Lots of Republicans are looking for a sane alternative to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and it looks like the Libertarian Party has just given it to them, now that former Massachusetts governor William Weld has joined former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson’s ticket.
If someone had told two years ago that one party was going to run a ticket with two ex-governors who were regarded as competent and scandal-free while another party was going to run Trump, which would you have guessed would be the mainstream party and which would you have guessed would be the wacko third party?
Between now and November, could the mainstream media take notice of this? How would it affect the race if the media started to take the Libertarian ticket seriously?
It seems to me that any enthusiasm for Clinton is based on the fact that many people fear and loathe Trump. If it started to look as though Trump represented a small splinter party and Johnson-Weld represent a major party, then the “stop-Trump” rationale that bolsters Clinton’s candidacy disappears, and she is left with whatever support comes from people who genuinely think she is wonderful. Or, to put it another way, I think that there are enough voters who are negative about Trump and Clinton to make it possible for Johnson and Weld to get more votes than either one of them, provided that the media give the Libertarian ticket as much attention as the other two.
They are likely only scandal free /because/ they have not caught the attention of mainstream media.
I’ve been predicting (not hoping) for a libertarian/Libertarian win within the next 3 cycles, just not this cycle- Specifically, but not necessarily a Rand Paul or Paul Ryan (or both) ticket, and they laughed at me. Now I am laughing at them! Trump is unqualified. Hillary is disqualified. Governors beat Senators. We can literally say that this year we have the correct choice on all margins.
For the calls of the liberal MSM, they sure in the hell hate her compared to Trump. The big question is what happens when Sanders evidently drops out. (Which could be June 7th with practically Primaries done and it is obvious she won the vote.) My guess the support and enthusiasm increase vastly a week after Sanders is out. Additionally, Obama’s approval ratings are high and I suspect that plays big after July. We saw something similar last October.
In many ways she represents the liberal and modern Richard Nixon 1968 in which her political strengths are fighting the enemy and our core supporters are older and quieter voters.
Can the MSM show Gary Johnson? Reasonably yes but he needs focus his attention on the Mountain states (NM, ID, UT). He might win one of those.
Arnold, unless you have enough money to buy the Washington Post from Jeff Bezos, I suspect you might be disappointed by the attention the LP candidates get.
The fact that such an important political outcome hinges on the journalistic discretion of unelected private figures outside the government is a key truth about the real distribution of power in our society. Any candidate who has the support of most of these people has the equivalent in billions of unregulated campaign contributions. Likewise for anyone who discovers how to hack the system and get free coverage by providing them with viral-sensation content they can’t resist reporting.
Clinton-Trump is the election made for the media, and which the media made.
Yes.
See also: the fact Handle plies his talent in the comment section of an Arnold Kling blog, while David Brooks bleats in the pages of the NYT.
The elitist real power structure of putative democracies is not novel. Pareto and Mosca were writing a hundred years ago. What is interesting to is the particular form of ideology, culture, bureaucracy and degeneracy that give us this elite. The mere existence of a ruling class and a hypocritical legitimating political myth requires less explanation than the peculiar late modern manifestation of kakistocracy.
“Lots of Republicans are looking for a sane alternative to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton”
Actual Republican voters or right wing media people? The signalling spiral going on at National Review, and the like, should not be conflated with actual voters who dont actually hate Trump, do not see him as insane, would prefer him to any Democrat, and treat the Republican party as a schelling point for their interests at the national level. That is the impression I am getting, and the conservative/libertarian outlets that have been dead wrong this whole election cycle seem to be doubling down.
Lots of Republican voters are looking for sane and reliably conservative alternatives to people like McConnell too. He’s awful, but even I’ll admit they he’s still better than Reid.
Sometimes people are disappointed in politicians, but it still makes sense to support the lesser evil.
Like the man said, you go to war with the army you’ve got, not the one you wish you had.
+1
Kling and his circle are beyond horrified by both Trump and Clinton. But I suspect he underestimates the number of people that actually like Trump or Clinton.
Even prominent libertarians like Peter Thiel are quite comfortable with Trump.
Has Kling even outlined why he is horrified at Trump?
Yes.
People who aren’t horrified at Trump need to do the explaining. Again, there are only 2 current known supportive statements for Trump. 1. Hillary Clinton is worse, and this is debatable and 2. Trump hasn’t actually meant what he has said.
How is Hillary arguably better?
At her mean (in the average sense), she’s probably worse, but the variance in her behavior in her political positions is much, much lower (and fairly predictable). Some people, including on the opposite side of the aisle, may prefer less volatility in the likely political direction of the presidency?
That is one good point.
She hasn’t argued for protectionism to the degree Trump has. And in this I’m setting aside all the crazy things Trump has proposed to focus on the one thing he likely means. But when we can’t trust your crazy statements it doesn’t automatically mean we have assume your real intentions are less crazy.
