The Third Option

In this vitriolic, poisonous and insane presidential campaign, I’m going to take a moment to write about a ray of light, another choice for the tens of millions of depressed Americans who can’t stomach the thought of either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becoming the President of the United States. I’m talking about Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson (along with his running mate William Weld).

In my last post, Head or Gut, I stated that I would choose Trump over Clinton if I had a gun to my head. Fortunately, there is no firearm presently held against my temple so I reject the binary choice that our two-party system provides. Right now, if I had to vote today, I would be voting for Gary Johnson.

I can feel many of you clicking away, murmuring to yourselves that I have truly gone off the deep end and that this is a waste of time. So let’s say right away the odds of a third party candidate ascending to the Oval Office are slim and none, and slim is getting ready to leave town. Still, if there was ever a year where the two-party stranglehold on our politics could be loosened, this is the year. So I ask you to humor me for a few minutes.

The 63-year old Johnson, the standard bearer for the Libertarian Party this year, served as a Republican governor in New Mexico from 1994 to 2002. In 2008 he ran (as a Republican) for president and didn’t get one iota of support. In the end, he endorsed Ron Paul. In 2012, he ran for president again, this time as the standard bearer for the Libertarians; he earned about 1.275 million votes (just under 1%) in the Romney-Obama race. Johnson is an avid triathlete and has also climbed all seven of the “Seven Summits” including Mount Everest.

Johnson’s vice-presidential running this year, 71-year old William Weld, is also a former two-term Republican governor, serving in Massachusetts from 1990 to 1997. Weld was popular in the Bay State, winning re-election in 1994 with 71% of the vote, the most lopsided gubernatorial contest in the state’s history.

It’s obvious that the reason anyone is even talking about Johnson-Weld is because of the intense dissatisfaction with the choices of Trump and Clinton. Despite the fact that the majority of the population could not pick either Johnson or Weld out of a police lineup, the ticket is running at about 9% in the Real Clear Politics Average of national polls, with Clinton at 42%, Trump at 38%, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 3.5%. The fact that the unknowns Johnson and Stein are combining for one-eighth support speaks volumes to what an unusual year this is.

Before tackling the “is it possible” question, let me quickly share some of Johnson’s policy positions:

Gary Johnson on the issues:

• He’s socially liberal. Johnson believes in a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage and legalization of marijuana. He believes in protecting the environment but doesn’t want Washington to pick winners and losers in the process.
• He’s fiscally conservative. Johnson wants to dramatically reduce the size of government and simplify the tax code while lowering the tax burden.
• On national security, Johnson believes in an impregnable national defense but is against putting boots on the ground on foreign soil.
• On job creation, Johnson wants to simplify and lower taxes while decreasing regulations that hamper job growth.
• He’s fairly liberal on immigration. He intensely dislikes the idea of a wall on the border, preferring to create a more efficient system to provide work visas, conduct background check and get non-citizens to pay taxes.

You can see a lot more of Johnson’s and Weld’s issues positions on their website.

Personally, I think Johnson’s a little weak on illegal immigration but I’ll take that over “build a wall and have Mexico pay for it.” As a socially liberal Republican, his positions align with mine, as do his fiscally conservative positions. Johnson likes to say that most Americans are Libertarians but just don’t realize it. On the issues, for me as a Republican, he’s just fine compared to the alternatives. I’ll be honest, though. If Johnson had run as a Republican, he probably wouldn’t have made my top ten. He’s really, REALLY goofy. He doesn’t “look” like a president. But he also appears honest, trustworthy and sincere. In a beggars can’t be choosers environment, I’ll take Johnson’s goofiness over Clinton’s corruption or Trump’s bombast and lack of preparation.

The biggest question now is this: is it even remotely possible that Gary Johnson could pull the upset of the century and actually become the president? The answer of course is probably not but let me explain how it could happen.

The key is for Johnson and Weld to get into the presidential and VP debates. This is the #1 thing that Johnson always says is essential to any path to victory. According to criteria set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a candidate must have an average of 15% support in a an average of five national polls (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN) in order to appear on stage with Trump and Clinton (the first one is in a month on September 26th). Sitting at 9% in the polls, getting to 15% is a steep climb and probably not realistic in such a short time frame. But as he’s been inching closer to the magic number, Johnson is getting more and more media attention. He’s doing televised town halls and now often appears on all three cable networks. National TV ads have started to run.

The challenge is that the system is rigged against any third party candidate and it’s the media that is doing the rigging. When you watch reports on the latest polls, most of the time the report focuses solely on the top two candidates as if the others didn’t exist. Yesterday, when a Quinnipiac poll was released, Fox News had a banner headline saying “Clinton tops 50% in new poll.” Other networks followed suit later in the day. Well, the truth is that, when the respondents were given a binary choice, 51% chose Clinton and 41% chose Trump. But it’s not a binary choice and, in the same poll, when given all four options, Hillary was at 45%, with Trump at 38%, Johnson at 10% and Stein at 4%.

