We’re still 16 months from election day 2024 but there are already signs that this coming election will mimic many of the conditions that led to Donald Trump’s surprising victory in 2016.
The electoral college is looking almost exactly the same at this point, with red states staying red, blue states remaining blue, and toss-up states still being toss-ups. Beyond that, the dynamics of the race are similar to 2016 as well; both major candidates have approval ratings underwater and there’s great dissatisfaction with the major party choices.
This could lead to a third-party candidate drawing enough votes away from one candidate in critical states to hand the electoral college victory to either Trump or Biden. In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein won only a little over 1% of the vote nationwide, but her totals in battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — the three decisive states Trump flipped that year — exceeded Trump’s winning margin over Clinton.
This is what’s giving Democrats acid reflux and keeps them up at night.
This year, the Green Party is set to upend the race again. Philosopher and activist Cornel West is running for the nomination of the Greens, and no one is doubting that if he’s going to pull votes from any candidate, it will be Joe Biden.
West has vast name recognition and the media loves him. He’s always good for an incendiary quote now and then.
“Well, I think you’ll think Joe Biden contributed to a crime against humanity when he became the architect of the mass incarceration regime in the 1990s,” the former Harvard professor told the New York Post in an interview published Saturday.
West was referring to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which then-senator Biden of Delaware sponsored in 1994 that earmarked billions of dollars for prisons and the hiring of thousands of new police. “I’ve taught in prison for 41 years. And the the level of barbarity in our prisons has something to do with that crime bill that he [Biden] put forward,” West added.
West also said the quiet part out loud: “It’s very clear that his cognitive powers are in decline.”
What makes West far more of a threat to Biden is that he could “harness some of the liberal dissatisfaction with Biden’s presidency so far — particularly among otherwise solidly Democratic voting blocs,” according to Politico.
David Axelrod, former president Barack Obama’s chief strategist, was similarly worried. “In 2016, the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump. Now, with Cornel West as their likely nominee, they could easily do it again.”
Even if his national vote total doesn’t rise much above 1%, West’s showing in key battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania could tip the race to Trump.
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The other third-party threat comes from the possibility that the No Labels party will field their own candidate. Joe Manchin will headline an event in New Hampshire this week and is being prominently mentioned as a possible No Labels candidate for president.
Conventional wisdom says that Manchin would draw more votes from Trump. That may be so. But it’s not how many votes Manchin takes from Trump, it’s the states where he takes those votes. And don’t forget; Manchin is a prominent Democrat and has been for 40 years. The radical left may have given Manchin the back of its hand, but other Democrats might give him a look. In a close race in a battleground state, Manchin might pull enough Democratic votes from Biden to give a state or two to Trump.
The electoral college still favors Republicans despite the Democrat’s big-state advantage. Taking Manchin and West together, it’s easy to see why the Biden campaign is so stressed about a third-party candidate.
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