I'm writing this piece mostly because I've been more engaged in politics than the typical American for the past 40 years, and so there are some things which are obvious to me which may not be so obvious to those new to the process. Or at least, these are things which a decent chunk of people on the liberal end of the political spectrum fail to appreciate. Let's start with:
1. If the winner of the next election isn't a Republican, it will be a Democrat.
This seems obvious. Yet there's a lot of chatter on the left about, for example, Bernie Sanders running as a third-party candidate in 2020. It's difficult to understand what anyone thinks this will accomplish, apart from making it easier for the Republicans to win re-election.
In the past 50 years, third-party candidates for president have drawn more than 5% of the popular vote only three times. H. Ross Perot won 18.91% of the popular vote in 1992, which won him 0 electoral votes. In 1980, John Anderson won 6.61% of the popular vote, which also resulted in 0 electoral votes. And all the way back in 1968, George Wallace actually won 46 electoral votes while polling at 13.53% of the popular vote.
Put another way, none of these three candidates came within miles of winning the election; two of them won as many electoral votes as I did in each of those years. And John Anderson, the candidate most similar to Sanders, actually did the worst.
And these were the most successful third-party candidates who ran in the last 50 years. As for 2016, the third-party candidate whose positions most closely align with Sanders' views was Jill Stein of the Green party (which is why the Green party is the one most often mentioned as the vehicle for a Sanders run). And she wasn't even the most successful third-party candidate this cycle. That title belongs to Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party, who won more than three times as many votes as Stein, and was still soundly defeated.
So, if you plan to support a third-party candidate in 2020, then defeating the Republicans isn't really your top priority. And if you call yourself a liberal or progressive, it really should be. Let's work together to put out the fire in our house before arguing over the most humane, zero-carbon windows we should use.
2. A splintered opposition opens the door for the Republicans to win
This should be fairly obvious to anyone who's been paying attention. For example, in 2016, Trump's margin of victory in Michigan was 11,612 votes, less than one-fourth of the 50,700 cast for Jill Stein.
In Wisconsin, Trump's margin of victory was 27,257, barely less than Stein's 30,980 votes. While there's no guarantee that Trump would have lost if every Stein voter had voted with the Democrats instead, there's certainly a case to be made. Particularly when you consider that there are almost certainly thousands of liberals who either voted for Johnson or stayed home because they bought into the 'Democrats/Clinton are corrupt' Republican smears.
What's the best-case scenario for a Sanders Green party run in 2020? Let's say he draws ten times the vote percentage that Stein got, which has to be considered a wildly optimistic assumption. That would mean he gets 10.7% of the popular vote, and almost certainly no electoral votes.
Trump won 46.09% of the popular vote, which you have to assume is his high-water mark. But Republicans are extremely loyal to their politicians, especially incumbent presidents. So it's unlikely his vote total drops below 40%. In this case (assuming 3% of the vote goes to other third parties), the Democrat would win 46.3% of the vote, which probably translates to an electoral college victory. But Sanders comes nowhere close to winning.
On the other hand, if Trump can get just 44% of the popular vote, he'll eke out a popular vote plurality, and likely a second term. And as we've seen just last year, Trump could even lose the popular vote by as much as 2% and still be re-elected. And what's painfully obvious is that while Sanders has no hope of winning the presidency as an independent, every vote he gets just improves the Republicans' chances.
So the best case scenario for a third-party liberal is that he loses, but doesn't draw enough support to hand Trump a second term. The worst case is that he splits the anti-Trump vote, and Trump does win a second term. There is literally no upside to supporting a third-party candidate.
3. The Democratic party is not 'corrupt' or 'anti-Sanders'
I've heard a lot on social media about how the Democratic nomination process was supposedly 'rigged', and how the party is trying to 'silence' Sanders supporters, and so on. At worst this is nonsense and at best it's whining. I won't attempt a full takedown of the 'rigged' myth here, other than to make some key observations. (Those wanting full takedowns are recommended to read this and this and this).
First, and most glaringly, Clinton is a Democrat and Sanders is not. If it were truly the desire of an all-powerful Democratic party to silence Sanders and his supporters, they never would have allowed him to run as a Democrat in the first place.
But Sanders chose to run as a Democrat, and the Democrats welcomed him in. This means that Sanders implicitly agreed to play by the Democrats' rules. Which brings me to my second point.