Johnson is already on the ballot in 43 states and likely to get to all 50. Stein and many others will be on multiple ballots. So Hillary Clinton is definitely NOT the choice of more than half of the population. That’s fundamentally dishonest. To be fair, more and more media reports include Johnson and Stein but every time they don’t, there’s a disservice being done to the first legitimate third party contender in 24 years.

The fact is that there is a true thirst for an alternative to Trump and Clinton. In the aforementioned Quinnipiac poll, 37% of the respondents said they were open to a third party candidate and two thirds of those who said “yes” said so because they hate Trump and Clinton. Of those who said “no,” more than half said that they weren’t open to it because it would be a “wasted vote,” certainly a valid point of view. Others were afraid that a third party vote would have the unintended side effect of helping the candidate they hate the most.  That’s a legitimate fear: in 2000, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader took enough votes from Al Gore in the state of Florida to deliver the state (and thus the presidency) to George W. Bush. It’s not quite as crystal clear as 2000, but a strong case can be made that the presence of Ross Perot in 1992 delivered the White House to Bill Clinton over Bush’s father.

The key finding from this Q-poll is this: even with 68% of the respondents saying they had “never heard of” Johnson, 62% of them said that he should be included in the debates. So if Johnson can inch close to the magic “get in the debates” number of 15%, media coverage will follow, more people will know who he is, and the process will feed onto itself. If he’s close to 15% but not close enough and is thus excluded from the September 26 debate, that in itself will be a news story and may give him the boost to get Weld into the VP debate and himself into one or both of the October debates.

So, let’s imagine that Gary Johnson actually makes the debate stage with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Would that be enough to propel him from third-tier into a legitimate contender? There is no way to know this of course; history would say “no” as Perot was on the stage with Clinton and Bush in 1992. But this is a different year entirely. Bush was a respected sitting president; Clinton was a charismatic and charming newcomer. The two current candidates are intensely disliked and distrusted.

Imagine, after another four to six weeks of negative campaigning and insult hurling, all of sudden you watch a debate and here’s a third option. He’s a little goofy but he appears to be honest and sincere. You learn that he served two terms as a Governor. You hear that he’s socially liberal and fiscally conservative, that he supports a strong national defense but doesn’t want to engage in nation-building overseas. For young voters (the most dissatisfied voting block and most open to another choice), Johnson’s support for lower taxes, no foreign wars and marijuana legalization and might just be your cup of tea. Just one appearance on the debate stage would fuel dozens of media appearances, newspaper headlines and magazine covers. Could the race shift overnight? Again, it’s not likely but if it were ever to happen, this would be the year. Remember, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has promised the release of “bombshell” emails relating to Clinton, the current front-runner.

Even if he makes the debate stage (or stages), the odds of Johnson zooming past the two major candidates is microscopic. I would say that in the more likely of the extremely unlikely scenarios is that the rocketing Johnson campaign picks off a few states and sends the election into the House of Representatives. Let me explain: this hasn’t happened since 1824. The presidential election gets thrown into the House if and only if no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes (the number is 270). So Johnson would need to pick off enough states from Trump and (more importantly) Clinton to keep both under 270. Since the electoral college inherently favors Clinton, it would be important to for Johnson to win blue states. The best candidates would be Colorado, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Oregon and Johnson’s home state of New Mexico. These are all states with a Libertarian bent that would otherwise likely go to Hillary.

Now, in this dream scenario, the House chooses the next president but it’s done state-by-state, not congressman by congressman. That means that Wyoming gets as many votes as California. Remember, the Constitution was written when there were only 13 states and were of relatively equal size (at least when compared to today). Since the Republicans have a huge edge in state delegations, Hillary would be out. My guess is that, when given the choice between the controversial and erratic Trump and a two-term governor, the House delegations would go with Johnson.

Finally, let me address the issue that has many of my fellow Republicans bemoaning a “wasted vote” and that supporting a third party candidate would help Hillary Clinton ascend to the presidency. Here’s my response: this is a free country and I have no obligation to support the standard bearer of my party. Donald Trump is unprepared and unsuited for the presidency. Period. Also, I’ve seen a lot of polls and it seems to me that Johnson is drawing evenly between Hillary and Trump supporters so it’s unlikely he’ll be a spoiler as Nader was in 2000.

Now, if I were the last person in the U.S. to vote and it was up to me to choose between him and Hillary, I’d pick the Donald. But it’s not a binary choice. In California, our vote for the presidency doesn’t matter anyway. I’ll go with a protest vote as I did in the primary when I voted for John Kasich. Whether Trump wins or Clinton wins, I want to see them win with the weakest possible position, with the lowest percentage of the overall vote we’ve ever seen. Neither candidate deserves the mandate of a big win. So if you want to vote for Johnson or Jill Stein or Evan McMullin (an independent candidate who I like a lot but got in too late to get on enough state ballots), go for it.

Again, Gary Johnson is a real long shot, with not quite as steep odds as winning the lottery but a long shot nonetheless. And if you’re thinking right now that I’m over-sampling the product that Johnson wants to legalize, I get it. Actually, I’m enjoying some Pinot Grigio, not cannabis. OK, so it probably won’t happen. But in this wacky, crazy election year, maybe it could. It would be huge fun wouldn’t it?

Thanks for reading.

Chris Bodig