Don't Blame Me: I Voted for Kodos

New at Reason: Brian Doherty gives an argument for third party efforts that you may not have heard before.

Comments

[matt]

Great title...that's one of my favorite Simpson's episodes

[GoonFood]

For me, it is precisely because our 2-party elections are a "lesser of two evils" affair that I feel no remorse in voting for a "third" party that will probably never win in my lifetime. Even if I end up having to live under the rule of some demopublican idiots I at least have the satisfaction of knowing that *I* didn't give part-in-parcel to the election of those boobs.

A small consolation perhaps when all of our rights get voted into oblivion by the fickle mob that is democracy in the US, but it is something...

[matt]

Goonfood's comment reminded me of one of my favorite bumper stickers:

Don't vote, it only encourages them.

[SPUR]

By the same measurements of the LP being a failure, so is Cato and Reason -- government continues to grow and libertarian ideals set by the wayside more often than not.

The LP accomplishes a couple important things that Reason and Cato do not -- LP activists have reached millions of 'blue collar' folks with a simple libertarian message. Cato and Reason are not targeting that audience - nor should they but they shouldn't ignored either.

The LP has successfully elected hundreds of people to office -- more than a couple dozen are actually important local offices like school board, etc.

LP activists have stopped billions of dollars in new taxes at the local level. Here in San Diego the Libertarian Party singlehandedly stoped the increase of a local sales tax a few years back saving the county taxpayer billions (whens the last time Cato had even that small of a policy success?)

The LP gets more media than any other libertarian organization by far (several hundred stories/radio/tv per month) -- Cato gets a lot but not as much as the LP and in half the Cato media mentions/stories they are referred to as conservatives...

If anything 'feelgood' activism is sending $50 to Cato so they can publish more books nobody reads.

[thoreau]

Third party movements can be influential if they do the following:

1) Demonstrate their clout by being a spoiler. (They've very good at this.)

2) After demonstrating their clout, announce that there will be ways for major party candidates to avoid the wrath of a spoiler. Maybe they make a single-issue demand (e.g. "Any Republican who votes for a gun control bill will face an LP spoiler"/"Any Democrat who votes to weaken an environmental regulation will face a Green spoiler", or whatever). Maybe individual candidates announce that they'll drop out of close races and endorse a major party candidate who meets some demands. (e.g. "The margin is 48-49, and I'm polling 3%, so I'll drop out and endorse whoever says the following...").

Whatever. It need not be centrally planned, it need not be the same tactic all the time or in every place or in every race. But take that clout and turn it into leverage. Given the bare-bones organizational structures of third parties, I doubt central planning could work, with some headquarters deciding who will drop out of which races based on which issues. But a general committment to using clout and a diversity of strategies tested in different grass-roots campaigns, well, that could have an effect. And it would turn third parties from a fun pastime into an occasionally effective pastime.

Of course, that would require third parties to compromise. ("We can't possibly endorse a Democrat/Republican who moves in our direction unless he passes the Progressive/Libertarian purity test!")

[speedwell]

I vote Libertarian because I can only vote for the ideology that works for me.

It's like being at a banquet where almost half the people are eating tin cans, almost all of the rest are eating bicycle tires, and a small minority are eating tofu. I may not like tofu very much, but I sure as heck can't eat tin cans and bicycle tires, even if most of the rest of the world says they're yummy.

[Shannon Love]

The only vote wasted is the one not cast.

The point of voting is not that any group of politicians and their hangers on gain power but rather that certain ideas get turned into policy.

Although 3rd parties have not secured any major power in the last 150 years, many of their ideas have thrived and become mainstream policy. Mainstream parties co-opt 3rd party ideas when they become even moderately successful. This leads to the death of the 3rd party but it can lead to their ideas becoming policy.

Perot, loon that he was, put the budget deficit front and center in the national debate and made the Republicans take it seriously. I doubt we would have our current Republican driven budget bloat if we had a deficit conscious 3rd party capable of stealing %5 of the vote away from Bush.

[Hydroman]

Long live HARRY BROWNE!!

[Swamp Justice]

As a registered Libertarian, I think the LP spends too much time and money on elections and not enough on ISSUES. Joe American does not care about the LP, but he does care about issues that affect him. An issue-oriented LP would have more leverage because it could ally itself with other organizations (such as the Green Party) on specific issues.

Bureaucrash.com is a new web site that is trying to bring "activist hipness" to libertarian issues. Cato and the LP will never have that. Bureaucrash has some funny articles about their counter-protests at free trade protests.

[Kevin Carson]

thoreau,

The ostensible Nader "spoiler" phenomenon, whether it actually existed or not, arguably had a big effect on internal Democratic politics.

During the 2000 election, the threat of a Nader endorsement by various unions forced Gore to move slightly to the left on labor issues, and to put more emphasis on his "people vs. the powerful" theme.