We will of course update our priors as we pivot towards the general.
I can’t believe Republicans made me debate on behalf of Hillary…
In a way, Trump and Clinton are the same. In neither case, do we know what they truly believe (AFAICT), but thus far Clinton has been pandering to the more moderate wing of her party while Trump is pandering to the radical conservatives. Hillary has been positioning against Sanders while Trump has been playing the field, so again, we’ll have to keep abreast of the pivot. Maybe Trump’s turn to the center will be huge and spectacular as he promised.
On the other hand, Trump MAY be better on military interventions, if you disbelieve about half his promises. But even then, I’m also not entirely sure if he’s just against things that went bad after the fact because being against those benefits them or if he’s against them beforehand, as there is some info that he was in favor of invading Iraq in 2002.
Why am I not horrified at Trump?
So, there is a degree of unpredictability with Trump. He plays both side of the fence on many issues. I believe despite his persona and his campaign tactics, if he gains office he will enact mostly reasonable policies such as:
– nominate supreme court justices from his pick list. That’s a great list.
– be center on health care. Hopefully, to the right in favor of decentralization. I’d prefer a Ted Cruz on health care.
– be somewhat military isolationist except with terrorists threatening us. In hindsight, invading Iraq was a mistake.
– pump the breaks on immigration. I think this is good.
– promote reasonable Larry Kudlow endorsed economic policy.
PC has run amok in the US and needed a vocal leader to counter it. Obama nursed racial grievances his entire term, guilted whites to the moon, and helped grow the Black Lives Matter movement. Obama did recently criticize the radical left, but that’s a very tiny concession.
Who has been wrong about what? Clinton and Trump are the two most disliked candidates in history.
I basically only read Arnold. About all you can about his prediction is that he gave voters too much credit and actually believed Trump’s primary campaign lies. All Trump has to do is repudiate everything he said in the primary and get people to come to their senses about Clinton. It’s still a lot.
I’d worry about Facebook and other Silicon Valley activist enterprises working against the Libertarian candidacy. Apparently, Silicon Valley is all in for Hillary and definitely not for libertarians. Trump, of course, has his own problems out there.
From the interview with a Silicon Valley journalist posted recently at AEI
“I found crucial to what is distinct between libertarians and valley folk that Silicon Valley’s ideology is pro-market but it is not pro-liberty. Liberty is not a value. They are highly, highly, collectivist. They believe that every single person has a positive obligation to society and the government can help people or coerce people or incentive into making a unique contribution.”
http://www.aei.org/publication/what-does-silicon-valley-seem-to-love-democrats-and-dimiss-the-gop-a-qa-with-journalist-greg-ferenstein/
Seems to me, without the Trump capacity to own the media and news cycle a non-Hillary candidate has little chance to show up trending.
Silicon Valley is left-libertarian. A combination of some SJW social aspects with center-left globalist economics.
Basically, the sorts of things that would make Silicon Valley comfortable. You don’t have to read far past: “They go with the public policies that make their ventures possible.”
Good Lord! Any sentient human being can basically predict that Johnson and Weld will take votes from Trump, but not Clinton. To claim otherwise is on the same level of reasoning that might claim that a Sanders’ third party candidacy might take a lot of support from both Trump and Clinton- he would cripple Clinton in such a scenario.
I like both Weld and Johnson, but they won’t win no matter how much attention the media give them, nor would they actually ever get more than 5-10% of the total vote even with the best possible circumstances.
That’s probably true, but like a commenter noted above, if they concentrated their campaign in a few high-target states they might get pretty far.
Firmly winning a state over the major candidates would force the MSM to give the Libertarian Party some legitimacy. It wouldn’t mean much in the short run, but that amount of goodwill could collect some interest towards the next election cycle, where the LP might have a chance to make some inroads if this next candidacy goes really badly.
I would also prefer Bill Weld (Gary Johnson less so) if they had a chance. However the idea that they would out-poll Trump or Clinton if they got more media attention is delusional (unfortunately). Doesn’t seem to me that Rand Paul got many votes.
“If it started to look as though Trump represented a small splinter party and Johnson-Weld represent a major party . . . .”
I have no use for Trump, but in what universe is this supposed to happen? Some galaxy where the Export-Import bank is a galvanizing issue moving tens of millions of votes?
IMHO, there’s not much to be said for a “libertarian” who wants to punish people for refusing to bake cakes.
Their negatives aren’t much different from the political polarization of the day. If you are polarized, it is because you prefer your end. Those that hate the one support the other for the most part. The overlap between those that hate both would be very small indeed.
The dovish on war MSNBC should go big for Gary Johnson but will not they hate market outcomes and corporations too much.