Gary Johnson made two recent appearances on MSNBC and Fox News (video below) to discuss speculation that Donald Trump might run as an independent or third-party, and to explain why he left the GOP to run as a Libertarian in 2012.
In 2012, Michigan state officials claimed that Gary Johnson’s application to withdraw from the GOP primary was late by a matter of minutes. The MI Secretary of State then refused to remove his name from GOP primary ballots, triggering the state’s sore-loser law and resulting in Michigan being one of two states where the Johnson/Gray ticket did not have ballot access in the 2012 general election. An attempt to put the same-named Libertarian activist Gary Johnson of Texas on the ballot instead was not successful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K26AekUzLmE
“I don’t see why we should dismiss the possibility that he could actually win as an independent. Perot led Bush and Clinton before the whole weird dropping in and out thing he did.”
But simply leading in the polls isn’t what it takes to win. When it’s a two-way that’s close enough for most purposes usually, but in a three-person race it isn’t enough to win the popular vote, or even to come in 1st in the EC. You have to win an absolute majority of 270+EV, otherwise it gets tossed to Congress to decide, and I don’t think Congress would elect him even if he did come in first in both the popular and electoral votes. Most of the time and in most cases I think Congress would have little politically-viable choice but to ratify the plurality winner in that scenario, instead of selecting a candidate who got fewer votes, but if it was Trump? I could see the (likely) GOP majority in state delegations electing their own nominee even if he or she came in 3rd.
Perot was leading in the polls, but was he ever leading such that he would have won 270+EVs? You’d have to go into a state-by-state break down to say for sure, and I don’t know that enough polling on a state-by-state basis was even done to provide a definitive answer. But I strongly doubt that at any point in 1992, Perot would have walked away with 270+ if the election were held the next day. In fact the possibility of the election being decided by the House, was one of the reasons he cited for pulling out of the race before he got back in.
gp: Carly Fiorina appears to be a background attempt to stop Trump.
me: How d’ya figger? She’s been testing the waters for perhaps at least a year. Who’s behind this “background attempt”?
Have you been hanging around with Andy? 😉
He doesn’t have to be charming. He just has to be better than his Republican opponents. Is this a challenge? Number 3 in the race, whose standing went up, is Dr. Carson.
Carly Fiorina appears to be a background attempt to stop Trump. Those of you who are old enough to remember the Goldwater ’64 campaign will remember the Republican liberals rolling our one great something hope after another in an effort to stop Goldwater. Unsuccessfully.
At some point she and Trump will be in the same debate, and Trump will discuss how her last company did under her losership, er leadership.
pf, yes, it’s a complex sort of charm. He’s so in your face and over the top, and yet there’s something of a whimsy about him at the same time, I think. It’s as if he’s letting you in on a joke of this character he’s created for us. And yet he never seems to break character, as he’s so well practiced at being The Donald.
Megalomaniacal, narcicistic sociopaths are often charming.. although I don’t find Trump to be charming at all, obviously a lot of other people do.
pf, I agree that Trump is one dangerous hombre. In 08, I was rooting for Obama because I found McCain similarly dangerous. First thing I’d like to see in a prez is: Not obviously severely mentally ill. DT is obviously severely megalomaniacal, which he has honed into a bizarrely charming schtick. Even I find him charming in a way. There are enough despondent people in America who might just say, Fuck it, I’m voting for the Donald.
Yes, there’s some truth in that.
On the other hand though there really is a lot of dangerous bigotry out there and people looking for someone to blame, and demagogues riding such waves have succeeded and done very bad things with that energy in the past; there’s no reason to assume Trump wouldn’t keep riding it as far as he can or that it will end any better this time, nor that he can’t succeed.
Hitler, Reagan and Ventura were considered buffoons who couldn’t possibly actually win power by a lot of people in their time too, among others.
Yes and no. Right now a lot of the bigots are lining up with Trump because he says more “politically incorrect” bigoted shit than anyone else and is saying it in a way that draws more attention.
To underscore your point on the other hand, see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/11/long-before-donald-trump-for-president-there-was-howard-stern-for-governor/
But whether he’ll draw from the far right or from a mix of right, left and center will depend on how things play out.
Interesting analysis in that article, but I think it misses a few things:
1) As the author correctly points out, Trump has released his finances, unlike Stern – so that won’t be a problem if he runs independent
2) It’s not likely but IMO not impossible he actually *can* pull off a hostile takeover and get the NSGOP nomination.
