2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Welcome to the forum!

[MichaelM24]

I'd like to see the evidence that the only reason RFK Jr. is running is to "ruin Biden."

First off, no one owes Biden anything. Democrats don't owe Biden their votes, nor should Biden just blindly expect all Democrats to vote for or support him. Many will, but some are turned off for various reasons, and that's on Biden, not those who are witholding their votes.

More importantly, I dislike RFK Jr. for a variety of reasons, but I suspect he's running for the exact same reasons that candidates like Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, Darrell Castle, Jim Hedges, Monica Moorehead, Jo Jorgensen, Virgil Goode, Patrick Buchanan, and Ralph Nader ran - because though it's unlikely that they'll have a traditional victory, they believe in the policies they're running on, and they think they could potentially do a better job than the current administration (be it a Democratic or Republican one).

I don't care for RFK Jr. whatsoever, and under no circumstances will I vote for him, but I'm not going to go around claiming that he's only running to "ruin Biden" or "ruin Trump," because that does a disservice to all the independent and third party candidates who have run or are running for entirely legitimate reasons.

[bilaps]

Always funny when Democrats complain about someone "taking away their vote" like they are entitled to people's votes.

[ProudModerate2]

He will probably take an equal amount, if not a bit more, Republican voters than Biden voters.
Conspiracy theories and overall lunacy is what many trump supporters are all about, and would love hearing RFK Jr at his rallies.

[DaleCooper]

RFK Jr. voters, however many that will even end up being, would vote 10:1 for Trump if forced to choose between Trump and Biden. Anyone who thinks these people would lean towards Biden clearly hasn't actually interacted with the people who like him, either online or in person.

[Inmate Trump]

As it stands right now, it seems RFK Jr would take away more votes from Trump than he would from Biden. So this is a reasonably map.

I think Biden would have better odds in Michigan, NH, and Maine at large though.

[PSOL]

The SPUSA will nominate a candidate next month according to SG, it is still unknown if the Greens are going to try and court their vote. Previously SPUSA was angry at Hawkins over not reforming the Greens to their liking, and with Hawkins and West out it will be seen what they and SAlt for that matter does.

The SPUSA is a weird party. I've been on Atlas for, what, ten years now, and every time they nominate a ticket it seems to come out of the blue. I've never heard of a Socialist Party candidate declaring their intent to run before the convention like Green or Libertarian candidates do.

Didn't Cindy Sheehan try and run on their ticket in 2016 but was rejected because she wasn't a dues-paying member?

The reason for this is because it’s probably chosen by a council running SPUSA while the Greens and Libertarian governing structure is—for detriment of both parties—influenced by the DNC and RNC as there are many former members of each.

It seems that SPUSA may have a strong line in not endorsing other candidates if they don’t have a relationship or prior membership. Hawkins and Sonia Johnson were probable dual paying members.

Cindy Sheehan’s Revolutionary Organization of Labor, of which she was a member for an indeterminate amount of time when organizing against the Iraq war, probably had no close relationship with SPUSA and their only prior endorsements are to the Greens in 2004 and Ralph Nader beforehand.
Larry Hogan and Andrew Yang (only if done in Safe States) are the only high profile candidates interested in being the No Labels nominee.
Chris Hedges in a true journalistic fashion summed up the self-critical lessons of the failures of the Left Liberals in the West Too little too late. Of course communists understood this which is why our movements are more successful.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

He stands very little chance and will get Jorgensen numbers

[PSOL]

He stands very little chance and will get Jorgensen numbers

Not even

Jr is the second most reptilian candidate running in this race outside of DeSantis with less than 1% of the resources. No one likes lizard people.

[AltWorlder]

The Reform Party is back baby

https://reformparty.org/our-solutions/

[PSOL]

The Reform Party is back baby

https://reformparty.org/our-solutions/

No one cares, the meme ticket everyone cares about this cycle is RFK Jr

[AltWorlder]

Reform still has some ballot access, would be interesting if they can stage a comeback and outlive the No Label, Forward, and Alliance johnny-come-lately moderate centrist parties.

