The Feudal Future Podcast . Hello and welcome to another episode of the Feudal Future Podcast . I'm Marshall Toplansky , I'm Joel Kotkin and today we are delighted to have two eminent guests to talk about the role of third party politics in the upcoming election . First we have Professor John Compton , who is chair of the political science department at Chapman University .
His specialty is the role of religion in politics and his book the End of Empathy , by Oxford University Press , is a tremendous work in this area . And we're joined by Mike Barone , longtime pundit and observer of American politics , senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute and author of the Almanac of American Politics .
Gentlemen , welcome , Well , thanks for having me .
Joel , you want to kick us off ? Sure . The first question is we have the possibility of several third party candidacies . Do you think it's going to have any impact ? I mean , we're in an election where you have arguably the worst choices for president in a century . Will third parties make a difference , or are they still marginal ?
Well , I should add to your generous introduction that I'm the senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner these days and I think there's a potential impact . I mean , you have something like 20% of the electorate are composed of what some call double haters .
People would have negative feelings towards the 45th president , Donald Trump , and negative feelings towards the 46th president , Joe Biden , and so you know there's the possibility of people migrating to a third party candidate casting protest votes , a third-party candidate , of casting protest votes .
It's a little hard to see how you could have a candidate who could be competitive in the national popular vote or in determining the electoral vote of , you know , winning the electoral votes of a particular state .
But there's certainly the possibility for a significant migration of votes , maybe as large as the 19% that ended up voting for Ross Perot in 1992 , even after he said that he had left the campaign for a while because the Bush was sending in the Air Force to strafe his daughter's wedding .
Before we get . I'd like to get John's take , but when you mentioned the impact on the electorate you're originally from Michigan . That seems to be the place where the third-party issue might become a determinant . I mean , you know more about Michigan than I do .
Well , people have taken a look at the fact that there's a large Arab American population and there's a large group of people who are of Palestinian descent or may identify themselves as such a larger percentage in Michigan than other states . It's not a huge percentage of the state . You're talking about 2% or something of the state population .
You also have as mainstays of the Democratic Party in Michigan these days big university towns . If you look at the highest , you know what's the county in Michigan that has the high , the significant county that has the highest Democratic percentage in the last election .
Well , it's not Wayne County , the home of Detroit and the old whole lot of people that find the ambiance of a university town congenial , and those people tend to be on the political left .
They may have some grievances with Joe Biden , in particular over the policy with respect to Gaza and Israel over the policy with respect to Gaza and Israel , but also possibly on other issues , and they may be in the market for another candidate . So Michigan's not the only state where university counties have been a mainstay of the Democratic vote .
There's vulnerability in other places too vote . There's vulnerability in other places too , including in Minnesota , which has the Somali population , but also a big university community in the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis .
John , what's your sense of this ? What's the role of third parties going to be in the upcoming election ?
Yeah , I think there's two ways of thinking about that question . And you know , on the one hand , this election is likely to be very close in terms of the popular vote . I'd be shocked if you know there was more than three or four points separating Trump and Biden at the end of the day .
And from that perspective , third parties could be very important , right ? I mean , the reason we still remember Ralph Nader and you know his Green Party bid in 2000 is because that election was very close , not because Ralph Nader got a huge share of the vote .
And something like that could very easily happen again this year , particularly when you think about the very limited number of states that are going to be really competitive and consequential in the electoral college . So from that perspective , rfk's bid could make a big difference , for example .
But thinking of it , you know , in the big picture , in terms of a vote share , I'd be really shocked if RFK or any other third-party candidate approaches Ross Perot's total from 1992 .
I mean , I'd personally be surprised if anyone you know , if RFK or whoever gets 5% of the vote or more than 5% of the vote , because I have to think , when push comes to shove , that the two parties are going to get the bulk of the vote share which is not going to leave a ton left for third-party candidates .
One of the things I found interesting is I thought the RFK candidacy was certainly intriguing , but it just seems that since he's now selected in ATM as vice president , that do you think that that is a sign of his weakness and inability to come up with any kind of consistent message ? The vice presidential choice was bizarre beyond belief .
Well , it's gee , I don't know . Nicole Shanahan would appreciate you saying that , joe .
I'm not rich enough to be of interest to her .
Well , you know , he hasn't gotten on many statewide state balances yet and of course that can be a money-intensive operation , intensive operation , and so having a vice presidential candidate who can write checks in more or less an unlimited amount is obviously an asset . It's been happened before . The Libertarian Party in 1980 nominated a man for president Ed Clark .
