If much of the GOP gets behind a third (non-Trump) candidate, should Sanders run as an independent?

[thesquanderer]

I know, Sanders said he would not mount an independent or third-party run, but that was spoken about in the sensible, expected context of Hillary winning the nomination and running against a single Republican candidate. And in a simple Clinton-vs.-Trump contest, he would certainly not want to be a spoiler that could hand the presidency to Trump.

But what if the GOP gets behind someone like Romney, Ryan, Kasich, etc. as a third-party/independent candidate, as has been discussed? Their likely goal would be to win just enough states to prevent anyone from getting to 270, and so throw the election into the Republican controlled House, thereby electing this third line candidate. (I discussed one strategy for doing this here.)

If the GOP does this, what is the best way to fight this strategy and prevent a Republican from winning the White House? As I see it, it is possible that the best thing to do might be to have Sanders to run as an independent!

Here's the key element: The House must select the President from among the top three candidates. If the top three are Clinton, Trump, and the GOP alternative (Kasich, whoever), the GOP alternative almost certainly becomes our next President. But if Sanders runs and merely manages to come in ahead of the GOP alternative, then the House has to choose from among Clinton, Trump, and Sanders. What would it do then?

Here's the mechanics of it, from https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/key-dates.html -

January 6, 2017
...
If no Presidential candidate wins 270 or more electoral votes, a majority, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides for the House of Representatives to decide the Presidential election. If necessary the House would elect the President by majority vote, choosing from the three candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by state, with each state having one vote.

Okay, so each state gets one vote. 33 states would be expected to vote for Republican, since the majority of their representatives are Republican (it could shift a bit depending on the exact makeup of the House after the election). Is it possible that fewer than 26 of them are willing to support Trump? If so, the defectors could form a coalition with the remaining states and agree to support a Dem in order to keep Trump out of the White House. As strange as it seems, if the GOP runs a third party candidate, Sanders running as an independent may provide the best chance of keeping a Republican out of the White House. Which Dem they compromise on remains a question, though I think it would likely be Hillary. Ironically, then, a Sanders run might even be the thing that gives Hillary the presidency!

Simply, IF the Republicans get behind an alternative GOP candidate, AND they succeed in throwing the race into the House, that alternative GOP candidate almost certainly becomes our next President. If Sanders can just prevent that candidate from finishing in the top three, the odds of a Dem in the White House go up!

[Renew Deal]

1. I think he should

Then Hillary can beat him twice

[morningfog]

2. No. And he wouldn't. And it's pretty much too late.

[CanonRay]

3. Perfect recipe to send the election to the House

three guesses what happens then.

[thesquanderer]

9. That's the point. What happens when it is sent to the House?

As I described in the OP, if a three person race makes it to the House--Clinton, Trump, and, say, Ryan--Ryan wins. 100% chance of a Republican president if it gets tossed to the House.

If it's a four person race, the House can only choose from the top three. If Sanders can beat Ryan for coming in third, then the House must choose between Clinton, Trump, and Sanders. What happens then? I'd say less than 100% chance of a Republican president, because of Republicans showing that some are even willing to defect to Hillary rather than support Trump. Therefore, it is the better of these two options.

Sanders NOT running is only clearly preferable if you are confident that Hillary would get 270 electoral votes even if running against both Trump AND another GOP candidate.

[CanonRay]

13. Since Republicans control the House

we will have a Republican POTUS. Both Bernie and Hillary will be shit out of luck.

[thesquanderer]

16. Only if you are 100% sure that the Repub House would choose Trump over Hillary.

I think that's not at all certain, considering how many Republicans are already saying they could support Hillary over Trump.

[CanonRay]

18. Nevermind

I just totally give up.

[ViseGrip]

4. All polls now show him winning in a GE. He will of course win a three way.

He says he won't 'do that'....but after the 'party done it'....I'd say he owes them shit.

[CrowCityDem]

8. Where does he win 270 in a three-way?

[firebrand80]

5. The GOP would split their vote in half

Hillary could win all 50 states if that happened.

Bernie getting in would split the dem vote and put us at risk of a President Trump.

