Noah Millman is "becoming increasingly convinced that Bob Barr’s candidacy could have a significant impact on the 2008 election." I agree -- between the GOP's collapse and resistance to Obamamania on the part of certain segments of the population, I feel like there's real room for a spoiler candidacy in 2008. What's more, the general pattern in American history is for a coalition's decay to call forth meaningful third party candidacies.
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The Barr Factor
21 May 2008 02:41 pm
Comments (34)
the general pattern in American history is for a coalition's decay to call forth meaningful third party candidacies.
I'm seeing Southern Dems soon to turn to the GOP going for Perot in 1992. But then, that kind of happened too with Wallace in 1972, right? Why didn't it happen in between? And I don't have a good sense of what happened with Anderson in 1980.
I don't know that much about Barr and what level of popularity he actually enjoys. Does anybody have a good feel for what group of voters he could realistically peel away?
Matt said that a coalition's decay calls forth meaningful third party candidates not that meaningful third party candidates are only called forth by a coalition's decay.
I think Matt was thinking in terms of the Wallace and Sturmond campaigns. Ross perot can also be seen in this light although Nader cannot.
Anderson in 1980 was a) liberal Republicans who really didn't like Reagan and what he stood for, and b) some liberal Dems and Independents who didn't like Carter and what he stood for.
One interesting question about Barr -- if he increases Obama's margin over McCain in the popular vote, but denies him an outright majority, would that hurt or help Obama? That is, is a new President Obama stronger after O:51 M:47 or after O:49 M:41 B:7? I'm leaving the totals below 100% for miscellaneous alternative candidate votes, BTW.
Matt,
Not sure about this... seems to me Barr is roughly from the same school of GOP outsiders McCain is from (the pseudo-libertarian rhino), mind you not exactly the same but a similar branch of Republican displeasure. It seems to me the only true breaking off faction of GOPpers is the Conservative Christian variety... and unless Huckabee decides to make a third party bid (he's got some money coming from me if he does) then I doubt it'll really make a ton of difference as far pealing off Republican voters goes. In fact the really pissed of right wingers who might have gone to Obama as a protest may find it more comfortable giving their vote to Barr instead.
I dunno. Lacks the name recognition and built-in devoted slave army that Nader did; lacks the money that Perot did. It would be nice, though.
That is, is a new President Obama stronger after O:51 M:47 or after O:49 M:41 B:7?
I don't think that it would matter much in terms of strength after being elected, but it terms of securing victory the second of those two scenarios would likely lead to a 1992 like landslide in the electoral college.
Am I correct that the convention wisdom is Barr's voters would pull more from McCain then Obama by significant margins?
Clinton won by landslides in the electoral college (even taking Montana), but rightwingers never stopped griping that he'd never won an outright majority.
It's important to note though that the MSM doesn't seem to really be all over this one.
rightwingers never stopped griping that he'd never won an outright majority.
Say it with me now:
"It. Just. Doesn't. Matter."
Now govern like you want to.
"I don't know that much about Barr and what level of popularity he actually enjoys. Does anybody have a good feel for what group of voters he could realistically peel away?
Posted by LFC | May 21, 2008 2:56 PM"
I hear he's popular with the human teat milk cheese-eating population.
JS, there's nothing even "pseudo-libertarian" about McCain. He might be the least libertarian prominent national politician, in terms of outlook and general disposition. The only stance he has that's remotely small-government-ish is the anti-earmarking stuff. Hell, he wanted a federal ban on ultimate fighting.
Given that most Dem voters only know Barr as the House leader for the Clinton impeachment, I think he'll have to get his votes from disaffected Repubs. So he's McCain's problem.
I think the potential is there for Barr to, in the end, get strictly the votes of those disgusted with the GOP who can't quite make themselves vote for the most viable alternative. Like most third-pary votes, it will be a passive-aggressive way of ending an incumbency.