Gore's defeat, at least arguably as a result of Nader, also caused a major shakeup in the party establishment this time around. The big debate in 2000 over whether "progressives" should support a third party or work as a caucus within the Demo party, carried over into the 2003 Dean insurgency. Otherwise, a DLC clone like Kerry would probably have been anointed with no serious challenge.

[Steve Skutnik]

"Go ahead, throw your vote away!"

[thoreau]

Kevin-

The biggest problem facing the Democrats is that they are trapped between a rock and a hard place. The same old left wing ideas don't inspire like they used to. They get some centrists and swing voters, but not enough. And the Democrats know this, so they lack confidence and never propose anything bold.

On the other hand, if they try to go to the center, some people bolt for Greens. This wouldn't be a problem if the Democrats found something new and bold that appeals to people who are neither left nor right (which is not always the same thing as moderate). Also, even if they could get something new out there, the nomination process is controlled by the left.

The GOP seems to be in a stronger position for two reasons: First, lately their base seems to be more loyal than the left is to the Dems. Second, the GOP is either stupidly or willfully ignorant of the fact that a lot of people don't like right wing ideas any more than they like left wing ideas. So Republicans sound more confident.

If you have to choose between two people, and one comes in with "Alright, here's my big plan of action!" and the other comes in with "Well, we don't really want to offend anybody, but we do feel a responsibility to certain interests, so we'll try to sort of strike a balance without going too far..." I think we all know who wins.

[howdt]

The thesis of personal fun rings true - the American Party of Oregon was a blast in 1994 running a senate campaign for Karen Shilling against both Wyden and Gordon Smith. Then Perot returned, Lamm got shafted and the Reform Party went through a grass roots v. top down shake-out, but who can say that Jesse Ventura wasn't fun. Pat Buchanan and John Hagelin provided a side show in 2000, but the Perot political gig of the 90s was good entertainment for the participants.

[skolix]

I'm for smaller government. I vote Libertarian in the hope that if enough people do so a major candidate will eventually take notice and cater to our interests. I got tired of voting for the lesser of two evils years ago and now I'm not sure which party is less evil anyway.

[Marcvs]

There is a libertarian organization with that consistently gets results and is on the ground at the local level. However, they aren't a political organization.

Institute for Justice

Now there's a group we can be proud to call "libertarian."

[Rick Barton]

A Rolling Stones song goes: You can't always get what you want...but sometimes you just might find that you get what you need...

Well, under Bush, libertarians and small government types in general aren't even getting basic sustenance. The cause of liberty is getting the shaft thanks to Bush. Wouldn't it shake the GOP up and likely move it in the right direction if a very noticeable and critical portion of limited government types gave their votes to the Libertarian candidate for president instead of Bush.

If Bush loses as a result, but the GOP retains control of congress, it's quite hard to imagine things being any worse for liberty than they are now. It's important though, that the good GOP reps. not be punished along with Bush. There are indeed some pretty principled ones and we should endeavor to add to their numbers in congress.

A possible down side of Bush's political demise:

I Just caught the FCC chairman, Powell on CNBC. The FCC just had a ruling to the effect; not to regulate or tax, "voice over" internet communications. The guy sounded pretty good talking about a deregulated environment. Would the FCC be a lot worse under Kerry? Just a thought.

[dj of raleigh]

"The next president of the United States will be either a Democrat or Republican." begins the article.

Thoreau anwered it pretty well, but I'll add on:

A third party will not win the election.
A third party might well determine the winner,
call it spoiler, or whatever you want.

If the Democratic Party will not deal with Nader,
then Nader might have to teach them what 3% of the vote,
the Florida vote means, the New Hampshire vote means.
Nader could run again, in Florida, California, Ohio.
Nader won't win, but might determine who does.
In fact, a third party vote might be the most powerful
single vote that can be cast.

[MALAK]

Isn't the header for this thread misleading? Isn't the punchline on that episode something like, "It doesn't matter which one of us you vote for, either way your planet is doomed!" Sounds like Bush and Kerry to me . . .

[John Hensley]

Voting for a minor party is just childish play at being a revolutionary, and that includes when I did it. In reality, you're just forfeiting your opportunities to defend what's good in this country. And possibly being used by a two-bit con man *cough*Browne*cough* in the process.

[Rick Barton]

What's good in this country is individual liberty. If you don't think either one of the two major party candidates for president defend it properly, then you may be forfeiting your opportunity to communicate that sentiment if you don't vote for the Libertarian candidate.

There are plenty of candidates from the two major parties for other offices for whom it makes sense to vote (mostly Republican). So we don't have to get Kerryed away or Bushwacked in the presidential race.

[Mark S.]

