Last political one for a little while. Then I am going to talk about Thailand.
America has a long history of forming third parties out of rebellion. The way our system is designed and promoted it is almost impossible for a third party to win, but they can sure fuck things up. Sometimes in the best possible way. In the early twentieth the majority of third parties were leftist. In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt (whose positions on race were problematic) ran as a Progressive and got over 25% of the popular vote and 88 of 531 electoral votes. Robert M. La Follette tried again with less success under the Progressive Party in 1924. While neither of these bids was successful, they did serve to push government policy forward.
In response to all that progress the State’s Rights Democrats Party was formed in 1948. Commonly called the Dixiecrats and made up of southern segregationists the Party was organized in direct opposition to the labor rights of the New Deal and the Civil Rights program of Harry Truman and the Democratic Party.* The states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama (no surprises there) gave 39 electoral votes and over a million popular ones to Strom Thurmond.
Then came 1968.The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the disastrous Democratic National Convention in Chicago, anti-war riots and racial uprisings, and George Wallace. Wallace’s American Independent Party was a far-right response to both the Republicans and Democrats. Focused on “law and order” it promoted the right of the states to maintain segregation. Like the Dixiecrats Wallace won Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, plus Arkansas and Georgia, gaining 46 electoral votes and roughly 9.9 million popular votes, about 14%.
In 1992 was the first time I was legally able to vote. That year Ross Perot ran against Democrat Bill Clinton and incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush. Some argue that he is the reason for Clinton I’s win but exit polls from the time indicate that the brash Texan stole votes from both sides of the aisle making his impact in that way on the election debatable. Though Perot managed to get almost 20 million popular votes he got not one electoral vote.
Then there is the infamous Nader campaign of 2000. Ralph Nader lost Gore the election.** Yes, there were other factors, other ways Gore could have won. But all of those ways come down to getting more votes. Gore lost Florida, where Nader won almost 100,000 votes, by 537 votes. A percentage so small as to be infinitesimal yet so large as to lose the election. Worse, the same thing happened in New Hampshire where Nader’s 4% pushed out Gore which blocked him from the 4 electoral votes that could have given him a win in the electoral college. All without earning a single electoral college vote of his own.
Ross Perot changed, or perhaps updated, the way in which elections are conducted. The self-made billionaire understood how to use the relatively new medium of cable news in a way that lifelong politicians H.W. and Clinton I did not. Announcing his candidacy on Larry King Live Perot sold his ideas using infomercials and quirky, yet memorable, one liners. Perot understood that these emerging forms of media allowed candidates to speak directly to voters in a new way. By the time he ran again in 1996 the other parties had cottoned onto his strategy and he garnered less than half the votes he did the first time around. Still, that’s 8% of the vote which is higher than any independent in 2016 or 2020.
Besides losing AL Gore the election Ralph Nader had a profound impact on the Democratic Party. It’s been a slow roll but take a look at Nader’s 2000 platform. Ralph Nader pushed for:
healthcare coverage
criminal justice reform
challenging racist policing practices
and tax reform.
All of which are present on the current Democrat platform. While third Party candidates have failed to coalesce their support into a single state and thereby earn electoral votes third Party or independent candidates can and have made a difference in presidential elections.
Source
https://theweek.com/articles/735568/ralph-nader-might-have-saved-democratic-Party
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/05/31/nader_elected_bush_why_we_shouldnt_forget_130715.html
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163522
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/opinions/how-ross-perot-shaped-our-world-zelizer/index.html
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/07/10/perot-third-Party-presidential-bids
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/1968-project/2018/08/16/stand-up-america-george-wallaces-chaotic-prophetic-campaign/961043002/
https://history.house.gov/Institution/Party-Divisions/Party-Divisions/
https://history.house.gov/Institution/Party-Divisions/Party-Divisions/
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/history-of-third-Party-candidates
*The roots of the Dixiecrat rebellion lay in opposition to pro-labor New Deal policies but President Harry Truman’s civil rights program, introduced in February 1948, was the real impetus for revolt. As usual, Black folks attempting to exercise their power, be it political or economic, enraged the powers that be of the Deep South.
**By the end of the Clinton presidency people were a bit soured on all the drama. Then there were the moderate “right light” policies he embraced in order to hold onto power. The Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994 with its mandatory sentencing, the amping up of the drug war, so-called welfare reform, encouragement of monopolies, NAFTA, and a few disastrous military interventions. Though Gore was obviously not Bill Clinton the Clinton scandals clung to him like spiderwebs.
On top of all of that there was Florida being Florida from purging the voter rolls of African Americans to dangling their chads. And finally, defeat was cinched by the failure of the Gore campaign to demand a recount.