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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent. And this is Somebody's Gotta Win. This is a very important episode about third parties. There are so many third party candidates out there right now, more than ever before. And I just think it's really important for people to understand that...
When you vote for a third-party candidate, you may be inadvertently tipping the scales in favor of one of the main candidates, a Democrat or Republican, most likely Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who you don't want to win. So there are real ramifications of a protest vote, perhaps against Joe Biden or in favor of a third-party candidate.
And that could, in fact, help tip the scales in favor of Trump or vice versa. It's a really crazy time right now because there are so many people clamoring to be the other option, although they have zero chance. And there are definitely gadflies and opportunists taking advantage of the fact that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are so unpopular. But the truth is that when it comes down to a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump,
it's better for Biden. And if people decide not to vote for him and vote for these third-party candidates, it hands the race to Trump because it's going to be really tight. It's going to come down to six states, the swing states, and it could be decided by a few thousand votes. And that's why this matters. I mean, even in the past week,
Jill Stein announced that she's running on the Green Party ticket. Democrats are still apoplectic over how she may have taken a few thousand votes from Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. You've got Cornel West running as independent, RFK Jr. running as independent, possibly taking from Donald Trump.
No labels. Joe Manchin just said he's not running for reelection. Everyone is worried in Washington, D.C., that that centrist Democrat may run on the no labels unity ticket where they're going to have a Republican and a Democrat on the same ticket. And that could take away from Joe Biden. There's a lot of concern and really consultants in Washington are trying to game it out, but they don't really know how it's going to play. All they want to tell voters is don't even bother. If you do it, you will inadvertently tip the scales in favor of the candidate, most likely that you don't want to win.
But before we get into it, here's a little roundup of what's going on in the political world. Tim Scott announced that he's out of the race. Not so surprising. The electorate wasn't exactly clamoring for more Tim Scott.
He was barely polling. He was raising money, but not really, only from really wealthy guys. And it's funny that it happened right after he revealed his mysterious girlfriend because people were worried, could a single guy get to the White House, right? But yeah, he's out. It's a good thing for Nikki Haley because if she makes it to South Carolina, where she'll probably come in second to Donald Trump, at least she's not competing with another South Carolinian for votes. And she has a good showing. She might make it to Super Tuesday.
as the non-Trump candidate. But right now, it's really Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis fighting for the number two spot. Nikki Haley is about to blanket the airwaves in Iowa and New Hampshire. We're really getting into the 2024 race. Over in Congress, MAGA Mike Johnson looks like he's going to vote on a budget with the help of Democrats, just like Kevin McCarthy did before he was ousted. Turns out he can't pass a budget without the help of the Democrats. I'm
Sure, Kevin McCarthy is somewhere just pulling his hair out over this. I wonder if the MAGA Republicans will be true to their word and call a motion to vacate against Mike Johnson. That's unlikely, but it's clear you can't always get what you want. But he's going to pass a clean funding bill, as they call it, CR, and there'll be a cliff for part of it, the Agriculture, Transportation, and Veteran Affairs
part of it in January and the rest of it will be funded through February. So more spending fights to come. But back to third party candidates. Yeah, I've got Matt Bennett from Third Way coming on. He comes from a center left group called Third Way, and they are spending all of their money and resources to try to kill off these third party candidates, specifically No Labels, because No Labels has about $60 million to get on the ballot in all 50 states. And he really believes that this group is organized enough to
to take votes away from Joe Biden. And he's just terrified that Donald Trump, as many of you are, will be reelected. So this is about for him. And I think it's important for people to know that if you vote for a third party candidate because you don't like Biden, you may be electing Trump. And there's argument that if you vote for RFK Jr. instead of Trump, you may be helping Biden win. I think the point is, is you have to accept the reality that
as it is, which is that it will most likely be Joe Biden and Trump. And if you vote for anyone else, you could have an impact on the election, especially if you're in the six swing states where it will come down to just a few hundred thousand votes. Yeah, protest votes. That's what Matt Bennett really gets into. And we break it all down. Matt, thanks so much for being on the pod. I got an email from...