If we're super-lucky, he could be what Anderson was on Election Day 1980. Anderson, it's often forgotten, arose from the GOP primaries, and, thanks to widespread moderate-GOPer dislike of Reagan, initially polled in the neighborhood of 20% as third-party candidate -- one reason why the Reagan/Carter race bounced around so much, poll-wise. As the day of reckoning drew near, however, most Pubs reconciled themselves to Reagan, and Anderson primarily served to drain unhappy liberals away from Carter. It didn't change the result, but it surely exaggerated Reagan's win (barely over 50%) into an electoral landslide that dazzled pundits and made Reagan into more of an electoral demi-god than he deserved to be. (1984 was of course a different story)
If Barr can draw 2-5%, he could swing a whole bunch of unlikely states Barack's way (a la how Anderson gave Reagan MA).
perot had a significant effect on the 1992 race because by keeping the spotlight on the deficit issue, he was able to prevent the GOP from mnaipulting the media into a slime/character driven assault on Clinton. 1992 really probably the last presidential election where actual issues were treated seriously - and when that happens it can only help the Democrats (one reason why it doesn't happen that often).
So regardless of whether Barr gets his support from nominal Repubicans or Democrats, he may have quite an impact on the campaign and the election just in terms of injecting and keeping issues in front of the voters. It would be harder for McCain to spend his time smearing Obama on trivialities if Barr's presence makes this an issues-based campaign.
rightwingers never stopped griping that he'd never won an outright majority.
Say it with me now:
"It. Just. Doesn't. Matter."
Now govern like you want to.
Posted by scythia | May 21, 2008 3:28 PM
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Obviously WJ Clinton acted on advice like yours and it worked real well for him in the 1994 elections. Do you really think he spent the next 6 years "governing like he wanted to"?
Re: seems to me Barr is roughly from the same school of GOP outsiders McCain is from
Barr is genuinely libertarian and anti-big government. McCain only plays at that identity, and on all the big questions (notably the war and civil liberties) he's about as libertarian as an old-time Russian tsar.
Obviously WJ Clinton acted on advice like yours and it worked real well for him in the 1994 elections. Do you really think he spent the next 6 years "governing like he wanted to"?
You've totally missed my point. I don't have time to write a coherent version of this up now, but...oh god, I'm gonna take flack for this...the proper model is Dubya and his 1% mandate.
But before you start to flame, let me pose this question:
Obviously WJ Clinton acted on advice like yours
Any evidence of this? I'm being serious here, I don't remember politics well from '93. (Don't say health care; it's worth no points and it's more of an example of what not to do viz-a-viz frame control.)
I repeat what I said yesterday - Barr can also suck independent voters from Obama - and if an Iran war starts, Obama is going to need all the help he can get to beat McCain the "war hero".
Ah, fuck it...what I just wrote made even less sense. Let me try to sum it up:
When someone questions your legitimacy and you debate them, you validate the notion that your legitimacy is in question. The proper response is dismissal, which, assuming you control the media of discourse (which a Pres-Elect Obama certainly would) marginalizes not only your opponents' arguments, but your opponents themselves.
Gotta beat rush hour! More on this later, if you wanna go deeper.
The last meaningful 3rd party candidates I can think of are Perot and Nader. What coalitions were decaying at that time? (In some marked way.)
When Perot ran, the majority of the public didn't believe either the Republicans or Democrats represented them and close to 70% in some polls wanted a third party.
It is true that new parties generally emerge when coalitions decay. Even when TR's Progressive Party formed, it happened with half of the Republican Congressmen jumping ship. The thing that has prevented this from happening already are restrictive laws put in place in the 20th century and the domination of money in the process that make it very difficult to start a new party. When I worked in the Reform Party, I know that some Congressmen expressed interest in joining, but because of the legal and monetary and media access situation they thought it would be political suicide.
The Republican and Democratic parties have been stinking corpses for a while (thanks for the metaphor Ahmedinejad).
Except the only problem in this situation is that if there's a new conservative coalition that's Libertarian, and a new liberal coalition that's Green, there's still nothing left to represent the vast majority people that are moderates--nor other elements in these parties like social conservatives. Instead the picture forms of a great number of splinter coalitions.
Because of this what usually happens when political realignments happen in the US is two new major parties form. The Libertarians are not going to become a major party, they probably have a ceiling of 15-20% no matter what type of viability they're given (sorry, Libertarians).
