With six months until the election, it's still too early to tell whether Democratic-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be more than a spoiler.
He initially received about 10 percent of the vote and is one of the most recognizable figures in American politics. At the very least, it's enough to ponder whether he'll be a third-party candidate who will leave a lasting mark.
Even if they have not been elected president, third-party candidates have often played an important, even healthy, role in American politics.
They can raise new issues, represent marginal constituencies, and sometimes even win large numbers of votes. Since the rise of the two-party system, six third-party candidates have won each state or reached double digits in the national vote. This could be more than just a spoiler.
Polls indicate that many of the conditions for a successful third-party candidacy may be in place. Voters hate both candidates. They have been dissatisfied with the current state of the country for two decades, but for most of the election cycle the focus has not been on solutions to the problems, which has been customary for many years. It's enough to wonder if this is the first time since 1992 that a third-party candidate has gained any meaningful foothold.
To understand the Kennedy campaign, it's worth considering how similar types of third-party bids have been able to gain traction or fail to garner traction in the past. For clarity, I have categorized third-party candidates into three groups that Kennedy plausibly reflects. These groups are not mutually exclusive. Historically, many candidates exhibit characteristics from multiple categories, and Kennedy is no different. Additionally, the taxonomy applies primarily to temporary third-party bids like Mr. Kennedy's, not to campaigns by established small parties (such as the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, or the Constitution). These categories may help Mr. Kennedy understand what it will take to be more than just a spoiler in this election.
athletic candidate
Every now and then, a new set of issues and issues emerges to the forefront of American politics, but the major political parties are not in a position to address them. In these cases, new issues do not map neatly onto existing political coalitions. They are so orthogonal to normal political divisions that it can be extremely painful and even divisive for political parties to try to counter them. There may even be a danger that the major political parties will split when the issue arises, as in the future of slavery in the 1850s (the Whigs no longer exist).
When important issues remain unresolved, third-party candidates often come forward to bring them to the forefront. Historically, these third parties tend to be temporary. Their problems fade, either because things have improved or because the major political parties have finally done enough to meet their demands. (A notable exception was the run-up to the Civil War.) But these movements look and feel like major third parties until they fade away. They usually for Whether it's free silver or deficit reduction, something that has a lot of support, something big.
It takes quite special circumstances for such a third-party movement to emerge. Usually when neither political party is able to meet the demands of the movement. This was routinely the case from the end of Reconstruction until the Great Depression, when the two-party system was still defined by the legacies of the Civil War and slavery rather than the immense challenges posed by industrialization. Outside of the Progressive Era, both parties are usually led by relatively conservative factions, with frequent progressive, populist, and socialist candidates seeking to subvert corporate power and protect workers and farmers. This created an opportunity for the event to take place. These campaigns often gained considerable support until the rise of the New Deal brand of modern liberalism, which, combined with postwar affluence, largely satisfied the issues and constituencies of the time.
Since the rise of the liberal Democratic Party, such progressive, outsider candidates have become less common. Instead, the recent third-party movement has emerged from a populist right that was alienated from the emerging liberal Democratic Party but had no comfortable home within the classically liberal and elite Republican establishment. That opened the door for nationalist conservative populists, from George Wallace to Ross Perot, who appealed to Democrats and Republicans alike. There are echoes of these campaigns in Donald J. Trump, who may ultimately represent the ultimate consolidation of their demands into a reshaped populist Republican Party.
Kennedy doesn't fit that particular mold, but could he lead a different third-party movement? On paper, the possibilities are good. Both parties lack credibility on spending and debt, which can contribute to inflation and high interest rates. Neither party focuses on the various crises such as isolation, obesity, homelessness, addiction, and mental illness, which do not fit into the usual left-right divide and which touch every material aspect of American life. It can be just as important as the task.