[PSOL]

Reform still has some ballot access, would be interesting if they can stage a comeback and outlive the No Label, Forward, and Alliance johnny-come-lately moderate centrist parties.

If I can recall they lost their one registered state, Florida, a while back and have only 2,000 dollars for such activities.

The ASP will outlast them and all these unpopular centrist parties, no one wants moderate hero parties that appeal to no real cleavage.

[PSOL]

Jr raises 11 million within 24 hours of his independent campaign. Those tech CEOs and retirees love him.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Always funny when Democrats complain about someone "taking away their vote" like they are entitled to people's votes.

Welcome to American politics. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans really believe in democracy. They believe in "the ends justify the means". Both parties in state governments they control seek to block parties and candidates to ensure the party they hate is the only alternative on the ballot in methods no different than what is used by Vladimir Putin's party in Russia. There are people employed by Joe Biden's campaign now seeking ways to ensure no one is on the ballot except Biden and probably Trump in several states, and CBS News got a hold of an email sent out to Utah Democratic Party county chairs by the party's Executive Director Thom DeSirant a couple weeks ago of "we must kill this effort now, don't even let [No Labels] get to the point of nominating candidates".

Third party and independent activists' best route is "Know the Rules": follow them, be organized, and when they attempt to screw you shove the rules right back in their faces. In states like Georgia and New York State for example that are openly Russian in democratic character and conduct, I think it might be best to just have a "Coalition Party" of all these disparate voices for the sake of securing ballot access. Easier said than done of course with many different voices and agendas. It'd require parties to sacrifice immediacy for the greater cause.

[PSOL]

Looking over the endorsements of RFK Jr, the fact many of them also endorsed Ron DeSantis, and a profile of his campaign staff it is clear he is a fascist. The economic anxiety against Jews being among the UMC and hatred of those above Jr sees as preventing his social climbing proves it, as does the class collaboration around opposing the vaccines.

RFK Jr won’t go far in this race, as he’s a lizard who freaks out most Americans and to a lesser extent voters who see him as not full of warmth and not behaving “normally” in his tics and body movement. Trump may be an opportunist, but at least he behaves normally, which is what most low info voters care about.

[Yoda]

I'd like to see the evidence that the only reason RFK Jr. is running is to "ruin Biden."

First off, no one owes Biden anything. Democrats don't owe Biden their votes, nor should Biden just blindly expect all Democrats to vote for or support him. Many will, but some are turned off for various reasons, and that's on Biden, not those who are witholding their votes.

In the sense that no politician ever is owed anything, voters don't owe a politician their votes, and no politician should just blindly expect all voters to support him or her, this is true, yes. None of this is remotely specific to Biden though, it applies to literally every politician in history.

Biden isn't going to win the primary b/c he thinks he's "owed" anything, he's going to win the democratic primary b/c he has earned it through his competent, successful administration.

Record employment, win after win for unions, a DoJ going after and convicting those responsible for the terrorist attack on Jan 6th as well as prosecuting donald trump for his serious crimes while in and since leaving office, a historic transformation of the federal judiciary, lower prescription drug prices, the massive and transformative infrastructure bill, defending Ukraine and destroying half of Russia's military with just 5% of our military budget and 0 American lives lost, successfully getting every country on earth to agree to a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, etc etc. He's arguably the most successful president in generations.

[Open Source Intelligence]

I'd like to see the evidence that the only reason RFK Jr. is running is to "ruin Biden."

First off, no one owes Biden anything. Democrats don't owe Biden their votes, nor should Biden just blindly expect all Democrats to vote for or support him. Many will, but some are turned off for various reasons, and that's on Biden, not those who are witholding their votes.