But the real ATM for that machine was David Koch , one of the Koch brothers recently deceased , who was nominated as their vice presidential candidate and basically financed their campaign . That didn't affect the outcome .
But you know , rfk does not have regional base like some candidates , third-party candidates George Wallace , who got electoral votes from a number of states 13% of the national vote but did not send the election into the House of Representatives , although you can make hypotheticals , changing just a few votes and get that result , 1968 .
You have Bob LaFollette in 1924 , carries Wisconsin , comes close to carrying Minnesota , north Dakota , the old Germanos , scandinavian America , as I call it , but was not dispositive because Calvin Coolidge won that election by a wide margin . Which won that election by a wide margin ?
But you know , the real question is , can an RFK Jr be a major factor in , as Theodore Roosevelt was a nose out , one of the major party candidates for the number two position . Theodore Roosevelt won 88 electoral votes in 1912 . He came pretty close to winning about 180 . I did a little exercise of that the other day . It came within a few percent .
But even if he had done so , he would not have defeated the Democratic nominee , woodrow Wilson , in that three presidents race where former President Roosevelt was running against incumbent President Taft and future President Wilson . That was you know . Could RFK Jr do something like that ?
And since some disqualifying health factor for either of the two candidates , major party candidates ? I think the answer is no .
Well , that's a tactful way of saying it some disqualifying health event . The question I would have is what is the threat of discontent that would be driving a move at all toward a third party , and is it in fact age and health related ?
Well , it's certainly an age problem on the part of Joe Biden . There's no question about that . People see him as a as as a person who is really too old for the job , really too old for the job . We just had tragic deaths .
I have a view of former Senator Joe Lieberman , born in the same year as Joe Biden , some months earlier at the age of 82 , after a fall , which reminds us that somebody who was very active in the political process , who was part of this no-labels group which was contemplating a third-party candidacy , had a health incident and is sadly no longer with us .
So you have Mr Biden at 81 . Donald Trump will turn what ? 78 ? In June , and it's you know those of us who remember that Ronald Reagan was thought to be too old to seek another term at age 73 . He would have been a young whippersnapper to the two major party nominees .
But is it ? Is it age that is driving the move toward third party interest at all , john , or is it some other factor in the American zeitgeist that has people upset ?
Yeah , I mean , I think on the Democratic side it's largely age upset . Yeah , I mean , I think on the Democratic side it's largely age . You know , if you look at the current polls , which are kind of all over the place in terms of third party support , you know Kennedy's numbers are , like you know , ranging from 5% .
You know the high teens in some polls and if you look at who's backing him it seems to be kind of low information Democrats or people who are not happy with Biden for various reasons and maybe not super familiar with RFK Jr , but they know the Kennedy name . I think that's kind of what may explain the strong poll numbers and again , I think that may fade .
But on the bigger question of when third party movements really tend to get rolling , I think there are kind of two ways it can happen . One is if there's some movement or issue that's not being addressed by the two parties , some issue they don't want to touch or some position they don't want to take . We mentioned George Wallace a second ago .
That was certainly the case , with neither party wanting to come out strongly against civil rights in 1968 .
There was a constituency for a candidate to do that , but the other time I think the other way that a third-party movement can have success in a presidential year is sometimes it's the opposite situation , where both parties are fairly , where voters don't see that much difference between the two parties .
I think that's more what we saw in 1992 with Ross Perot , where Clinton and George W Bush were both reasonably popular . Voters didn't see huge differences between the two and so they felt kind of safe in rolling the dice on Ross Perot , kind of safe and rolling the dice on Ross Perot . You know , this year not the case .
Both parties are , both nominees are relatively unpopular , comparatively unpopular in a historical perspective . So but at the same time the country is very polarized and that's why I think , at the end of the day , some of this you know , some of the strong polling numbers you're seeing for RFK and other potential third party bids are going to fade .
I think people will come back to their , their parties at the end of the day .
Is no labels now a debt issue ? Is that something that's not going to happen ?
Well , I've got . I've got email in my inbox , which I haven't read , from Nancy Jacobson , the head of no Labels .
It seems like they haven't been able to find a candidate and you know this number of people that were suggested former Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland he's running for the US Senate as a Republican instead of Maryland he's running for the US Senate as a Republican instead . And you know it's not clear . They're going to find a candidate who's well known .