a staffer at Third Way after I wrote a piece for Puck that basically argues that third party challengers aren't necessarily going to take from Democrats. At least that's what polling is showing right now.
there is some variability. Some of them may actually take from the Republicans and even Republicans didn't think that third party challengers for a while would hurt their candidates like Donald Trump or extremists like Kerry Lake. And it seemed like they were open to them, even promoting them. You know, people like Steve Bannon, who propped up
RFK Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a while to the alt-right because he's an anti-vaxxer and pro-gun, but he also thought he's a Democratic scion and his name alone would confuse Democrats and they would come out and vote for him instead of Biden. But recent polling shows that he's actually stealing Trump donors at a higher rate than Biden donors. This is all stuff that
No one really expected on the right. And that's why the RNC is finally calling him like a typical Democrat. They don't see him as a prop or as useful to take Biden down. So I wrote this piece.
There are other examples as well, how Kyrsten Sinema, the latest polling from the National Republicans Editorial Committee, shows that she would take from Carrie Lake, the Republican candidate, a far-right extremist rather than Democrat Ruben Gallego, which sort of also defies conventional wisdom for a long time. Ruben Gallego had been
just trashing Kyrsten Sinema, seeing her as the real enemy, not as the Republican. But now, you know, he seems to have laid off her, seeing her as someone who could, you know, possibly help him win. I mean, obviously third party challengers add a lot of variabilities and
No labels now, which is a third party group. They're also floating the idea of putting a Republican on top of the ticket, a center right Republican, to try to take Republican voters from Trump rather than putting a Democrat at the top of the ticket, like Senator Joe Manchin, who just announced that he's not planning to run for reelection.
And so some Republicans are saying, like, that's great. Like Mark McKinnon, who I had on the show, he's a Republican strategist and he's been affiliated with no labels in the past. He suggested if they put a favored son or daughter from, you know, one of these swing states and then, you know, since the election will likely come down to those few swing states, if they are able to pull the votes from those states that perhaps, you know, it could be helpful to Biden and,
if they could pull Republicans away from Trump in those, you know, six swing states that will probably determine the election. So it's sort of flipping conventional wisdom on its head. That's why I wrote the story. But obviously after I wrote it, I immediately heard from your team at Third Way. And, you know, I'm curious, like what was it that made you reach out? Why did you feel like I need to address this story? Well, first of all,
you have been very early to the third party stories. You wrote one of the first ones about the impact that no labels could have. And, and your stuff has been kind of among the leader in, uh,
reporting on third parties. So we've been paying close attention to your reporting on this. And it's been really good. So kudos to you. Thank you. To your point, we think it's really important. For a long time, the kind of chattering classes of Washington were paying no attention at all to the fact that this
very significant organization was raising huge amounts of money and was planning to put a third party candidate on the ballot when despite that and despite the fact that we've all lived through several elections where third party candidates have actually had an impact on the outcome obviously 2000 where ralph nader got 97 000 votes in florida a state that al gore lost by 537 votes
And then in 2016, when Jill Stein and Gary Johnson either cost Clinton the election or came within a thousand votes or two of doing so. So they were nobodies with no money behind. Now we have this major push by a big organization with tens of millions of dollars. They claim to have $60 million for this effort. And we need to take it seriously.
So, we reached out because we wanted to make sure that you were hearing the latest in what is going on with these guys. You hinted at this, but they are now convinced they should put a Republican at the top of their ticket, which means Joe Manchin won't be their nominee. Second thing is,
while they've been saying for a year that they were in this to win it and they put out this incredibly farcical map showing their path to 270 electoral votes as a third party, where they were going to win Delaware, you know, Joe Biden's home, and they were going to win Illinois that Joe Biden won by 30 points last time. They've now, it seems, reexamined
recognize that that's insane. They're not going to win the election. They would be... No, they're not. No, definitely not. But let's just be clear about that.