Personally, I've come to the conclusion that if libertarianism is to have any growth in American society, the last group we should turn to is the Libertarian Party. I helped ran the Wisconsin LP booth at our state fair one year. There were two respones I got from people: 1) "I'd vote for you guys if you stood a chance of winning. 2) If you're ideas are so great, why aren't you winning elections?

It was the second response that bothered me the most. It implied that because the LP can barely get 1% of the vote, that libertarian ideology muth therefore be invalid. In American politics, the strength of an idea is proportionate to the power that idea has to draw votes.

In order for libertarianism to get a fair hearing I propose this: Disband the Libertarian PARTY. We are wasting time, money, and manpower toward elections that we KNOW we have no chance of winning. Instead, let's re-organize into a Libertarian MOVEMENT that can focus that time, money and manpower on activism and education.

When we can convince a significant number of people that freedom works, THEN we'll talk about running candidates for office. Until then, we're spinning our wheels while government gets bigger and bigger.

[Mark S.]

James:

I left the LP before Ed rose to the purple. Ed may have got 10%, but the point is he STILL lost. Elections are not about making a point, they're about WINNING. As long as the LP keeps losing, it will be regarded as a fringe element.

Political activists on the other hand are not elected. Greenpeace, NRA, ACLU, National Right To Life, NARAL, and other non-partisan groups are able to get their message out and not have to worry about the stigma of being extreme--at least not for being an electoral laughing stock.

John:

I fear that the Republican Liberty Caucus is nothing more than a GOP trap cell, an organization allowed to within the party to marginalize those with dissenting opinions and keep them on a short leash. The RLC has as much chance of convincing the GOP to try libertarian as the Republicans For Choice have to convince them to drop the anti-abortion plank, or the Log Cabin Republican have to convince the bible-beating leadership that homosexuals aren't "abominations."

[JimInNoVA]

There is always hope that the bible-thumping element will finally annoy the fiscal conservative element enough to cause a break in the party. Of course, the would require someone with the cojones to stand up to the GOP leadership and stop taking their money. Even McCain falls back into line most of the time so that he can keep the (R) next to his name.

[Jason Ligon]

You have no hope of election signifigance running on the LP platform. Just as social democrat types succeed by creating one service at a time rather than flat out saying 'private property is bad', libertarian ideals can only be implemented incrementally. Our choices are to incrementally win, incrementally lose, or make noises that shock people out of interest and become irrelevant.

My personal take is that the LP is populated with folks that like the shock value of the position more than the idea that it could be more successful in a moderate form. I guess that is what Brian was getting at, too.

[James Merritt]

I agree and disagree with Jason. A "shock"-oriented LP candidate for congress back in the 1980s alienated my wife, who has forever afterward teased me for my affiliation with the party, regardless of her often sympathetic views concerning LP positions. It is clear to me that candidates such as those do hand have set the party back. On the other hand, Jason's response appears to have been to dismiss and avoid the LP; and I presume that he isn't anymore active in LP politics or local party organizations, if he ever was. My response was different. I hung in there with the party and did what I could to motivate it and its candidates to learn how to put their best foot forward. I tried, myself, to put my own best foot forward on the party's behalf. Over the years, things various people said or wrote to me gave me the idea that I was perhaps having an effect, at least with some people, here and there. And a little effect was all I could spare: I have a job, a life, and a family. But apparently, I wasn't alone in wanting to put in at least a little effort and make a little difference. And apparently, more than a few people shared my desire to put a friendlier face on the LP. More and more Libertarians got elected over the years. Each elected Libertarian showed that people would choose credible libertarian candidates (many of them were bitterly opposed by rivals who used the L-word against them often and loudly in campaign speeches and materials). Each re-elected Libertarian showed that the sky wasn't going to fall with Libertarians in office; that genuine Libertarian sensibilities were compatible with real-world governance, after all; that Libertarians could help make things better.

I guess, to paraphrase an old saying, just because you can only do a little, that's no reason to do nothing at all.

I wonder if Mark S. was in the Wisconsin LP before, during, or after the Ed Thompson campaign. Ed did phenomenally well as an LP gubernatorial candidate (>10% of the vote) running against both GOP and Demo opponents, and earning the LP a seat on the statewide elections board -- a first for any third party in that state, I believe. Thompson is running the state LP now; from reports I get, I think that both the attitude of the state LP, and the public attitude about the state LP have changed. Perhaps those manning LP booths at county fairs get a better reception, these days. I heard Gary Nolan, aspirant for this year's LP Presidential nomination, in a recent Wisconsin Public Radio interview: both the host and the callers seemed respectful and interested in what Nolan had to say, even those who disagreed.

[thoreau]

I think the next frontier for the LP is intelligent use of the "spoiler effect." Like I outlined above, they should basically pick and choose when to undermine a major party candidate. I don't recommend centralized planning (the antithesis of a libertarian organization anyway), just that on a case-by-case basis they start saying "We'll run spoilers against any legislator who does such-and-such" or "We'll drop out of this close race and endorse the first candidate who endorses the following reform measures..." and then rattles off a list of decent compromise measures that makes the gov't smaller without shocking everybody ("Legalize every single drug and weapon known to man while firing every single regulator, and do it all in the next 20 seconds!?!?!?").

