Third Party candidates could fuck us

[Beautiful Disaster]

24. We need to stop with the third party candidate boogeyman.

Ralph Nader ran for president four consecutive times between 1996 and 2008.

We only focus on one election, 2000, because it's the only one we look to as costing the Democrats the presidency.

But think about it: Nader didn't instantly grow into this firebrand phenom between 1996, when he garnered 685,435 votes, and 2000, where he garnered 2.8 million votes. And he certainly didn't just 'lose it' four years later when he garnered only 465,642 votes.

Nader was propped up by a complicit media and apathy on the left.

It wasn't Nader who cost Al Gore the presidency. If you take out Nader for any other third party candidate and you're likely to have a similar result. What cost Al Gore the presidency was the assumption that he and Bush were two sides of the same coin.

It's why, in 2004, Nader was such a non-factor - because people actually saw what Bush was and realized he and the Democrat weren't the same. Of course, it cut both ways: it galvanized Bush's supporters just as much as it did Kerry's. They just had a little bit more of them than we did ours.

Now people forget that Nader ran in 2008. He received 739,278 votes, which was higher than in 2004 and 1996 (though, it was also a higher turnout election and he only received .56% of the vote, compared to .71% in 1996 and .38% in 2004).

But that was another election where the differences were stark.

Gary Johnson also ran in 2012 - four years before he'd run in 2016. In 2012, he only pulled in .99% nationally In 2016, 3.27%.

Did Johnson instantly become a political sensation?

No. Sub out Johnson for Jo Jorgensen, who ran in 2020, and you probably see a similar number.

The issue is never the candidate. It's the narrative.

2000 and 2016 stick out because they were polarizing elections where voters felt, regardless who they supported, they results in the end would be the same. So, they voted third party in protest.

It's incumbent on Biden to define the differences. The good news is that we know the differences. No one is going to be fooled by Trump like maybe a few were in 2016. They know what he presents. No third party candidate is going to change that.

Still, Biden needs to define himself and give voters reason to support him - and if that reason is mostly because he's not Trump, it'll probably be a winning message.