don't know how they raise this money. $60 million to get on the ballot in all 50 states. I know who it is. We know who it is. They're major donors like Steve Schwartzman, Nelson Peltz, Harlan Crowe. I mean, they're not public about it, but we found out through the grapevine. But it's just incredible that they're able to raise this amount of money. It's bananas. And they're raising it from people
mostly in the finance industry, who spend all day looking at spreadsheets and deciding, am I going to invest money in this company or is everything they're telling me complete bullshit? And it turns out that when it comes to politics, even though they're being fed a line of nonsense from no labels,
They're investing in it anyway. It's unbelievable to me. I think the idea of a unity ticket is very appealing. It is. Especially these finance guys. I mean, these are billionaire finance guys. They don't like progress so much. They actually kind of like a log jam in Congress and the White House. They don't want things to become too radical. It makes it more difficult for them. They don't like regulations. No labels ever.
Their mission hasn't always been to be a third party, a unity third party. Before that, they supported the Problem Solvers Caucus, which many people call the Problems Caucus, the Main Street Caucus. But they genuinely started as a group of Democrats and Republicans that tried to work together. Oftentimes, they would logjam. At least Democrats felt like they would slow down their progressive movement.
agenda, they would say, no, we're working across the aisle. And it was tended to be a lot of Democrats who come from red districts like Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey, which is near where I grew up in the suburbs of New York. Um, and you know, he knew his electorate, uh,
a lot of Wall Street types and they are, they like the Problem Solvers Caucus. They like bipartisanship. They like Democrats that are socially, you know, liberal, but fiscally conservative. And so that's where this group sort of came from. And it's interesting that the couple that started it
It's Mark Penn who came from Clinton world. He was Clinton, Bill Clinton's top strategist, and they had a falling out. And they, the couple themselves have become like very enriched by this organization, No Labels. And we don't know much about it. We really don't because it's a 5-1-C-4. It's just like a nonprofit that doesn't have to disclose its donors. It's very bizarre. Yeah.
Super weird. So that's all right. A couple of things on that. One is on the problem solvers, you're right. For about a decade, what they did was they worked in the House to try to bring together Democrats and Republicans to do things together. A very admirable goal and one that's catnip to the kinds of donors you were just talking about.
But somehow, I guess, they decided that wasn't enough or the change wasn't happening fast enough or it was too boring. And so they had to get into the presidential race. And what they're offering, you made this point, they're offering these donors something that is very appealing. What they say to them is, just imagine arm in arm, a Democrat and a Republican walking into the White House and how magnificent that would be. Now, leaving aside the fact that that is never going to happen ever, even
Even if it did, we know how this works. When you have a president and a vice president, one of them is in charge, and that is the president. The vice president has no power. So even that vision is kind of silly because ultimately the agenda would be that of the president. But in any event, none of that's real. It's all a fairy tale that they've told to their donors.
However, they have sold that fairy tale very effectively. They've sold it to their donors because I think the donors also see that what the electorate wants as well. And the electorate is not happy with Biden versus Trump. So they have touched like this is a sweet spot. It's a moment that they know that the electorate could it would be warmed up to this idea. They sell it as an insurance policy against a Biden versus Trump rematch.
which all polling shows that no one wants. Very few people want this. Well, that's exactly right. What they're telling people is we can win this election because this time is different.
Right. Biden and Trump are so unpopular that for the first time in American history, including, you know, when Teddy Roosevelt tried this and failed for the first time, we're going to succeed where everyone else has failed. The thing is, while it is true that Americans are grumpy about a rematch between Biden and Trump.
That is always true. Americans are always grumpy about their choices. Whenever you ask them, would you like a third choice? They say, yes. I mean, if you go to an event and someone says to you, would you rather have two options or three options on the menu? You say three. I'm, I,
I get that, but it feels different. I'm going to push back on this. Like we've got literally like a psychopath that wants to run for reelection in Donald Trump. And we've got a man that seems very old. Democrats say to me that even like are very close to him and work in that world. They're like, this is just not the guy that we would want to put forward, but he wants to run again for reelection. Like they're upset about it.
