Updated w Audio! Nick Gillespie Talking Gary Johnson, John McAfee, Austin Petersen at 10 AM ET
Listen live online.
UPDATED 12 NOON: Here's the audio link!
I'll be on Charlotte, North Carolina's WBT radio station at 10 A.M. E.T., talking Gary Johnson, John McAfee, Austin Petersen, and the Libertarian Party's chances in the 2016 election with Keith Larson.
Go here to listen along online (takes less than a minute to sign in via Facebook or Twitter).
My most-recent thoughts on Johnson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico and the 2012 LP presidential candidate (who pulled 1.2 million votes and about 1 percent of the popular vote):
This much seems certain: The Libertarian Party will go the farthest in 2016 with Gary Johnson at the top of its ticket. If this is the winter of our electoral discontent, American voters still aren't so pissed off that novices such as McAfee, whose gnomic invocations of libertarian dogma and piercing eyes can be quite beguiling, or Petersen, no matter how much "pussy" he's swimming in, are capable of reaching anything like the 11 percent that Johnson has already registered.
The LP meets in Orlando in May to pick its presidential candidate and, even assuming Johnson regains the form that earned him 1.2 million votes in 2012, there's still a non-trivial chance that the party faithful may dump him in favor of somebody less capable. In the past, after all, the LP has chosen candidates who eschew driver's licenses and any possibility of electoral success.
But if the party does back Johnson, and he does get his act together, and Hillary and The Donald go after each other like Adams and Jefferson once did…well, let's just say it will be the most entertaining election this side of South Park's [infamous "Douche & Turd" episode, where kids must choose between one or the other to be their new school mascot]. Except that this time, there will be an actual third choice that might actually represent the plurality of American voters who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
UPDATED 12 NOON: Here's the audio link!