[whatthehey]

6. An asinine idea (both of them)

While I hope the Reps run an establishment candidate it would be stupid from their POV to do so, at least assuming the goal is to win the WH in 2016. Splitting the R vote doesn't stop anybody but Trump from getting to 270, not that he would anyway. Splitting the D vote as well is asinine in that the combination possibly could stop anyone from getting 270, which guarantees a non-Trump R president as the gerrymandered House will vote that way.
IOW, running anybody other than the Dem and inconsequential vanity candidates like Greens or Socialists or Communist Party on the left is the ONLY legitimate way to prevent a D victory.

[thesquanderer]

15. re "Splitting the R vote doesn't stop anybody but Trump from getting to 270"

Accepting your point that that's unlikely to happen anyway, then the real goal of the other R candidate presumably isn't to get 270 or to stop Trump from getting to 270, it is to throw it into the House and so get the Republican President they want that way. One way to stop that is for some other candidate to come in third, since the House can only choose from the top 3.

If you think Hillary wins in November against the two R candidates, then that's the best path. If you think that 3rd candidate could win enough states to throw the election into the House, then the preferred goal could be to give the House only one R candidate to choose from, and making that candidate Trump, because that could lead to some defections.

Basically, the part we disagree about is that stopping anyone from getting 270 "guarantees a non-Trump R president as the gerrymandered House will vote that way." That's only true if there is a non-Trump R for them to select. If that candidate does not come in third, they can't vote for him.

[whatthehey]

22. Again - HOW?

Imagine the best non-Trump R you can. I'll call them "X".

The only way to stop Clinton winning is to have T+X > 270. To get that, X, who will in any sane universe take more votes from T than C, will have to win states (or T alone would have > 270 and win). But he'd really have to win blue states or swing states. Romney, as one possible X, could probably win Utah for example. So what? C's path to 270 does not include UT.

You have to imagine that given a choice of T, X or C, enough people in states like OH or MI or PA or FL would vote for T or X to overcome C. Not combined T+X, but just ONE of them, or C gets the state. This is just far far more likely to go the other way. Let's say (hypothetically and VERY pessimistically) right now OH is rust-beltishly pissed off at the establishment, not diverse enough to go Dem due to POC, and swayed by T's schtick so it's ready to hand C a massive 58-42 loss, a huge swing from 2008 and 12. Blame Clinton if you like.

Now introduce X into that. Let's even say X = Kasich to make this worst case. He pulls the establishment Rs from T. He pulls some homers from both T and C and even skims some misogynsitic indies who couldn't stomach T from C. That leaves T with the parochial know nothings, Kasich with the Chamber of Commerce and C with just the core Democrats. So you end up, at worst, T - 29 X - 33 C - 38. Dem win.

Even if you get really creative and imagine either T or X winning some swing states by shifting the above, you have to balance that against the much greater damage X does to T in reddish-purple states. With a divided RW vote how do states like NC, MO, GA, AZ, IN NOT switch to blue? When the D vote is well over 40%, how unrealistic do you have to be to imagine a split R vote with a polarizing political rube like T at the helm not losing the 10%-15% of the remainder to a real establishment R, which turns the state blue? Remember that to win AZ, NC and GA, all a Dem has to do is pull 100-200k votes from the R candidate. X could be an utter nonentity akin to Gilmore and he'd pull that much from T just from the non-bigoted businessman types. That puts another 40 EV into the blue column, a guaranteed victory.

There is no sensible way a split R vote prevents a D victory. In reality it guarantees a D landslide at 400+ EV. The only way it could work is if you also split the D vote, which likely DOES send it to the House, who are guaranteed to pick X.

[thesquanderer]

26. re: "To get that, X, who will in any sane universe take more votes from T than C"

No. The best strategy for X ("ideal" Republican candidate) is NOT to try to take more votes from Trump than Clinton, since Trump is unlikely to win anyway. Instead, their strategy needs to be to take more votes from Clinton than Trump, in order to throw the election into the House where they can indeed choose X to be president.