that he wants to run for reelection. Democrats I speak to everywhere wish that Biden was not running for reelection. I believe you. And I've heard those things too. I don't share that view, but I certainly get it. However,
While people may be unhappy with their two choices, what they're not going to do is throw away their vote on a third-party candidate. Even if they don't love their own candidate, the vast majority of them are simply not going to
to vote for someone else because they know that not enough other voters are going to do that alongside them and that that person isn't going to be present. But they have in the past. People have done it. Not to win the election. I mean, no, no, no, not not in a way that would help win an election, but in a way that spoils the election. Correct. So that's where I was headed, which is
while the vast majority of people will not vote for the third party candidate, and there is no chance that person will become president, there is a real possibility that they could spoil the election. And if that happens, they will do it to benefit Trump. And the reason we know that is kind of intuitively obvious. Trump's
ceiling and floor are both very hard. He cannot get above 50%. He can't get above probably 47%, but he doesn't really drop below that either. If you're for Trump, you're for Trump. You're not going to peel away and vote for somebody else.
Biden's support is much more fluid. He has much more ability to get above 50% in a head-to-head race with Trump. If people decide, well, I don't love Biden, but I hate Trump and I'm going to vote for Biden. But his floor is also a little bit softer. So if you give people a place to go, they may go there. Sarah Longwell, the very well-respected center-right pollster and strategist, has a piece today in the Bulwark
laying out exactly why she believes that those voters Biden desperately needs, that he won in 2020 and has to have for a winning coalition against Trump in 24, they're the ones most at risk to peel away. It's people who identify perhaps as Republican or conservative independents who just hate Trump, but...
would love to vote for somebody other than Biden if they had the choice. So that's why we think in a head-to-head, Biden wins, leaving aside these polls for now, which we've discussed, Biden would win a head-to-head with Trump. But if they give him a well-financed, popular, famous third party, that could really hurt.
I'm going to recap. I read that piece by Sarah. It's a great piece. She reminds the readers that Biden did win 7 million more votes than Trump, the popular vote. But obviously, we know that doesn't really matter. And it really comes down to these swing states so that you win the Electoral College. And the margin of victory was so small for Biden.
for Biden. He only won Pennsylvania by 1.2%. He won Wisconsin by 0.6% and Arizona by 0.3%. She says, you know, if those margins had gone the other way, Trump would be present now. You know, she said the reason that he won was because he won 11% of historically Republican voters and Hillary only won 9% of historically Republican voters, AKA never Trumpers, right? But I...
I do wonder, like, I don't know that how I still have this feeling that there are people who voted against Trump because of COVID and the chaos, but voted for him in 2016 and they voted for Biden. And I think they might go back to Trump. I just have this feeling about that because they have nostalgia because of the conversation.
And it would only be kitchen table issues because the economy was better, whether they understand that actually, you know, Trump was a huge had a huge influence on the inflation that we see right now, that Biden sort of taking the wreckage from his administration and dealing with it, which tends to happen in the same way that like Obama inherited the wreckage of the George W. Bush administration. Right.
I could see people just saying, well, you know what? My 401k was better than like, I know this because I have people in my family that talk this way about politics. It's just kitchen table issues for them. And they might just say it was chaotic.
Trump didn't cause COVID. Sure. He was nuts. Didn't affect my life. I, I was making my, like I didn't pay $8 for eggs then. And now I am. Yeah. I think that's why the polling that we're seeing is showing him winning and winning, you know, narrowly, but, but outside the margin of error in a whole bunch of places like those swing States you just talked about. I do think that's exactly what's happening is there's nostalgia for Trump and, and the Trump era and,
and nostalgia for the economy that people thought he had created, which he did not, but nevertheless, that's what they think. However,
polling a year out from a presidential election is always a referenda. It's always, how do I feel about the president right now? Now they know who Trump is, but they're not thinking about Trump in any kind of detail. You just made this point. They're thinking about him in a kind of rose colored glasses, gauzy way, like things seemed fine then. Between now and the time they vote,
the Biden campaign and its allies will spend a billion dollars, $1 billion, reminding people about who Trump is. Totally nuts. Pity the television viewers of Maricopa County because it's going to be ugly. But the TV stations make a lot of money. They make tons of money. It's very good to be in that business in even years. But they will be reminded that
very, very dramatically of who Trump is and what his plans are. And, you know, for those of us who are following the news carefully, I'm sure you saw this in the last couple of days, the things that he has been saying in the last few days are even unhinged by Trump standards. I mean, he is talking about creating giant camps, deportation camps. He's talking about kicking all Palestinian Americans out of the country. He is talking about
He is talking about his political enemies using the term vermin, which is a term directly taken from Hitler. He is he is moving into full on fascism, which is what he wanted to do in the beginning. But he was stopped. There were guardrails and those will be gone next time. Yeah. His entire administration was essentially filled with the Republican establishment because you needed those people to like have a government. And he couldn't really deal with that. He was like, why can't I do everything I want to do? People were stopping him.
