choosing the people who would be the candidates online. So if you were a registered voter and you had an online presence, you could get involved in the nominating process. And they set up an online primary that was supposed to happen in May. And all you had to do was get 5,000 clicks from each of 10 states. And you could be one of the guys or one of the women in that contest.

But my understanding is, Ron, that this effort ultimately failed. Well, they didn't get anybody who could meet that criteria. And it seemed quite reasonable at the time and perhaps with much greater participation in social media today than in that particular era. It was around, but it wasn't nearly as ubiquitous and normative for people to be online all the time. Possibly something more like that could be successful, but it was not at the time. So the thing was basically a flop. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about the most recent third party effort, this group called No Labels. And we're back. And let's talk now about No Labels, because I'm very curious as to what's happening now, Sue, compared to the history of this group. I remember it during the 2016

election. I went up to New Hampshire and I went to this No Labels problem-solver convention, and a bunch of different mainstream presidential candidates were giving speeches at that convention. Yeah, I mean, No Labels has been sort of a modern group. I think we would consider them a good government group in that they're nonpartisan, they don't advocate for one party or the other, and their stated mission is sort of to bring the country together in this viewpoint that most Americans exist somewhere in the middle outside of the far partisan left or the far partisan right. And as an advocacy group, it has had some successes. They helped sort of create the Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress in the House, which is a group

of centrist moderates who, you know, both are committed to working together in the substance of policy ideas, but also in tone. A lot of the No Labels sort of vibe is that politics needs to be more civil in the way we talk to and about each other. And these members have worked together pretty well. But in its current form, No Labels is now trying to affect the 2024 presidential election. And we should be clear, they are not 100% committed to getting in. They are saying that they might not actually try to do this if certain situations are met, but they're moving forward like they're trying to get a no labels candidate on the ballot. And that is actually provoking a ton of anger, not just among some of these problem solver members on Capitol Hill, but among former Democratic lawmakers,

Democratic activists. I mean, it is really creating a lot of intra-party tension, at least within one party now. And why is that exactly? I think a lot of Democrats, one, are suspect that their motives are as pure as they say they are. For instance, the way that No Labels gets money from donors is private. They don't have to disclose it. And I think it's a bit of a contrast to say you're a good government group above political reproach, but we're not going to tell you who's funding this effort. So that alone has chafed a lot of Democrats. Other Democrats, a separate group, Third Way, which is another centrist think tank in D.C., one of the heads there is a guy named Matt Bennett, formerly an Al Gore campaign staffer, so he's familiar with what third parties can do on a ballot, has been one of the sort of

counter-programmers against no labels. He's been very public criticizing them, saying like, look, all this group is going to do, all this group risks doing is costing Joe Biden the election. And I think most Democrats would say the bigger thing at stake in 2024 is defeating Donald Trump if Donald Trump is ultimately the nominee. So any effort that could even potentially mess with Joe Biden, especially if the call is coming from inside the House, is going to create a lot of anger within both, you know, the member ranks, the voter ranks and the activist ranks of the party. And you don't see the same, I guess, consternation on the Republican side, though, Rod. You don't. And part of the reason for that is the uncomfortable, awkward position that all the Republicans are in, including the candidates for president,

in that they don't want to be overly critical of Donald Trump because they want his voters. And so even though they might be unhappy about something of this nature, to say, we don't want no labels because we're afraid it's going to throw the election to Donald Trump is unimaginable for a good Republican in this moment. So right now, they're letting the Democrats take care of the crossfire and the criticism and make it look like it's an internecine fight among Democrats over this group. And later on down the road, let's say, for example, if for some reason or another, Donald Trump was not going to be the nominee, they might feel differently about it. You know, it's interesting because No Labels is, they've said they've raised about $70 million

for this effort, which is not nothing, but in the orbit of presidential politics isn't ultimately all that much money. Part of that money will fund trying to get on ballots if they take those steps in as many states as possible. But another point that I've heard Democrats point to is that the case that they are making for themselves is a bit fantastical. You know, they are saying that in the best case scenario where a no labels candidate could appeal to this 50, 60, 70 percent of voters that say they don't want Biden or Trump to be their candidate. You know, their argument is that they could win with the plurality of the popular vote and as many as 286 electoral votes. Now, I think that that is a pretty aggressive, overwhelming case to make for any third party effort anywhere ever, based on what we know about how voters think, how voters operate, the idea that a third party candidate could sweep

states like Texas and New York and Pennsylvania and Washington. And also, who is this mythical third party candidate, right? I mean, I hear that voters are consistently saying that they don't love Biden or Trump and that in theory they would be open to an alternative. But then, like, once that alternative is right in front of their faces, that's a totally different equation. And is that alternative being selected by the, like, few men who control the $70 million pot of money? Like, it's not a real democratic process

of choosing the alternative. Candidates matter. That is the key word, open. When you ask no labels about the willingness of an American voter to choose somebody who's not a Republican or a Democrat, they point to a poll, and there are many of them, that show that something around half the people in the country or more than half of the people in the country are willing to consider it. They are, quote, open to the idea of a third party. We just do not elect people who are a blank slate. We don't elect people who are an empty set. You have to have someone who can take the slings and arrows like all the other candidates, stand in there and talk about what that candidate actually believes, which is something, well, we don't know too much about exactly what no labels would do on the big issues of our time.

But we do know the type of candidates that no labels has tended to support. And just recently, and Ron, you had this in your story, they held an event, a town hall style event in New Hampshire. And two of the politicians that were there were Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, a very well-known moderate, and maybe the whole country doesn't know him, but if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably pretty familiar with Manchin, and John Huntsman, a former Republican governor who served, I believe, both under the Trump administration and the Obama administration in diplomatic roles. People that are known for centrist moderate views and also sort of centrist moderate personalities. They're not prone to being hyper-partisan. But then,

you know, you put faces on it. Can Joe Manchin defeat Joe Biden and Donald Trump at a general election? That's a pretty big bet. That's a pretty big bet. You know, the thing is, these are individuals who have, in one sense or another, offered themselves to their parties. John Huntsman ran for president. Joe Manchin has certainly flirted with talk of doing so. And they both know there's no lane for them to win the nomination in their own party. So having no lanes, they are interested in some sort of an alternative. And there may be other people like them. But, you know, it sounds better to call a party no labels than to call it no lanes.

And so it's worth noting that no labels isn't the only possible alternative third party effort out there. No, there are potentially others. A former professor and progressive activist, Cornel West, is looking at running as the Green Party candidate. And I would note, ironically, that one of the people advising his campaign is Jill Stein. We will leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. And thank you all, as always,

for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.