I described this scenario in more detail in post #17.

re:

"You have to imagine that given a choice of T, X or C, enough people in states like OH or MI or PA or FL would vote for T or X to overcome C. Not combined T+X, but just ONE of them, or C gets the state. This is just far far more likely to go the other way."

That's true if you look at the population as a simple split of Republican vs. Democrat, where the Republicans are split. The variable is the unprecedented unfavorables of both Clinton and Trump. But as I said, I think that, for the Republicans, it's more about going after blue-ish states than than swing states, i.e. where Trump is very weak, and they can more easily siphon off the Hillary unfavorables. That said, let's use your example, "Let's even say X = Kasich to make this worst case...So you end up, at worst, T - 29 X - 33 C - 38. Dem win." I'm not convinced you couldn't possibly flip Kasich and Clinton's numbers in that scenario.

re:

you have to balance that against the much greater damage X does to T in reddish-purple states. With a divided RW vote how do states like NC, MO, GA, AZ, IN NOT switch to blue?

Good question. Two possibilities. One is that any red-to-blue flip would be more than offset by the blue-to-x flips. Second is that that potential damage might be controlled by choosing not to compete in those states (i.e. not to even appear on the ballot), thereby conceding the reddest of states to Trump from the start.

re:

The only way it could work is if you also split the D vote, which likely DOES send it to the House, who are guaranteed to pick X.

Right... unless they can't pick X because he didn't finish in the top three. That's the whole point of having Sanders on the ballot as a fourth candidate. He throws a wrench into everything we've been talking about.

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

[whatthehey]

28. I think you are still missing the central question/problem

Even in the silly nonsense GD view of Clinton as something akin to a slightly smarter Bush who doesn't openly hate gays, exactly how does a REPUBLICAN take more votes from her than from the Republican nominee, in enough states to stop her winning? Taking red states doesn't help. How does a split R vote take any of the swing states, let alone the Dem leaning states they would have to take to stop Clinton? Look at the last EV map and tell me how many Obama states go to X, and then tell me how they DON'T swing a bunch of just-red states to her in return.

[thesquanderer]

31. I think you are still missing my point as well.

re:

Taking red states doesn't help. How does a split R vote take any of the swing states, let alone the Dem leaning states they would have to take to stop Clinton?.

I agree, taking red states doesn't help, that's why I said that X has to take states that lean (but are not certain to go) blue. And again, for the same reason, even taking the swing states is not the issue. When you say "let alone the Dem leaning states" you are implying those would be tougher to get than the swings. My argument is that those are easier to get. No, not the solid blue states, those will go to Hillary. But the ones that are not certain. The ones where Hillary has some weakness, but Trump has so little support that he is still unlikely to get them, even though Hillary's unfavorables are extraordinarily high. These are the states a candidate X (with higher favorables) can potentially steal from Hillary. Swing states are not as tough for Trump as these leaning-Hillary states are... they are not solid Hillary, so they are vulnerable, but they don't have enough Trump support to even qualify as swing. (Again, I'm using the chart at http://cookpolitical.com/presidential/charts/scorecard )

Look at the last EV map and tell me how many Obama states go to X, and then tell me how they DON'T swing a bunch of just-red states to her in return.

Again, they could limit the possibility of swinging some red states to her in return by simply not running candidate X in the states they are confident Trump would win.

[whatthehey]

32. Not missing it. Dismissing it really.

There is simply no conceivable candidate/state/demographic scenario where this is plausible. Take the states with narrow blue victories last time. Nevada, Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, etc. Who could the Rs run who would take more from Clinton than Trump in any of those running 3rd party? Virginia is pretty much archetypal in having a bipolar Republican voting bloc, from the socially conservative rural south on one side to the prosperous MIC Beltway suburbanites in the north. It's probably the most fertile ground.