But I've even noticed in this campaign, which is a very small one with a handful of people around him, you're just not seeing the leaks. You're just not seeing the explosive stories you used to see, even the stories that I reported on, too, about what was going on inside of the White House. These are people that are supplicants to him. They will carry out his tasks and they will not leak to stop them because in the past, it was the people who were trying to stop him that were leaking. Exactly. And that's exactly what you're going to get is an administration filled with
bootlickers, people who love Trump and Trumpism and not responsible adults like Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson and others who, to your point, were not only stopping things before they could cause too much damage, but were leaking so the public knew about them. So my point is simply this. Yes, things are kind of grim right now because we're in the kind of referendum phase of the election, but soon we're going to be in the choice phase.
And it's going to be, okay, you may not love $8 eggs, and you may think that's Joe Biden's fault. But here is what you are having to contend with. It is Biden, for all of his faults, against Trump, who is a lunatic, and could destroy the country and could change America in ways that will make it unrecognizable to you. Which one do you want? And
I truly believe that if it's head to head, Americans will choose Biden because in 2022 and last week in 2023, when things were really on the line, when it was abortion rights or democracy itself, voters did the right thing every single time. You know, it was
It was close, but they kept Kerry Lake from being governor of Arizona and Mark Fincham being secretary of state and crazy people from running states that really mattered. And they voted for abortion rights and they voted for democracy every time. And I think they're going to do it again. I'm going to respectfully push back and say that more activists and informed voters come out to vote during those off years. For sure. And I would also say that Trump's band of Democrats
disaffected voters who are low information, low propensity voters who don't come out in those off years will come out when he's on the ballot. He was not on the ballot in those races and neither was Joe Biden. No doubt. However, and you're right, the electorates are very different. And I wish that the electorates of the off years could be the electorates of the presidential because I'd be more confident in this.
But I will say that Americans are generally pretty sensible. They generally do the right thing. They did not in 2016 by tiny, tiny margins in a handful of places. But I believe that when they are confronted by the choice between the chaos and authoritarian kind of darkness of Trump versus
a safe pair of hands who they may be disappointed in for a few things. I think they're going to do the right thing, but
But I'm very, very worried that if you give the people that we talked about, the Sarah Longwell's people, if you give them somewhere to go, if you give them a Larry Hogan... 0.3% essentially. Yeah, exactly. That could be the difference. And that is why I'm spending basically every waking moment trying to convince people around no labels not to do it. It would be catastrophically bad. I spoke to Steve Bannon last week. I was like,
OK, you hyped up RFK Jr. You said he could be a running mate for for Trump. Now all the alt writers are like he's even bigger and better than Trump. He's and he's more anti-vax. And they're they're finding that, oh, shit, we have to let the we let the genie out of the bottle. How do we put him back in? And I sort of asked him about it. Of course, he brushed it off. He's like Democrats are going to vote for RFK. It's not going to be Trump people, but whatever. He didn't make one interesting point.
Which actually Mark McKinnon made and has made. And he's been associated with no labels, but he told me he has not worked with them in 10 years. But the idea of a favored son. Bannon said, and it's like what Mark said, that if you put a favored son, and Bannon said a Mormon, like John Huntsman on the ballot or Mitt Romney, that they would end up taking enough votes from Nevada and Arizona. And that that could end up
you know, tilting the election away from Trump and towards Biden because those Republican voters would instead of voting for Trump would vote for a, uh,
would vote for a favored son and then also a Mormon who saw eye to eye with them. And in those states, you only need a few hundred of them, you know what I mean? Or a few thousand. And so that was his theory of the case, which I think Mark was alluding to. So in that case, could no labels actually help? And no labels is always saying, by the way, that they would never do this if they thought it was going to help Trump win reelection. And they are planning to hold their convention, right?
In March. March. Yeah. Okay. And so I guess they would know by then, ostensibly, but it would be based all on polling, right? That's all it would be based on. Because you can't really know for sure. You really can't. So I'm glad to tell you that my perfect record of disagreeing with Steve Bannon on every single thing remains intact. First of all, the label says, absolutely.
absolutely never suggested that they are interested in this favorite son thing to help Joe Biden. So there's zero evidence that they want to do that. McKinnon floated it. The one piece of evidence would be that they are leaning toward a center-right candidate on the top of the ballot instead of a center-left candidate like Joe Manchin. They are, but that would be nationally. So that...
maybe Joe Manchin doesn't help you win West Virginia. Like that's just not happening. West Virginia is going to be a 40 point blowout for Trump. So I just think the whole favorite son thing is, is not actually on anyone's radar and it's not going to happen. Okay. But,
The idea that putting a moderate Republican at the top of the ticket would somehow mitigate the harm that I talked about earlier to Biden is wrong. I mean, that is what No Labels is peddling. They're saying, well, OK, they've actually said they've told a whole bunch of people we're going to put a Republican on top of the ticket. They put out data a couple of weeks ago that showed if they put a Democrat at the top, it would help Trump. But if they put a Republican on the top, it's a mixed bag. We just don't buy it at all.
because for the reasons that Sarah cites, which is the people who would be attracted to Larry Hogan are not Trump voters. Those are people that are going to hold their nose and vote for Biden if they must.
But if you give them an opportunity to peel away, they will. These are Republicans who don't like Trump. They're not never Trumpers in the sense that Sarah is, which is to say she wants Democrats to win. They are anti-Trump Republicans. And anti-Trump Republicans...
who could stomach voting for Biden if they had to, but would prefer not to, those are the people we're most worried about. And as you said, they voted for Trump in 16, Biden in 20, and they might look for a place to go in 24, and we don't want to give them one. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've done a lot of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.
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Okay, I'm going to go to the left. Let's go that way. So I also spoke to James Carville for my piece, and he said what he's more concerned about than these Republicans that might go to a third party that's center-right, he's even more concerned about the left, the far left. Mm-hmm.
And what Cornell West does at running as an independent, because he's on the far left, he is a pro Palestine. And a lot of Democrats are pissed off at Biden right now for his, his kind of his union with Israel and his unwavering support. And so, um,
He's worried that Cornel West will do what Jill Stein, oh, by the way, she announced last week that she's running as well on the Green Party, will do to Hillary Clinton when she helped peel off just enough votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And he said, I'm really more worried about what Cornel West does in terms of getting the youth activists out voting less.
And just peeling off just enough to hurt Biden. I don't know. What's your thought on that? Definitely worry about anybody running this third party because anything that divides the anti-Trump coalition is bad. And certainly, Cornel West running would be bad. A couple of things. One is Cornel West does not have a party. He was running as a Green Party candidate, and then he left. Now, as you know, Jill Stein is their candidate. So West has to get on the ballot.
in these places and that is not a trivial problem because um for a lot of complicated and boring legal reasons he has to use and and so does rfk by the way if you're a named candidate you have to use what we call hard money to get on the ballot which is to say money raised in relatively small increments you can't give more than 2900 dollars uh per person and that money is disclosed
What No Labels is using is dark money. That is money that can be given in unlimited amounts by individuals like Carling Crow, and they don't have to be disclosed. And there's a reason for that. But the bottom line is, for Kennedy and West, they got to raise it in small increments. And
Then they've got to have the kind of organizational wherewithal. They need to get on. Yeah, exactly. To get on the ballot. Right. And, and that's hard to do. So RFK, apparently Elon Musk likes RFK junior, but Elon Musk can't pay for that. All he can do is give $2,900. You can't give him 30 million bucks and say, go get on the ballot because that's, you got to pay for it with hard money. So why can't a 501 C four like no labels, right?
Like, why can't Elon Musk start a 501c4 to put RFK on the ballot on a separate ticket? Great question. And there's a very clear answer. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case 10 years ago that a C4 like No Labels can gain ballot access for their party. And what No Labels is doing is they're getting on the ballot as the No Labels party of Arizona or Maine. And they can do that with C4 funds.
But the minute that they name a candidate, that all comes to an end. That's why they have to hold a convention. That's right. So if they said tomorrow, John Huntsman is our candidate, they would be under FEC rules. But for now, until they name a candidate, they can proceed this way. So Elon Musk can't do the C4 for RFK because he's the candidate he's named already. Got it.
Got it. Okay. That was my big question as well. And I do know ballot access is very difficult. They have until when though, March? Or have they already... Independent candidates have longer, right, to get on the ballot? They could wait as long as they want. Well, they could wait a little bit longer. They actually pushed their convention date up. It was going to be in April and now it's in March because in...
15 states, they can't start getting ballot access until they have a nominee or until the spring. The rules vary. But they need time because we're
Once they name their candidate at the convention, it's a nominating convention. They'll have a candidate coming out of that. Then it'll be the whatever, Huntsman for President campaign. And then they're under FEC rules. So they can no longer use the, you know, Harlan Crowe money for this. They have to operate as a, you know, under hard money rules. So they want to have as much time as possible.
possible to do that. But they want to use this period to get on as many other ballots as they can. And in RFK or Cornel West, they would actually have to run with a running mate to get on the independent. Like you'd have to have a running mate by the time you're trying to get on ballot or no? They would. And they'll come up with somebody or other. And it may be a nobody. Jill Stein had a running mate in 2010.
16, no one, I couldn't possibly name that person. But yes, they'll have a running mate. But the bigger problem is they need a campaign. They need a real organization. They need a finance committee and they need the organization to go out and probably hire people to get the ballot signatures.
The states all have different rules about how to get on the ballot. Texas, for example, is very complicated. You have to hold a convention in Texas to get on the ballot. That's why no one is hosting a convention in Dallas. Makes sense. And then other states, you just have to gather signatures in Maine and at least one or two others.
to sign a ballot petition, to put somebody on the ballot, you change parties in so doing. So for example, No Labels was collecting signatures in Maine and people were signing them not realizing that they were no longer a registered Democrat or Republican. They were now a registered No Labels party member and about 800 of them complained to the Secretary of State about that because all of a sudden they couldn't vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries.
So, the rules are all over the place, and that's why it takes time and money to really know how to do it effectively, which is why I'm not sure James is right about the impact of West.
It could be true, but only if he's on the ballot and he's got some momentum behind. What about this cat, Dean Phillips? He's a member of Congress. He's sort of running on the Biden's too old on the Democratic ticket. So he's not an independent. He's running as a Democrat. And he's trying the first state that he is holding a primary in is Texas.
New Hampshire, which the DNC has decided is not on the primary calendar anymore. So it's unclear if he even gets any delegates. But does he do any harm to Biden besides maybe just like putting out, you know, showing an example of a elected official Democrat candidate?
challenging him? Or are you just kind of like, oh, he's a gadfly like Marianne Williamson. No one really cares. I think he's north of Williamson, but way south of Ted Kennedy, who ran against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and really hurt him. I mean, Kennedy was obviously, you know, a senator, super famous, but
brother president, you know, like the whole and Dean Phillips is none of those things. So he's not going to do the same level of damage that Kennedy did. And to his credit, he has been super clear that if Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee, he will support him enthusiastically. So to your point, he's nothing like RFK Jr., who wants to run as an independent.