Also in that next frontier: Start spoiling Democrats. The LP is already good at hurting Republicans with guns and taxes as issues. So start targeting Democrats with different issues. Announce "This Democrat has been particularly noxious, so we're going to do a campaign that targets Democratic core constituencies, as well as swing voters." And then explain to blue collar workers that this Democrat is carving a big hunk out of their paychecks and giving it away as corporate welfare. Explain that he's rigged the regulations to make housing and healthcare more expensive. Go to college students and remind them that they won't see a dime of the social security funds he'll be pulling out of their paychecks when they graduate, and that the Democrat wouldn't hesitate to put any or all of them in jail for whatever recreational drugs they might have used. And so forth.

The LP might never elect a President or Governor or Senator, but the LP could surely defeat some particularly loathsome Senators and Governors and even Presidents.

[John Hensley]

An alternative to the doomed LP:
http://www.republicanliberty.org/

In particular, if you look at this page,
http://www.republicanliberty.org/libdex/index.htm
you'll see evidence that the GOP members of Congress generally stayed in libertarian quarter during the Clinton years, especially after 1997, while the Democrats were consistently statist.

[James Merritt]

Mark S. says, "Elections are not about making a point, they're about WINNING. As long as the LP keeps losing, it will be regarded as a fringe element."

There are shades of winning. Thompson didn't just make a point. He awakened many people to the LP alternative on the one hand, and he got the LP's foot in the political door (though the legally mandated seat on the state election commission) on the other, for just two real accomplishments. At 10% of the vote, he confounded all his critics and got some respect not only for himself, but for the LP and its future candidates. You should have heard the Wisconsin radio show I mentioned above. People were asking serious questions and listening carefully to the answers, as they would with serious GOP and Demo candidates. Nobody was dismissing LP candidates as folks on the fringe, even though it was clear that several callers disagreed.

Will this translate into significant electoral victory in 2004 or 2006? I don't know. I will say, however, that the mood seems significantly different from the time before Thompson's gubernatorial campaign, and even from the time midway through the campaign, when people seemed to catch on to the fact that he was serious about running, and began to engage him and the LP. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens for the next several Novembers.

[thoreau]

James-

Maybe Thompson's showing will yield fruit. But every time I hear of an LP candidate who got 10% or more running for a statewide office, I always think to myself that the same number of votes would have been much more than enough to win a seat in the state legislature.

Yes, I realize that getting X number of votes statewide is not the same as getting X number of votes, or even X/10 number of votes, in one particular place. But clearly these are skilled candidates, and I'd like to see how they fare in a particularly fertile district.

Remember, even a tiny victory like state assembly is better than losing the gubernatorial race in style. Of course, as state assembly members these candidates would get less glory, and would have to attend to the nitty-gritty of an often tedious job. I have no doubt that most of them are sincerely interested in advancing the cause of liberty, but I wonder if a few (and I'm not naming names, because I simply wouldn't know which to name) wouldn't rather get attention than actually win and make a difference the hard way.

[Mark S.]

James:

"There are shades of winning."

No, there isn't. You either win or lose and the LP has been losing.

Don't tell me about all the puny local dog catcher postions that LP candidates hold either (and they won them only because they were the only names on the fricken ballot). The real power lies at the legislative and executive levels of goverment (state and federal).

Part of the reason I left the LP was because of the mindless optimism held by many of its members. They would scrutinize election results looking for any straw to grasp onto: "Look everyone, our totals were .000001 percent higher than last year! The revolution begins next election!"

Optimism doesn't get us the seats or the power to make the changes we want. It takes manpower, money, and most importantly, enough voters to put you into office. The LP is seriously laking in all 3 and the little they have is being squandered on the hopeless races they run.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what happens for the next several Novembers."

I can save you the trouble and tell you right now: Ed is going to lose. The REAL reason Ed got anywhere last time was simple: Name recognition and novelty. (Ed is Tommy's black sheep brother, etc.) Like Miller Park (if I can use a Milwaukee Brewers analogy here) you can only count on novelty for so long until people realize you still have a losing team and walk out. Chances are that 10% is going to become less than 2% next time, and none existant the election after that.

It is time that libertarians had a reality check: The LP is a failure and will always be so in America's current political climate. Nor will libertarians find a home in either of the two major parties because they will be crowed out by their statist leadership. If our ideas are to survive and perhaps grow, we need to present ourselves as something other than "that party who wants to legalize pot and can't get 1% of the vote."

[Lee Jung]

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DATE: 05/20/2004 05:01:46
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