The campaign has just begun, and it seems premature to declare that Mr. Kennedy cannot be the campaign's candidate. He has already talked about some of these issues, but this is not a complete list of plausible opportunities for vigorous third-party bidding. Consider other issues such as childcare, education, and housing costs.
But Mr. Kennedy is not this candidate today. His argument does not put pressure on the major political parties based on tangible issues. Mr. Kennedy's policy agenda and political message are not particularly focused, so few people ask Democrats or Republicans if they support his claims. His anti-corporateism is expressed primarily in general terms. And despite the potential for a broader message, he is best known for his idiosyncratic views on vaccines (of which he has long been a critic and skeptic) and environmental protection, but for now These seem to cause disgust rather than fear on the part of the establishment.
factional opposition
There is another group of candidates whose demands are broadly consistent with the existing two-party system, but who leave regardless. It is sectarian opposition.
These candidates draw support from disaffected factions of the major political parties.In many cases, it is the major political parties end Something that the group hates. Maybe the party is too focused on the center. Maybe that's going too far. In any case, dissatisfaction in one party tends to lead to rebellion and draw the bulk of support from that party. Content that may contain spoilers is written throughout.
These candidates are well known in an era of ideological, left-right partisan politics. There's Henry Wallace, who ran as a progressive in opposition to Harry Truman's hostility toward the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. Strom Thurmond and George Wallace are white supremacist Southerners who left the Democratic Party because of their support for civil rights. Then there was John Anderson, a liberal Republican who thought his party had moved too far to the right in 1980. More recently, Ralph Nader counted in 2000 (though his Green Party was an established small party), as did Evan Mamalin. The independent candidate ran for president in 2016 as a more or less traditional Reagan conservative, winning 21.5 percent of the vote in Utah.
Faction candidates usually don't do very well, and their performance worsens over time. Parties gradually became more ideologically consistent and opportunities for opposition to participate decreased. And as politics becomes more polarized, the risk of “wasting” one's vote and allowing another party to win increases.
Is Mr. Kennedy a sectarian opponent? He appears that way at first. But while he was a Democrat at the start of his campaign, he does not represent the Democratic opposition, which is deeply resentful of President Biden and the party's mainstream. He's not criticizing Biden on the Gaza Strip, for example. In fact, he takes pro-Israel positions. His main criticism of Democrats is not that they are too centrist. His most prominent views on vaccines aren't really tied to criticism of Biden and his Democratic Party. This is not another Ralph Nader.
Candidates in protest
Almost by definition, almost all small-party candidates benefit from protest voters, people who vote for third-party candidates because they don't like the major-party candidates or politics as usual. ing.
But recently, relatively prominent third-party candidates have emerged who appear to be drawing support almost exclusively from protest voters, not because voters want to send a message on the issue. .
This is a relatively new phenomenon. Believe it or not, the 2016 presidential election marked the first time in the polling era that both candidates were viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters. As a result, 2016 Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson could become the first notable candidate to win a largely empty protest vote. He received 3.3% of the vote, but there is little evidence that most of those voters were libertarian or willing to show support for his message. In contrast, voters who disliked both candidates but chose Jill Stein or Evan McMullin were more clearly accepting of ideological critiques of their usual party candidates.
Of all the categories so far, this applies most to Mr. Kennedy. At the start of the campaign, he is a well-known candidate who is not Biden or Trump. If this is all Mr. Kennedy has to prove, his support will likely decline steadily as the campaign continues. (Johnson had nearly 10% support in the summer of 2016.)
One of the things Mr. Kennedy expects from him is that he is one of the most famous figures in politics. His broad anti-business, anti-bureaucracy, anti-establishment appeal may naturally resonate with voters who tend to dislike both parties and candidates.
Historically, there's not much reason to expect candidates like this to be anything more than potential spoilers. But perhaps the growing number of voters dissatisfied with American politics gives such candidates a better chance of success today. These kinds of small-party candidates may be new, but they may be with us for a long time to come. Perhaps we have not yet seen the strongest of them.