And you know , I think , that the no labels movement has tended to look for a candidate that is more conservative on economic issues , more liberal on cultural issues and that if you divide the electorate into four quadrants based on their different views on cultural and economic issues , that quadrant of liberal on cultural issues , conservative on economic issues , that
quadrant of liberal on cultural issues , conservative on economic issues is the smallest quadrant in terms of number of voters that fall in there on the basis of their attitudes . I think Star FK Jr and , to a lesser extent perhaps Cornel West , if he becomes a ballot access , the green candidate , jill Stein , have the potential of campaigning on environmental issues .
We heard Robert F Kennedy Jr talk about that . He's for banning fracking entirely Well , I regard that as kind of a crazy issue . Well , I regard that as kind of a crazy issue .
And the Biden administration , which has been going to a considerable extent , including their latest EPA ruling designed to get us all to drive electric cars by 2032 , or two-thirds of new car sales to be electric cars , but they haven't gone so far as to ban fracking . So there's always environmental issues that a candidate like Kennedy can raise and raise .
You know , at least some groups of what John was talking about , the low informational , perhaps young , tilted towards the young age group of potential Democratic voters , may say hey , instead of voting for this old guy , we'll vote for the comparatively youthful RFK Jr , who actually is 70 years old himself actually is 70 years old himself .
That leads me to this other part of the quadrant , which may be bigger , which is people who may be economically more liberal but socially more conservative , and , john , that's your area of study . I mean , it's always astounding to me how many evangelicals support a moral reprobate like Donald Trump .
Is there any potential for that group , or do you think that Trump owns them ?
Yeah , I mean , I think we've kind of entered an era when politics is driving a lot of religion rather than religion driving politics , and I think at this point , trump has a pretty firm hold on the evangelical vote . I mean , I think a lot of people maybe misremember how things unfolded in 2016 .
And initially there was a lot of opposition to Trump and the evangelical community . You had a lot of prominent evangelicals who came out against him and obviously others Jerry Falwell Jr , the now disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr supported him , but there was initially a lot of opposition . But then when Trump got the nomination , everyone fell in line .
He famously won 83% of the evangelical vote .
And I really don't see any signs of that changing , particularly as long as Democrats don't radically change their stance on social issues , which seems very unlikely . I think Trump pretty well has that constituency locked up .
Both parties are going to an unusual degree , compared to previous elections , of pandering to these highly specialized points of view , whether it's an evangelical point of view , whether it's a DEI point of view , whether it's a ecologically driven point of view , there's more pandering that's going on without any substantive , real support underneath it for the particular
point of view . What's your sense ? Is this happening more frequently in today's society than it has in the past ? What do you guys think ?
Well , you know there's a sort of on most of the cultural issues and so forth , including trans issues where if you look at public opinion polls , he's very much in the minority . On and so forth .
His administration has taken what I consider to be the preposterous position that biological men who identify as women should be able to participate in women's sports , where they have obvious advantages that we've seen demonstrated in a number of venues . Is Donald Trump's stance on issues permanent or can he wobble on these ?
Well , on the abortion issue , for example , he's made statements which the right-to-life people might not necessarily like His pledge to support people supported by Leonard Leo , the Federalist Society , to the Supreme Court I don't know if that's still operative or not , and you know he has a long history of taking a variety of stands on issues .
But you know his constituency mostly , uh , doesn't seem to care . I mean , one of the arguments for Ron DeSantis uh , in the Republican primaries was look , donald Trump talks about doing things but didn't get a lot of these things done when he was president , didn't build the wall with Mexico completely , and so forth .
Desantis has shown Florida's governor the capacity to follow through and do things and take command of a government bureaucracy and make it fulfill its promises . That argument went over like a lead balloon with Republican primary voters .
They just didn't buy it and I think you know basically , the man I would give credit for Donald Trump's primary victories besides Trump himself is Alvin Bragg , the district attorney of New York County in Manhattan , who indicted him on March 30th just about a year from the taping of this podcast for what turns out to be a pretextual crime .
That was an astonishingly weak thing . At that point . The polling showed Trump 15 points ahead of DeSantis . With Trump under 50 percent and DeSantis at 29 percent Looked like it could be a race that could be seriously contested Within a couple of weeks . The next round of polls were taken . Trump's lead was 32 points . He was well over 50 percent .
He was re-nominated .