3) I don’t see why we should dismiss the possibility that he could actually win as an independent. Perot led Bush and Clinton before the whole weird dropping in and out thing he did. If Trump is running in the general election and competitive in the polls in October, he doesn’t get the traditional end of the election season dropoff, because he’s not seen as someone who can’t win and thus the wasted vote/spoiler myth does not come into play — which in a few rare cases it doesn’t, for example Ventura for Governor, if they are polling competitively and gaining momentum near the end, thus not seen as “can’t win.”
4) Trump won’t necessarily pull from the Republicans more than from the Democrats. True, right now he would, but that is because he is marketing himself to a Republican primary audience. As an independent, he would be free to take any number of stances that he is far less free to take as a Republican (if he wants a chance at their nomination) and many of which he has taken in the past:
* Pro universal mandatory government health insurance
* Pro wealth tax to pay off debt
* Pro drug legalization
* Pro choice on abortion
* Pro gun confiscation
* Pro campaign finance reform (ironically)
etc
Some of his stances, while generally right wing, also appeal to some on the left – his trade protectionism has a lot of fans on the left, and his immigration views can draw support from blue collar Democrats and their supposed champions (e.g. Bernie Sanders, for example).
It’s entirely plausible IMO that as an independent in the general election Trump could win away just as many votes from Democrats as from Republicans, just as Perot did (which unfortunately all too many people fail to recognize).
5) Along those same lines, the article presumes that had the LP qualified for ballot retention with Stern this would have been bad news for Republicans. I think those of us on this distribution know better, so I don’t have to take time to explain why that isn’t true. Like Perot, and perhaps but not necessarily like Trump if he runs independent, out of the LP voters who would still vote if we were not on the ballot the votes would be split pretty evenly between Ds and Rs.
6) Also along the same lines, Stern would not have necessarily won more votes away from Pataki than from Cuomo, nor is it inconceivable that he could have built his momentum and won like Ventura did.
Missed the Cavuto interview before…that was a B, mostly because he got into the weeds about sore-loser laws, and I think he didn’t get his facts quite right.
pf: I’m surprised Capozzi has not issued his report card grades on these yet.
me: Thanks for the prompting, P.
I give this one a solid A. He’s still a bit awkward at times, and sometimes his pacing is a bit off, but I found him relevant and reasonably glib. Substantively, I’d say quite good.
I’m not sure that Trump is necessarily appealing to the far right. I think he’s more tapping into understandable frustration and concomitant alienation with DC’s deep dysfunction. The far right (especially the socialcon far right) would probably line up more with Huckabee or Santorum.
I like the bit about us all being “politically correct” down deep. But I think the better word is that we all want to be respectful and respected. Trump confuses speaking one’s truth with being outrageous and inflammatory.
People — especially pols — are afraid of speaking their truth for fear of offending and alienating.
http://ballot-access.org/2015/08/10/vox-misinforms-its-readers-about-michigans-sore-loser-law/
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9127435/donald-trump-third-party
I’m surprised Capozzi has not issued his report card grades on these yet.
That’s good. Thank you.
“This just shows that Gary Johnson is not that well-informed about election law. Michigan does not bar “sore losers” from being independent candidates. Michigan only bars them from being minor party candidates.”
I just rewatched the relevant parts of both videos, and from what I can see Gary consistently used the phrase “third-party” throughout, which is also the phrasing the interviewers used to describe a possible Trump candidacy. The distinction between independents and minor-parties didn’t come up, and he didn’t make any claim about the MI law applying to independents.
“Also (and this may not be Gary’s error, but the IPR author’s), Michigan did not reject the other Gary Johnson. The state of Michigan simply ignored the request to put the other Gary Johnson on the ballot.”
I’m not sure there’s much difference, but I’ve changed the wording slightly to reflect that.
This just shows that Gary Johnson is not that well-informed about election law. Michigan does not bar “sore losers” from being independent candidates. Michigan only bars them from being minor party candidates. Also (and this may not be Gary’s error, but the IPR author’s), Michigan did not reject the other Gary Johnson. The state of Michigan simply ignored the request to put the other Gary Johnson on the ballot.
Hey, Toby Keith says that taking a boot up your ass is the American way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9r0haVPDAo