Are superdelegates fair? Maybe they are and maybe they're not, but they've been part of the process for more than 30 years, which Sanders certainly should have known when he got in the race. And if those superdelegates were already Clinton supporters before the caucuses and primaries, that's almost certainly because Clinton spent more than a quarter-century --- more than one-third of her adult life --- fostering that support within the party (and Sanders didn't). The fact that superdelegates wield a disproportionate amount of power in the nominating process, and the fact that the vast majority of them preferred Clinton, is not evidence of 'rigging' or corruption. Instead, these were known facts before Sanders chose to run, and thus were presumably realities he accepted.
In a similar vein, Sanders supporters have complained about closed primaries. Once again, right or wrong, closed primaries have been part of the process for decades. Complaining about them, or about superdelegates, or claiming 'Sanders would have won if the rules had been different' is just whining. Maybe Sanders WOULD have won if the rules had been different, but the rules which determined the nominee were the rules he agreed to play by, so who cares?
To make a sports analogy, suppose Sanders is a basketball player with a high field goal percentage, but who sucks at 3-pointers. If Clinton beats him by making a lot of 3-pointers, it's pointless to claim 'We would have won if there weren't a 3-point rule'.
There also seems to be some belief at the fringes that Clinton herself is corrupt, but that's just the Russian/Republican smear campaign. I'm not going to go into detail explaining this (because I've already done so elsewhere), but Clinton is a fairly mainstream Democrat who is fundamentally honest and hard-working, but more moderate than Sanders.
4. So if I want to vote for Sanders (or Stein or . . .) that's just too bad?
Absolutely not. I'm not writing this to advocate for or against any specific candidate; I'm writing it as an appeal to Democratic unity. And because I know from experience that my motives will be questioned, I should point out that I didn't have a strong preference either for Clinton OR Sanders for the Democratic nomination. I didn't care who won, because I knew that either one of them would be a better president than Trump, in the sense that any master chef will cook a better meal than a diseased pig will.
One iron law of politics is that you never get everything you want, so you need to get used to the idea. I hope I've made it clear why supporting a third-party candidate is a recipe to insure that you don't get anything you want.
The alternative is: make a better Democratic party. The party pretty clearly isn't corrupt, but there's still room for improvement. Maybe it can and should move further to the left. If the Democratic party isn't your cup of tea, then get involved and make it your cup of tea. Indeed, Sanders has already done that (It's my belief that moving the party left was Sanders' sole reason for getting in the race, and he wasn't really trying to win until Clinton already had an insurmountable delegate lead). The best way to put progressive ideas into policy is to keep the momentum going in the Democratic party, not abandoning it.
Attend party meetings, become an officer, advocate for a cause or a candidate, change the rules. It won't get you everything you want, but I guarantee it will get you closer than anything you do outside the Democratic party.
5. Relentlessly arguing that Clinton/the DNC is corrupt helps Trump
The Russians worked for months to help elect Trump, and they didn't just start after Trump and Clinton clinched their nominations. They knew Clinton was the strongest candidate, so they worked to undermine her from the beginning --- including during the battle for the nomination. The 'Democrats are corrupt' thread started with the Russians in the service of electing Trump, and repeating that idea only furthers that goal.
Not only does it discredit Clinton and the Democratic party generally (which helps Trump), but it also lends credibility to Trump's allegations that the Democrats are corrupt. And since nearly everything Trump says is a lie, his opponents really should avoid giving him credibility, especially considering (as explained above) that charges of corrupt Democrats are overblown at best and more likely just flat-out false.
6. You catch more flies with honey
Social media is basically a cesspool, it's true. But I have been surprised recently to find that I've received a lot more vitriol and name-calling from Sanders supporters than from Trump supporters.
It appears that a significant number of Sanders supporters have decided that the best way to get their candidate elected president is to position him for a doomed third-party run, and rudely tell off any liberal who disagrees with them.
To state the obvious, this seems, at best, counterproductive.
7. And Finally
The formula for winning the White House in 2020 is fairly straightforward:
- Fight like hell to nominate the best Democrat possible.
- Fight like hell to elect that person. Even if she's not your favorite candidate.
Clinton's opponents should be able to adopt this strategy a little more easily, given that (despite extensive wild speculation to the contrary), Clinton has said she's not running for any public office again. But even if she were, any liberal should be able to agree to this plan. The Democratic party is open and welcoming (as evidenced by the fact that Sanders ran as a Democrat), so any candidate with good policies has a shot at the nomination. And since any Democrat would be a better president than Trump, this is a no-brainer.
Personally, I don't want Sanders OR Clinton to run in 2020, because I would like it if our next president hadn't passed retirement age. But despite my personal favorites or misgivings, I hereby solemnly pledge to vote for whomever the Democrats nominate in 2020.
If you really want to be rid of Trump, I suggest you do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment