During the election of 2016, I observed that “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the two most hated people in America. One of them is going to be our president.” Such is the chokehold that the Democrats and Republicans (or the “duopoly” as some call it) have on American political life.
Earlier this year, I attended a debate at the Soho Forum in Manhattan. Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, faced off against the famous economist Arthur Laffer (if you’re thinking “Laffer Curve” then, yes, THAT Laffer). The debate question was: “should libertarians vote for Donald Trump in 2024?” Mr Oliver’s position was “no, they should vote for me” and Dr Laffer argued that Trump was the more sensible choice. More accurately, he argued simply that Trump was a good choice. He didn’t really bother to address why Trump should be picked over Oliver. It wasn’t a snub. Laffer seemed to exude a sincere warmth and friendliness toward both his opponent and the audience (to my amusement, the Octogenarian who was NOT running for any office was the one debater who actually walked around shaking hands and talking to everyone before and after the debate)! I honestly don’t think he meant to belittle Oliver.
This is just how the topic was framed. This framing tacitly assumed the answer to an important threshold question, which is, “should we even bother to vote for third parties or independents, or should we make the best possible compromise and pick one of the Big Two?” So resigned are we to the inevitability of the Big Two that avowed libertarians are seriously considering the populist, economic-protectionist, nationalist Donald Trump as perhaps a more appropriate option than one who is a straightforward, down-the-line supporter of individual liberties and free markets. Similarly, many avowed socialists and green activists are routinely pressured to vote for the Big-Pharmaceuticals-friendly, Military-Industrial-complex supporting, Wall-Street-beholden Democrats (there are Ralph Nader voters from 2000 and Jill Stein voters from 2016 who have permanently lost friends and allies over their choices).
Every election seems to be infused with more urgency than the last, with people announcing “it’s the most important election of our lifetime.” But instead of a call to break the cycle, it seems the rallying cry is merely to defeat that other, monstrous candidate and stick with one’s own party’s “safer” choice. Every year the talking heads and candidates all seem to be saying “whatever issues we have, let’s work it out later. Right now, the house is on fire and the other guy is the arsonist.” But the house is ALWAYS on fire these days. The Republicans are calling this election “reality’s last stand.” The Democrats are warning that Trump will “end our democracy as we know it!”
The most remarkable thing is that we keep falling for it. All this alarmism doesn’t actually shake anything up in practice. It just shakes up people’s nerves, but elections actually get ever-closer, as in statistically tied races. Counterintuitively, the more polarised we are, the more meaningless election participation actually becomes, because the candidates can tap into the fear-factor of polarisation to hold your vote hostage. They don’t have to work for your support or have a good vision for the country. As Chase Oliver pointed out in the debate, this “lesser of two evils” voting practice leads to a decline in the quality of candidates and ideas.
This year could have been different. Polls have shown for the last few years that record numbers of Americans identify themselves as “politically independent” and “undecided voters.” There are record-high levels of distrust of public institutions—including the media, academia, science and tech industries, the medical establishment, big businesses, and of course, government. The two political parties seem to be especially unpopular. And yet, people seem to cling to them. Fed up with Trumpism and rightwing culture wars, the “never Trump” Republicans have left their party… only to join the Democrats. Fed up with economic authoritarianism and leftwing culture wars, the “walk away” Democrats have walked away from their party… only to walk into the Republican tent! High profile “dissident” types, like Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard and Bill Maher have endorsed either Trump or Harris.
One guy that seemed to break through the gridlock was Robert F Kennedy Jr (“RFK”). There was so much potential in his campaign, but it too, eventually folded.
When this potential “spoiler” and one of the strongest-polling independent presidential candidates in history, dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Former President Donald Trump, the reactions ran the gamut. Trump supporters were mostly thrilled, as evidenced by the electric reception they gave him at their rally where he spoke. Democrats were furious. Not that long ago, he was one of their own, the scion of the Kennedy clan, which is basically royalty to them. But, for some time now, his tendency to go against the party orthodoxy on a host of issues—such as the Covid lockdowns and vaccines—has led to him being treated increasingly like the black sheep of the family. His decision to mount a challenge against the party’s sitting president, Joe Biden, in a primary election and eventually leaving the party to run as an independent candidate really solidified their animosity and turned him into an enemy and a target. After all, apostates are always hated more passionately than heathens. A couple of decades ago even Donald Trump was one of theirs (which could explain the particular sharpness of their scorn for him).
The widest range of emotions, understandably, was exhibited among Kennedy’s supporters. Some are finding it hard to bridge the vast ideological chasm between Trumpism and their own, left-learning, socially liberal, green-leaning politics. But others are following him to the Trump camp, sharing his political calculation about this being the “less bad” compromise. That’s because like Kennedy, they see the Democratic party as having “become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big agriculture and big money.” Many of them also want to punish the Democrats for the considerable legal efforts they mounted to keep Kennedy off the ballot in a number of states and the media influence they allegedly used to block his messaging.
But, to those for whom the whole point of the Kennedy campaign was to offer a third way, a break from the duopoly, I imagine this is a hard pill to swallow. For them, it wasn’t only a matter of “voting one’s conscience.” It actually seemed like they had a real shot. Kennedy had enormous name recognition and a running mate—Nicole Shanahan—with significant Silicon-Valley money and fundraising capacity. Their organisational energy was breathtaking. Many old-school liberals (including young ones), tired of stifling culture wars (and actual wars), threw their support behind him. As he has pointed out “After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of the other candidates both in favorability and also in head-to-head matchups.” While there is disagreement about this (and generally about how to read polls), it is undisputed that his polling was extraordinary for an independent candidate, especially one who was essentially shunned by the media (compared to the great interest shown to Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 or John Anderson in 1980). Among undecided voters, Kennedy was often leading. Yet, in the end, he had to accept that he had no “realistic path to electoral victory.”
The states make the rules about ballot access, campaign finance and a host of other election regulations, and the state legislatures and election commissions are made up of people vested in the two-party system. The parties negotiate with each other and the media about who gets to be on televised debates—and the big guys have ways of squeezing the little guys out. It’s an uphill, almost unclimbable path.
It is interesting that some people, including the aforementioned RFK Jr, Musk, and Gabbard and many libertarians are treating their Trump endorsements as a sort of “anti-establishment” stance or some kind of “protest” vote. In the barest sense, I suppose I see an outline of a rational argument there. It is true that Trump’s agenda has FEWER intrusive government programmes than Harris’s and Trump, for all his wealth and connections, actually is kind of a rogue upstart and Washington outsider. He’s a loose cannon, which makes the other elites nervous because they can’t control him. This is why many of the elites in the previously ruling faction of his party have switched over. However, an authoritarian personality cult is not the kind of freedom-bringing “protest” vote many of us were hoping for—no matter how many others of his own rarefied class he is in the habit of annoying.
When tech mogul Elon Musk first started talking about his support for Trump a couple of years ago, he said he would like to vote for the Libertarian Party but it’s “not realistic.” Elon Musk, the richest person on earth, owner of one of the biggest social media platforms and an entire satellite communication network—with an almost unlimited access to people’s attention and considerations— a man who probably has more social/political influence in the United States right now than almost any other private individual, not to mention the guy who’s trying to fly humanity to MARS, thinks a third-party movement in America is beyond reach! This is how deep the two-party mythology goes.
But it IS mythology. Whatever our propaganda-addled mental habits might lead us to imagine, the duopoly’s iron grip is not a law of nature, like gravity or entropy. It’s merely the outcome of conscious human choices. It’s now entrenched conventional wisdom that a vote is “wasted” if cast for someone who “can’t win” because nobody else is going to vote for them. But why take this for granted? Why exactly would anyone else NOT vote for your pick? You like this candidate, so why assume nobody else can be persuaded? In fact, isn’t that the point of campaigns?
Also, if this “can’t win” logic is a sound one, then why doesn’t it apply to the duopoly candidate who is unpopular in your state (like Trump in California or Harris in Texas)? Why doesn’t it apply to candidates with low name-recognition? In 2007, how many people had heard the name “Barack Obama”? We could all have said, well, I like this guy, but he’s an unknown. Nobody will vote for him, so let me go with someone else. Speaking of Obama, people used to say Black candidates were unelectable. Some STILL say that about women. But we all assume voters are persuadable and a good candidate is worth the work it takes to bring people around. Yet, getting people to vote for someone other than a Democrat or a Republican is unfathomable?
No, it’s not. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Third parties and independent candidates would be electable if we voted for them. They could run viable campaigns if the ballot-access prerequisites and media blackouts were removed. The two parties didn’t always exist. The country didn’t always exist. Voting to choose a government didn’t always exist. Things can change. Yes, the duopoly has become bureaucratic and deeply entrenched; maybe even tyrannical. So, it will be hard to loosen it. But hard is not the same as impossible.
The author is a lawyer, writer and editor based in Manhattan, New York