In the sense that no politician ever is owed anything, voters don't owe a politician their votes, and no politician should just blindly expect all voters to support him or her, this is true, yes. None of this is remotely specific to Biden though, it applies to literally every politician in history.

Biden isn't going to win the primary b/c he thinks he's "owed" anything, he's going to win the democratic primary b/c he has earned it through his competent, successful administration.

That and for just considering running against Biden Dean Phillips has been ostracized, resigned his position in House Democratic leadership, and a Democratic National Committee member has announced for the Congressional primary to run against him. Phillips for just asking the question his political career is probably done.

And look, the Republicans are no better, and Trump sycophants did the exact same thing in the run-up to 2020 to make sure there was zero path for Mark Sanford who was a more realistic Trump alternative than Bill Weld ever was. But it comments on your naivete that you think there's not all these levers and people behind the scenes strong-arming so that there is only one option you're allowed to pick from. And if primary voters ever put up a result we don't like, we'll invoke some arcane rule in our bylaws so they're not allowed to have delegates at the National Convention and therefore any power. I'd bet anyone any amount of money they would've done that to RFK Jr. if he won say 10% of the delegates to the National Convention, this current Democratic Party leadership group are never going to allow Bernie Sanders 2016 complete outsider campaign to ever happen again (it's a lot of the reason why they pushed South Carolina first, diversity is the public reason, the private reason is Bernie-type politicians are dead on arrival in South Carolina), and I think they only allowed him in at the time to have Hillary defeat someone in the primary that they thought would've been a complete pushover (Sanders as the Bill Bradley to Hillary's Al Gore), but completely underestimated their own voters' desire for change from the Obama adminstration, and also underestimated Hillary's broader unpopularity inside the party.

[PSOL]

The verdict is in, West is lazy

“The moment of transition became clear, given the internal dynamics of the Green Party,” West said. “The procedures and requirements for debate, you have to go to various Green Party events in a variety of different states. … I said, ‘Oh my God, this is a lot of energy and time and effort.’”

Really all that was newsworthy in this hit piece.

[Compuzled_One]

Welcome to American politics. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans really believe in democracy. They believe in "the ends justify the means". Both parties in state governments they control seek to block parties and candidates to ensure the party they hate is the only alternative on the ballot in methods no different than what is used by Vladimir Putin's party in Russia. There are people employed by Joe Biden's campaign now seeking ways to ensure no one is on the ballot except Biden and probably Trump in several states, and CBS News got a hold of an email sent out to Utah Democratic Party county chairs by the party's Executive Director Thom DeSirant a couple weeks ago of "we must kill this effort now, don't even let [No Labels] get to the point of nominating candidates".

I must say, I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if the Democratic leaders and media are just overly paranoid, but I don't get why they're worried about No Labels-it's true Biden's supporters are less devout than Trump, but most of those supporters of Biden who don't like him much are progressives, who aren't gonna be voting for Manchin or Larry Hogan or most other no labels candidates, especially when many left-wingers hate Machin. Trumps hold on whatever remains of his centrist voters is weaker if anything, and they're the only ones who'll listen to Manchin. So, unpopular opinion, I feel it will hurt Trump more, just based on what I know.

[The Mikado]

The verdict is in, West is lazy

“The moment of transition became clear, given the internal dynamics of the Green Party,” West said. “The procedures and requirements for debate, you have to go to various Green Party events in a variety of different states. … I said, ‘Oh my God, this is a lot of energy and time and effort.’”

Really all that was newsworthy in this hit piece.

This is the funniest reason possible for this.

[Yoda]

I'd like to see the evidence that the only reason RFK Jr. is running is to "ruin Biden."

First off, no one owes Biden anything. Democrats don't owe Biden their votes, nor should Biden just blindly expect all Democrats to vote for or support him. Many will, but some are turned off for various reasons, and that's on Biden, not those who are witholding their votes.

In the sense that no politician ever is owed anything, voters don't owe a politician their votes, and no politician should just blindly expect all voters to support him or her, this is true, yes. None of this is remotely specific to Biden though, it applies to literally every politician in history.

