During the most difficult days of the presidential campaign of 1912, it might have been said that a vote for valiant Teddy Roosevelt, who never had a snowball’s chance and even got shot in the chest running as the Bull Moose candidate, was actually a vote for the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.
After all, Roosevelt’s compelling presence drew support away from William Howard Taft, a bathtub of a Republican incumbent who had concluded by election time that no one liked him anymore and that the president’s job was basically to increase the gate receipts at expositions and to lure tourists.
Roosevelt eventually healed, Taft moaned, and Woodrow Wilson won with 42 percent of the vote.
Bull Moose Teddy got 27 percent of the vote and the hapless Taft collected just 23 percent.
It remains the high-water mark of third party political performance on the American presidential stage. People still try, but they are almost always cast as spoilers, no matter how noble, or ignoble, their cause.
Dixiecrats united in 1948 in protest of the Democratic Party’s decision to slither into the 20th Century on questions of race–and got 2 percent of the vote for their candidate, Strom Thurmond. Tapping still-simmering Southern resentment in 1968, George Wallace collected 13.5 percent of the vote in 1968 for the American Independent party.
Centrists turned to John Anderson as an alternative third party hopeful in 1980 after he bolted the Republican Party, tightly sewn up by Ronald Reagan. Anderson got 7 percent of the vote.
H. Ross Perot, as homespun and down-to-earth a billionaire as has ever tried to buy an election, started his own Reform Party, gabbed his way into history and got a very respectable 19 percent of the vote in 1992 and 8 percent in 1996.
The thought in some circles was that Perot took votes away from the Republican ticket and helped elect Democrat Bill Clinton, although there are those who argue he stripped about an equal number of votes away from each side.
In each case, it might have been argued that a vote for one of those third-party candidates was really a vote for someone else.
It happens in every presidential contest, particularly presidential contests in which there are determined third-party efforts. This time around, it’s Ralph Nader with the Greens and Pat Buchanan with, well, call it the Buchanans for want of a more illustrative description that won’t offend the non-Pat Reform Party people.
These interlopers create what might be called a “ghost politics agenda,” an argument that a vote is not really what it seems.
In Evanston just last weekend, a collection of teenagers went on a political ramble looking for lawns that might be friendly to Ralph Nader Green Party signs. They planted a couple, but, in predominantly Democratic and overwhelmingly liberal Evanston, more than once they heard: “I respect Ralph Nader, but a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for George Bush.”
Do the math.
Nader draws liberal support. Gore needs liberal support. Vote for Nader, who is not going to win, and in a close election, you might as well be voting directly for George W. Bush.
The Gore people are so well aware of this problem that they started a deliberate campaign for the final weeks of the contest to convince likely Nader voters that they should really support Gore, even if they respect and admire Nader’s record.
Without question, someone in some comfortable, conservative Republican suburb is doing the same kind of mental math on the Buchanan question.
He is most certainly a fire-breather, and that kind of talk appeals to bile-driven right wingers. They also know that George W. is the Republican on the ticket and needs every vote he can get in Illinois.
In that formula, a vote for Buchanan is a vote for Al Gore, so don’t do it.
But it’s an idea that can be parlayed into other tradeoffs.
Late one recent night, close to closing time at a bar on Elston Avenue in Chicago, a musician and former divinity student explained that he had decided to swap his vote with a friend who lives down South.
A good Democrat at heart, he didn’t like Gore in the first place and had no time for George Bush, but he will cast his vote for Gore in Illinois, just to help his friend make a point, even though he really wants to vote for Ralph Nader.
What kind of point?
The North Carolina friend argued that a vote for Gore in Illinois is more important than it is in North Carolina.
Even though a vote for Ralph Nader probably doesn’t mean anything in North Carolina, she agreed to vote for Nader in North Carolina if her Chicago friend votes for Gore here. She gets to say she helped Gore in a state where he needed help, and the musical guy gets to say he actually voted for Nader, just not here.
Think of it as national vote-bartering.
It’s not a bad idea.
Say you are an Illinois Republican who recognizes that Bush is unlikely to carry this state. Call a friend who is likely to stay home in some more marginal place and persuade him to cast your vote for Bush there in exchange for the promise of casting a vote for your friend in Illinois at some future date. It could work for Gore too. Maybe you know someone in Florida who is likely to stay at home. Persuade her to go vote for Gore.
Presidential elections are really 50 little state elections held at the same time. Electoral votes determine who wins, not the popular vote.
It’s a way to expand your influence beyond your turf.
It’s also pretty cynical, a problem that already infects enough of American politics.
Come Election Day, perhaps it’s best to believe that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for Ralph Nader, no matter where it is cast.
The same holds true for any other vote.
Winners win, and losers lose on their own.