So Alvin Bragg , who was nominated by the Democratic Party to be Manhattan District Attorney by 8,828 votes in 2021 , may have certainly determined the outcome of the Republican primary and may have determined the outcome of the presidency , because I think what are considered to be unjustified , pretextual , unfair prosecutions of Donald Trump are what has really cemented the
loyalties of an awful lot of Republican voters to him . It would leave less room for a third-party candidate among discontented Republicans than perhaps exists on the left of discontented Democrats .
You know , the irony , john , is that the title of your book is the End of Empathy , and what Mike is saying is it was the empathy for Trump's travails that actually put him over the top . What's your sense of this ? Are we out of issue land now ? Is this just not a factor ?
You know I'm a big fan of the political science . Research that suggests that people most voters don't have really coherent or well thought out issue positions that they consistently apply when they're casting their ballots .
A lot of times people are drawn to a candidate or party for , you know , identity reasons or other reasons they can't fully articulate , and you know their explanations of their votes might talk about issues , but really it's just this more . You know innate attachment that they feel to a particular candidate and I think that's certainly what we see with Trump .
You know Trump's an example of a candidate who doesn't , you know you could say has a couple of core positions .
He's kind of anti-free trade , he's kind of isolationist on foreign policy , but otherwise his positions are either extremely vague or just all over the map and he'll change on a dime , like with his TikTok ban reversal , which may or may not have been money related .
Until they gave him options in the company and then he was suddenly very much Exactly .
Well , essentially it's something along those lines , but none of that really matters a lot to voters who like Trump , they like him , they like his style , they like it that he really sticks it to the Democrats and I think in that sense we really are beyond issues , and I think in that sense we really are beyond issues , no-transcript .
But they have a base that's just deeply , deeply attached to one candidate who can't really seem to focus enough on anything , any one particular issue , to actually advance policy . Democrats , on the other hand , have staked out positions , particularly on cultural issues , that are not really consistent with the base of the party .
If you look at , you know pulling on policing or you know mentioned trans issues earlier . The party's official stance or the stance of the Biden administration is , on a lot of these issues , not in line with , say , the average or median Democratic voter .
I was thinking the parties have two separate issues , but in both cases we're in a kind of weird environment where issues and voting preferences don't connect in quite the same way they did in the past .
Well , if you look at that spread of thought right of what you just brought up , where would be even the room for a third-party candidate to be in people's heads ? I mean , I think about Teddy Roosevelt in the Bull Moose era , right , there was kind of a there was a policy-related issue going on .
And he was a very charismatic figure too , and he was a very charismatic figure too , yeah .
And if you look at the , you know the Perot dissatisfaction period . There was dissatisfaction with the status quo . If you look at the libertarians , there was dissatisfaction with the status quo . Where is the headspace today for an RFK ? What piece of real estate mentally does he stake out that would actually give him a shot ?
I think maybe the initial rationale , so far as I could tell , was it was the he has this strong reputation as an anti-vaccination person , very skeptical of the medical establishment , um , and maybe this was , I think , a little bit similar to what the rationale for DeSantis was campaign was at the beginning , but the idea that Trump was too hawkish on COVID and
there might be space for someone there who , uh , who , uh , you know it was very anti lockdown or anti vaccines or whatever , um , but that seems to fade it a little bit , you don't ? You don't see much . I mean , you know , we know that Trump dispatched DeSantis pretty easily and we don't see much discussion of RFK in that context anymore .
At least he doesn't seem to be building a big following along those lines because , as we mentioned earlier , I think it's more kind of disaffected low information or younger Democrats who might be backing him . So I'm skeptical really that there is any space for anyone to build a viable , any issue space for anyone to build a viable third-party candidacy .
Yeah , Mike , what do you think about that ? Is there a space that RFK could stake out that has any hope of having enough appeal ?
to do something that's with the assumption that no labels is not happening Right .
Well , the space , I suppose , is the word , that's the weaknesses that are personal to each of the two major party candidates .
Biden , you know , is too old and in addition there's the , you know , the unleashed inflation or so it could be argued on people , on an American electorate which everybody under 40 had never experienced significant inflation in the past , but an acceleration of inflation . They don't like it , just as they didn't like it in the 1970s . So there's a weakness there .
Trump is arguably erratic and difficult , I think if you go back to 92 , when the Ross Perot candidacy , you had much achieved , all that he set up to achieve in his first term and at age 68 , was ready to retire and the voters gave him his wish and he settled into a very dignified , constructive retirement period without great regrets that he wasn't getting a
second term . Bill Clinton was relatively young , relatively untested , not known nationally and floundered and made some mistakes during his campaign and during his first years as president . He later learned from those mistakes and emerged as a much stronger candidate by the re-election time in 1996 and when the impeachment charges came up .