Biden isn't going to win the primary b/c he thinks he's "owed" anything, he's going to win the democratic primary b/c he has earned it through his competent, successful administration.

That and for just considering running against Biden Dean Phillips has been ostracized, resigned his position in House Democratic leadership, and a Democratic National Committee member has announced for the Congressional primary to run against him. Phillips for just asking the question his political career is probably done.

And look, the Republicans are no better, and Trump sycophants did the exact same thing in the run-up to 2020 to make sure there was zero path for Mark Sanford who was a more realistic Trump alternative than Bill Weld ever was. But it comments on your naivete that you think there's not all these levers and people behind the scenes strong-arming so that there is only one option you're allowed to pick from. And if primary voters ever put up a result we don't like, we'll invoke some arcane rule in our bylaws so they're not allowed to have delegates at the National Convention and therefore any power. I'd bet anyone any amount of money they would've done that to RFK Jr. if he won say 10% of the delegates to the National Convention, this current Democratic Party leadership group are never going to allow Bernie Sanders 2016 complete outsider campaign to ever happen again (it's a lot of the reason why they pushed South Carolina first, diversity is the public reason, the private reason is Bernie-type politicians are dead on arrival in South Carolina), and I think they only allowed him in at the time to have Hillary defeat someone in the primary that they thought would've been a complete pushover (Sanders as the Bill Bradley to Hillary's Al Gore), but completely underestimated their own voters' desire for change from the Obama adminstration, and also underestimated Hillary's broader unpopularity inside the party.

No naivete involved here my guy. Biden's going to win the primary b/c most democrats want him to be our nominee, not b/c of some ludicrous theory that some ominous democratic machine is strong-arming other democrats to stop them from running and getting 10% of the vote. If Dean Phillips wants to embarrass himself I'm all for it. Let him get on the trail and tell democratic primary voters what part of the Biden agenda he disagrees with. Biden has been a very successful President from the point of view of a democratic primary voter and according to most polls around 80% of democrats want Biden to be our nominee again, with the remainder only not wanting him to be the nominee bc of concerns about his age, not bc they don't like him. Instead of conspiracy theories and nonsense, you just need to recognize that there is not some big, organic effort underway in the democratic party to replace Biden. The vast majority of us really, really like him.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Welcome to American politics. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans really believe in democracy. They believe in "the ends justify the means". Both parties in state governments they control seek to block parties and candidates to ensure the party they hate is the only alternative on the ballot in methods no different than what is used by Vladimir Putin's party in Russia. There are people employed by Joe Biden's campaign now seeking ways to ensure no one is on the ballot except Biden and probably Trump in several states, and CBS News got a hold of an email sent out to Utah Democratic Party county chairs by the party's Executive Director Thom DeSirant a couple weeks ago of "we must kill this effort now, don't even let [No Labels] get to the point of nominating candidates".

I must say, I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if the Democratic leaders and media are just overly paranoid, but I don't get why they're worried about No Labels-it's true Biden's supporters are less devout than Trump, but most of those supporters of Biden who don't like him much are progressives, who aren't gonna be voting for Manchin or Larry Hogan or most other no labels candidates, especially when many left-wingers hate Machin. Trumps hold on whatever remains of his centrist voters is weaker if anything, and they're the only ones who'll listen to Manchin. So, unpopular opinion, I feel it will hurt Trump more, just based on what I know.

I'm inclined to agree, or think that at the worst (from a Democratic perspective) No Labels will draw from both Trump and Biden sufficiently to make it a wash.  And welcome to the forum!

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Lol we have S candidates in the 303 this is the same states that reelected Obama and Biden instead of IA and OH it's AZ and GA that gets Biden to 279.

In 2016 Rs had control of redistricting in MI,WI and PA and now Ds have redistricting in those three

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It's gonna pull votes away from Trump not Biden