Politico.com reports Andrew Yang’s claim that he has had talks with the No Labels movement about becoming their Presidential candidate. However, his candidacy would be somewhat tentative, in that Yang says that he would not run if he thought it would increase the likelihood that Trump would win the election. He termed ‘a mistake’ the idea that the goal of a third party Presidential candidate is to win.
“The question presumes that the goal of any third party is to win a presidential election,” Politico quotes Yang as having said, “which is probably one of the mistakes [and] problems of the past.”
Hat Tip to Christopher Cole for this story. Readers of Independent Political Report can view the full article at Politico here.
The Forward Party does not have ballot access. The No Labels Parry has gained ballot access in a bunch of states and is working on ballot access in more states now.
@Gene,
Perot would have likely performed much better in ’92 had he not dropped out of the race over the summer. This made him appear to be not-serious, and caused a lot of people to vote for Bush or Clinton instead.
Didn’t Yang found the Forward Party? Why would No Labels be remotely interested?
“The question presumes that the goal of any third party is to win a presidential election.”
Since 1856, every President elected has been either a Democrat nominee or a Republican nominee. Only once since that time has another party candidate come in second nationally, so Andrew Yang is onto something here. A third party candidate who claims he can win will not be taken seriously, except possibly, if he has billions of dollars like Ross Perot, and makes people think he will spend it.
But even Ross Perot came in third nationally, only making second place in Maine and Utah.
All too many third party candidates have made claims that they can win the election. They do this because they think it will make people take their campaign seriously.
In reality, at this point, all third party campaigns for President are at best about getting protest votes. Sometimes, as in 2000 with Ralph Nader or 2016 with Gary John, millions are willing to cast protest votes. The best that can be done with protest votes is to convince the media that there are people out there who are unhappy.
A new party with resources and some members who are publicly known might aim for a higher goal – a large third place showing that included second place in some communities and some states.
The large protest votes in 2000 and 2016 reflect the unpopularity of Al Gore in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. Since Donald Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee in 2024, if No Labels runs an anti-Trump Republican like John Kasich, they might get a good protest vote from Republicans and center-right independents. If No Labels runs a Democrat who takes votes from Biden, we can see Democrats joining the crackdown on third party ballot access following the 2024 election.