We have to be sensible and assume Clinton keeps the core Dems. The Rs aren't going to peel off many of the lower echelon, minority, post-grad liberal, etc voters. The only thing in play for them is the pragmatic defense company workers and higher paid admins who would be rightly dubious of a wild cannon in Trump. But even if X pulls in those, he's really pulling them back whereas Trump would lose them. How many people who voted for Obama see such a huge difference between Clinton and him to change their vote to R? But remember the R vote is split! Even if 10% (hugely higher than I suspect) of the 2012 D electorate say "fuck it, I voted for Obama but I don't like the very similar policies of Clinton because of scandals/poorer oratory/woman/IWR/whatever, she still gets 45% of the vote. But if they only pull away because of X and if X even gets 10%, just 10% of Romney voters from Trump (and in what rational world would any mainstream Republican fail to pull more than that from Trump, a man massively reviled by the Rep old guard?) You end up with the following:

Clinton loses 10% of Obama's voters and gets 45% of the vote. X gets that 10% of Obama voters or 5.1% overall, gets 10% of Romney's vote or 4.8% for 9.9% overall. 1% go Lib/Green like in 2012 (assuming Trump bleeds zero Reps into becoming Libertarian, despite high profile examples of him doing exactly that already) leaving 44% for Trump.

And that is absurdly laughably biased towards your scenarios. Which candidate among Republicans can pull more from Clinton, a near-clone policywise to Obama who won the state last time, than he does from a demagogue widely despised by large sections of traditional Republicans, all the while assuming the Libertarians don't grab any from the latter too? Sure the Greens may pick up a few more from the Bernie or Bust loonies this year, but that's likely cancelled out by the above defection to the Libertarians a la Matalin, so you are left with trying to find an R who pulls away more Ds than Rs from their respective nominees (even without names, that is as absurd as it sounds, like saying Boston could field another MLB team which would dilute the Yankees fan base more than the Red Sox base), and that's before we consider the mayhem a split R vote does to reddish state EVs.

[thesquanderer]

33. re: "Which candidate among Republicans can pull more from Clinton, a near-clone policywise to Obama"

That may be the Republican's biggest problem in this scenario. They don't have any obvious candidate with strong across-party favorables to really capitalize on Hillary's high unfavorables. If Colin Powell were younger, maybe he could do it. But I guess you could say that, if they had such a candidate in their stable, maybe Trump wouldn't have been the nominee in the first place. It's true that, talking in theory, you could see where there may be openings, but if you try to come up with an actual person, it's harder to find those openings.

[CrowCityDem]

7. No, no, no, and NO

It wouldn't work. First of all, the idea of a conservative third-party candidate isn't to win the Presidency, or even to win states, but instead to drag down Trumps numbers enough to guarantee he wouldn't win.

All Bernie jumping into the race would do is further muddy the waters, and make it harder for Hillary to get to 270. If she didn't, there is no way that the Democrats are going to retake the House, so the Republicans would elect one of their two options. There is no scenario where they would elect Bernie, even over Hillary.

[thesquanderer]

10. re: "There is no scenario where they would elect Bernie, even over Hillary"

The question then would be, is there a scenario where they (the Republican House) would elect Hillary over Trump? They obviously won't do it if they have another Republican option, but what if it gets thrown into the house and there IS no other Republican option? That's the goal of this scenario.

As for your basic premise, "the idea of a conservative third-party candidate...is to drag down Trumps numbers enough to guarantee he wouldn't win" -- I think they are hoping for better than that. Rather than toss the election from Trump to Hillary, I think they would prefer to have their third party candidate do well enough to throw the election into the House. So again, it's worth considering how to best defend against that path to a Republican presidency.

[CrowCityDem]

14. To that last point:

A third party Republican would likely never win any of the blue or even purple states. There would be little, if any, impact on Hillary getting to 270. If Bernie was in the race, even picking off Vermont and New Hampshire could be the difference that throws the election to the House. Bernie can't increase the Democrats chances of winning, so why should we even give this a thought?

[thesquanderer]

17. re: "A third party Republican would likely never win any of the blue or even purple states. "

As I discussed in the earlier post I linked to...

One perspective is that Hillary's unfavorables (outside the base) are so high, that if she were running against a more popular Republican, she could actually lose some states that would otherwise lean more strongly to the Dem candidate.

With that in mind, look at the chart at http://cookpolitical.com/presidential/charts/scorecard and assume that the candidates are Clinton, Trump, and some other Republican who has higher favorables than either of them.