Ha ha - Do people really think conservatives are going to vote for John McCain? All the kings horses and all the kings mens couldn't put the Republican Party back together again.
Its not going to happen, regardless of all the wishful thinking. Conservatives have been voting for the lessor of two evils for 20 years and they are sick of it. This year its voting for the lessor of two liberals and well you'll see.
Bob Barr should get a huge majority of Social Conservatives, Fiscal Conservatives, Libertarians, Ron Paul Republicans and anti-NAFTA industrial state Democrats, not to mention the old Reagan Democrats.
The Democrats and Republicans have caused the havoc our country is now in. Never ending war, $4.00 plus a gallon gas, housing busts, the dollar dropping causing inflation, an out of control Federal Reserve, lost civil liberties, and all sorts of crazy overspending. Healthcare is shot now because we have no large employers left in this country to pay for it, and now they want to socialize it just like the post office.
Are you kidding me - Americans are fuming mad!!
It’s quite possible that Barr will get double digits in Georgia. The reason that he’s no longer in Congress is a redistricting push (the Democrats’ last gasp) that put him up against more buttoned-down conservative John Linder. This means Barr has campaigned in two different districts, gaining increased name recognition with voters. For the past few years,he’s been writing a column for the Atlanta Constitution and he comes across as much more thoughtful than he did in his Clinton-bashing days. With black Georgians making up 30 percent of the electorate, Obama could have a field day.
When are you guys going to wake up and realize that the third candidate will be Hillary Clinton?
She's not angling for 2012. She's not trying to win this year. She is out to prove that you just don't mess with the Clintons.
Because Obama is a black man with a foreign-sounding name, the Clintons are confident they can take him down, and they believe he deserves it for crossing them. Simple as that. Not much analysis needed.
For what it's worth, I think McCain will win and the Clintons will therefore succeed. Obama's electoral vote coalition is fragile enough in the first place, it won't take much for Hillary to ruin it for him.
N.D., I think you underestimate just how hard current campaign 'reforms' have made it, and not at all by accident, to run as an independent. Hillary might want to take Obama down, but she's not going to do it by being on the ballot this November.
"I'm seeing Southern Dems soon to turn to the GOP going for Perot in 1992."
Perot got his lowest percentages in the southern states in both 1992 and 1996. He did best in the West and the states along the Canadian border. In fact, his 1992 vote is closely correlated with Anderson's 1980 vote.
Perot's worst demographic was "Southern Dems" if this means how it reads and you include Southern African-Americans. You probably meant white Southern Dems, but Perot didn't do well with this group either.
In fact, Perot's actual impact seems to have been the exact opposite of what you stated. In 1968 - 1972, alot of white Southern Democrats, and some white working class ethnics, voted for Wallace and then for Nixon. Many of these voters voted for Carter, then for Reagan in 1984 and have been Republican at the presidential level ever since. White southerner's were the most loyal Republican voters in 1992. They went over to the Republicans on the Congressional side in 1994, but this had more to do with an unusual large number of retirements among Southern Democratic congressmen that year than Perot.
Except for Carter's election in 1976, starting with 1968 Democratic presidential candidates struggled to get past 43%. Clinton broke this barrier with 49% in 1996, and the Democratic presidential vote has remained in the 48% to 49% since then. Perot's support seems to have been disprortionately from Western and Northern voters in the Republican coalition who were upset over GHW Bush agreeing to tax increases. This was a part of the Reagan coalition that was not attracted to the party over "social issues" (which I think is a code word for race).
The above is not contradicted by post 1992 election polls showing Perot voters splitting evenly between Bush and Clinton, if Perot hadn't run. First, all polls taken on how people claim to have voted right after presidential elections have exaggerated the winner's percentage. Second, many of these voters did wind up voting for Clinton in 1996. So Perot seems to have acted as a vehicle, but from the Republican presidential coalition to the Democratic coalition, sort of a George Wallace in reverse.