But there was perhaps an opening there for a guy like Ross Perot , a billionaire with a lot of name identification , but it's harder to do it as a third party , and I think we have Donald Trump who , in 2016 , could have done the third party thing . He could have run that , and why didn't he do so ?
I think the answer is that you know he had threatened to do so a number of times . He wasn't strongly linked to either party or had some links to both of them . Why didn't he do it ? I think he saw the Perot situation and he said that's not the way to win .
You know he was a billionaire with high name identification and he said take one of the major party nominations and go to town with it . And you know , uh , I can argue that that was not a good , smart thing for him to do .
But he might say , as a number of presidents have said to political reporters that said they didn't do the right thing , the president would say Michael , how many times have you been elected president of the United States ?
Plus , I won .
Yeah . And yes , Well , I was elected . Yeah and yes , Well , I was elected . Donald Trump would say twice .
And you know , I think that that assertion that he was the real winner gave him an advantage in the primary season of being of what an incumbent president usually has in seeking another nomination for another term , an advantage where they basically said we're loyal to our guy .
That was one of the things that was working for him to an extent that was greater than I had anticipated and shows that Donald Trump , for all his malapropisms and vulgar language and so forth , is actually a little bit better political strategist than I am .
Yeah , well , and it engendered that empathy that we talked about , right , the empathy with his victim role . Joel , you want to ? As we get a little close to our wrap up here , do you want to go for the last question ?
Yeah , I think what I'd like to get just a final read on from both of you is is this really a scenario where a third party could have made a difference , but the right people didn't come up and therefore we're stuck with these two awful candidates ? John , what's ?
your take . I think that's a great counterfactual . I mean , I can imagine a world where no labels or some other entity recruited a high-profile candidate very early on and that would have put , if nothing else that would have put tremendous pressure on the Democrats , I think , to decide whether they're really going to stick with Biden .
But I think it would have taken something like that a very big name getting in the race at a pretty early point and someone who could conceivably draw from both parties . And you know there was obviously talk about Joe Manchin or Mitt Romney or someone like that Larry Hogan . Yeah right , Larry Hogan jumping in .
I think any of those potentially could have made a difference , but I think it would have had to happen early on and I think at this point I think the electorate's pretty resigned to the fact that it's a Trump-Biden choice , or if they're not resigned to it , I think they're going to be resigned to it very soon .
So it's a little late in the game at this point , but I can't imagine a situation where it would have mattered .
Last word Mike .
Well , last word , you know we didn't have somebody that had a Trump-ish political profile . You know , liberal on economics , conservative on cultural issues . I think that would have been a strong . If you could have found a hypothetical candidate , a third candidate like that , it might have been successful .
I'm not sure that person could have gotten the no labels label If you had a 52-year-old Joe Lieberman instead of an 82-year-old Joe Lieberman . That's another possibility , a different possibility that might have come up .
But you know , the supply of billionaires who are very well known and who are eligible for the office Elon Musk having been born and not at a US national but in South Africa national not being eligible , limits the range of things and I think that again , it depends on you know there's a third party .
We can envisage a scenario where a third party candidate seems to deprive one of the major party candidates of the critical electoral votes Ralph Nader in Florida 2000 , even though gets a small percentage of the vote .
But to see a greater success by a third-party candidate , I think it depends on some deterioration , probably something in the nature of a health-related unhappy event occurring with one or both of the major party candidates . And you know , it's just a matter of civic consciousness .
That's not something that's really happened before in American history and I think , for a variety of reasons , we all hope that that does not happen again . So we shall see that that does not happen again , so we shall see .
Well , and I wonder how this will all play out .
We'll know within the next few months , and at the moment , what I'm summing up and hearing from both of you is that we're looking at a classic two-party race , not a third-party race third party race and of course the tragedy in some senses is , I think , as John mentioned , had you had a Larry Hogan in the race early on , that might have been a game changer .
But for whatever reason , our political system seems to function to just , you know , vomit up the worst possible alternatives .
Well as this plays out , we hope you stay tuned to the points of view that we've expressed here . Mike , thank you very much , John . Thank you , and thank you for tuning in to the Feudal Future podcast . The Feudal Future podcast .