Let's assume Hillary is going to get the states that are in the "Solid D" column no matter what, that gives her only 190 truly solid EV, everything else is at least slightly in play.

So now let's say that the alternative Republican candidate takes (with as little as 34%) just Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, and some fifth state (i.e. any one out of Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, a Maine split, or any one of the swing states), Hillary can't get to 270 based on that chart (giving the rest of the blue or leaning blue states to Hillary, giving Trump the red and leaning red states, and giving the rest of the swing states to either one of them), and of course neither can Trump. So that tosses the election into the House.

[CrowCityDem]

19. Again: How would Bernie being a fourth candidate help?

[thesquanderer]

23. How Bernie being a fourth candidate helps in that scenario:

If the election gets thrown into the House, the House can only choose from among the top three candidates. If Bernie does better than the GOP sponsored third candidate, then the only available options are Clinton, Trump, and Sanders. If fewer than 26 of the 33 or so Republican states are happy with Trump, the remaining states could join Dems in selecting Clinton, considering her the lesser of the two bad choices from their perspective.

[CrowCityDem]

24. I can't believe any Rebpublican not retiring would ever be able to vote for a Democrat.

[thesquanderer]

27. Ah, but no one would ever know!

My understanding is that the individual representatives would not cast a public vote. Instead, all the representatives of a state would get together and decide who they will vote for (each state only gets one vote). So the vote for the Dem could not be traced back to any particular Republican.

Beyond that, though, quite a number of Republicans have come out against Trump, and some even publicly preferring Hillary. Whether any of them are (or will ever be) up for re-election, off-hand, I don't know.

[whatthehey]

25. How would a split R vote result in an R win?

No matter how unpopular you think Clinton is, ardent lefties aren't going to choose, say, Rubio over her. Dems certainly aren't. You'd pull off establishment Reps from Trump, but all they would pull off from Clinton are centrists who don't feel happy with a woman, those suffering from scandal fatigue, and right leaning Indies who can't stomach Trump and no longer have to hold their nose. It's not going to turn 50-50 R/D into 34-33-33 R/T/D. It's going to turn 50-50 into 30-25-45 R/T/D. How many DEMS and D leaners do you thing an establishment Republican will take away from a Dem nominee even one as cartoonishly villified as Clinton? Now how many more states will they just serve to split the R vote enough to let Clinton win reddish states like NC, AZ, and IN? Way way way more to gain from this than lose.

[MineralMan]

11. Neither thing will happen, so no.

Truly.

[zipplewrath]

12. No

I don't want Clinton. I have been resigned to her presidency for a long time, even though I sent Bernie money. But there is no point to a 3rd party bid. There are plenty-o-chances for a protest vote if that is what you want to do.

Look, I think he should stay in until the bitter end. If nothing else it helps avoid the "all Trump all the time" issue on the networks. But once it's over, assuming he's not the nominee, what he really should do is look around for senate, house, and state level candidates to support. He could help with fund raising and he could attend rallies. The result of that could be to give Clinton the congress she can't ignore.

[Uben]

20. No, that would make him a liar.....

...he has said already he would not seek to run as an independent. Bernie isn't a liar, so he definitely will not.

[thesquanderer]

29. It doesn't make him a liar if the circumstances change.

My premise is that his running in what would otherwise be a 3-way race could conceivably increase the chances of Hillary winning the presidency; and so his decision not to run could increase the chance of a Republican victory. That is, if you believe that the emergence of another GOP backed candidate is likely to throw the election into the House, then it is possible that Sanders helps the Dems more by running than he does by not running!

It is not a scenario that could have been envisioned from the outset, so it would not be a lie to have changed the position based on changing circumstance. He would be serving the greater truth of his position by taking whatever path is most likely to lead to a Republican loss in November. Or if you really must find a way for it to be semantically true as well as true in spirit, you could say he promised not to run as a third candidate against Clinton and a Republican; he did not promise not to run as a fourth candidate against Clinton and two Republicans.

[Punkingal]

21. No. And he won't do that, he keeps his word.

[thesquanderer]

30. Please also see post #29

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511932910#post29