The larger point is that in the twentieth century these third party presidential candidacies served as vehicles for members of the two presidential coalitions to temporarily cast a protest vote against their parties' usual candidates. Sometimes these voters continued migrating into the other coalition. The confusing part is that the two presidential coalitions don't necessarily match up with party ID or with the congressional coalition (the remaining members of the Republican presidential coalition who still ID as Democrats are voting for Hillary), nor are they held together by a coherent set of stances on issues. Third parties can't get traction because the presidency is what counts, and if who becomes president is going to be the focus of your system of government, everyone is going to line up into two loose coalitions.
Outside Georgia, Barr's ultimate percentage will depend on how many voters there are who usually vote Republican but want to cast a protest vote this time. If this number is low he won't do well, if he is high and he isn't in the race they might well find another vheicle.
Where is Barr going to get the money it would take to introduce himself to a large enough sector of the populace to actually make an impact on the election? The whole conversation about his candidacy is taking place in the hyper-tuned-in political media, but Joe Schmoe has no idea who Barr is. A third-party candidate that (relatively) no one has heard of needs a lot of money to make any inroads, and I don't see that happening for Barr.
I can't speak for others, but as an anti-war libertarian/Ron Paul repub, there is no way in hell I'm voting for a pro-war authoritarian like McCain (or Clinton, for that matter). In a two-man race, it would be a no-brainer -- I'm with Obama. With Barr in the race, I might need to make a decision.
I don't really know if other libertarians feel the same way, but I would caution against assuming a Barr run is only stripping votes from McCain.
One could go further back in history and look at Theodore Roosevelt's challenge to Taft giving the White House to Wilson, or even the emergence of the Republicans in the late 1850s. I don't think we've changed so much that those principles couldn't still apply.
I think Barr is in it for the money. He saw Ron Paul's receipts and wants to attract as many of his supporters as possible to pad his pockets. Personally, I supported Paul and would rather sit this one out than support Barr. Obama is probably to the right of McCain economically, and he won't spread the war on terra, so I'd be compelled to hold my nose and elect him to block McCain.
To the poster above, no one is stupid enough to get involved in a campaign in order to benefit financially on a personal level. Aside from the unhealthy dose of cynicism required to even speculate such a thing, it's just not a realistic scenario at all. A more reasonable conclusion would be that he saw the resonance of Paul's message (successful campaign funding obviously being a big part of that) and decided that this was a serious opportunity to get a libertarian message in the national debate and not seeing anyone else with the credibility to get it out there (since Paul made it clear he isn't interested in running as a third party and every other LP candidate is a dud) he stepped up himself. He's got my vote for sure but I don't see him hurting McCain much at all. Sure he'll probably take some votes away from McCain, but not significantly more than he'd take away from Obama. Independents like me are going to be Barr's base.
Bob Barr will get votes from a few areas. One of them being Libertarians, another being people who aren't convinced in Obama's approach to foriegn policiy (remember him talking about bombing pakistan in the debates?) What's left of the Libertarian wing of the republican party will probably get behind Bobby, A large percentage of the Paulites will come out, if for nothing else to support a candidate outside of the mainstream. I think most of the "conservatives" that hate McCain, most of them being of the religious variety will not vote for Barr. Once they look into the Libertarian platform and see we don't believe in dictating morality they'll probably go to the constitution party or stay home.
[The last meaningful 3rd party candidates I can think of are Perot and Nader. What coalitions were decaying at that time?]
1992 marked the beginning of the end for the Cold War coalition. Some conservatives, like Buchanan, led the charge. Buchanan did run against Bush in the primary. There was also a lot of concern about Bush's handling of the economy. Junior's handling of the economy has been much worse. $4 a gallon gas, that will very likely be over $5 a gallon by election day, is only one example. We are also in a no-win war in Iraq, for no reason.
The Bush's have destroyed the GOP. Barr will do quite well.
Comments closed June 04, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
What on earth does this mean?
"the general pattern in American history is for a coalition's decay to call forth meaningful third party candidacies."
The last meaningful 3rd party candidates I can think of are Perot and Nader. What coalitions were decaying at that time? (In some marked way.)
Posted by lampwick | May 21, 2008 2:52 PM