But I do wish Phillips would go away. I mean, this is not helpful to have a Democratic elected official attacking Joe Biden. And he's
a rich guy and he's using his own money and he's got a lot of resources. So it's not helpful, but I don't think it's fatal. Based on our conversation, you seem to be really fixated on no labels above RFK and Cornel West, and you see them as the biggest threat to the White House. How is the White House dealing with them? I think wisely they've stayed out of the conversation about third parties for now. I mean, anytime the White House engages with something politically, it gives it a lot of lift.
You know, presidential attention is a commodity and they don't want to offer that commodity to no labels. So I think they've been smart to kind of outsource the anti-no labels campaign to folks like us and move on and others who have been really prosecuting the case against no labels. And I think that will continue.
until unless and until no labels actually goes forward and names a ticket and is on the ballot. And then they're an opponent for the president and the Biden team will have to respond at that point. So because there are so many variables, there are so many people kind of putting their names forward for third parties. Have you ever seen it like this before, where so many people are saying that they want to run the third party?
No, this is completely bananas. There may have been moments in which like super gadflies were all running around doing this, but to have this a really well-funded effort, like no labels and then, you know, a famous name like RFK Jr. Yeah. It's, it's unique to this moment. Yeah, no, I feel that way. But I also think that reflects the sentiment of the electorate right now when they're tapping into it, they see that there are two unpopular candidates and they're like, okay, this is the moment. Um,
Do you think the RFK is a useful spoiler to the White House? Like if he really does take alt-right candidates from Trump, isn't that good for Biden? It would be if that were true. I just don't buy it. So national polling doesn't tell you anything about what his actual impact would be in ways that matter. So as you pointed out, the
There's like seven states that matter. What RFK's impact is in California or Idaho is irrelevant. And so a national poll doesn't really give you the kind of granular detail you would need about who he's taken voters from in California.
you know, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And, and my fear is that there may be some alt-right people that love how anti-vax he is and would peel off from Trump to go there. But I think the higher likelihood is that he's just got a name ID. RFK is a very big name in American politics. They don't maybe know exactly who he is. They just
might look at this and say, well, I can't vote for Trump. I don't love Biden. Oh, here's a Kennedy. I'll go there. You know, low information voters, and this is the point you made, are going to be a bigger part of the electorate in 2024. And so it makes us nervous to have him there. I think anybody on that ballot that isn't Trump or Biden and could divide that anti-Trump coalition is dangerous.
You make a really good point because all the polling that we've seen about RFK and how he influences the race and how he, you know, perhaps like, you know, brings the Trump down by three points and or brings Trump down by or makes Biden and Trump tied when he's in the race. It is just national polling. They haven't done it in the swing states. We don't know what kind of impact he has. There's just so many variables. And like, I don't know, that's sort of why I wrote that piece, because I'm like,
There's some we don't we can't really rely on conventional wisdom in a lot of ways in this election because we don't know how each one of these candidates is going to impact the race. And Trump is such a unique character. And, you know, there is so much unrest in the Democratic Party right now. We you know, the youth vote alone is just like crazy.
Trump is actually gaining ground with the youth vote, according to this recent CNN poll. Trump is gaining ground with Hispanics, Latinos and African-Americans. This is craziness. You would never have thought this. It is reflecting unhappiness with Biden. And that unhappiness is real. You know, the Arab-American vote in Michigan. Obviously, they're very unhappy with Biden right now for reasons that are very understandable.
The question, though, is not how do you feel about Joe Biden? Ultimately, the question is, do you want Joe Biden or Donald Trump? That's the question. And David Brooks made this point in a column last week, which is it's easy to use polling to register your protest. I don't like what Joe Biden is doing. I, you know, I protest.
But it's hard to go into a polling booth knowing that Donald Trump is a catastrophe.
And not say, listen, I may be unhappy with Biden, but he's better than Trump. That is what we have to rely on. And it's a year from now and things could change and people could, their attitudes could change about Biden. Your organization is called Third Way. Yes. Which to me would suggest that you are actually promoting another option. It's been awkward. Yeah. I'm like, hey, don't they want...
a third candidate? Isn't that like maybe you're trying to change? Are you guys actually trying to change the electoral system so that there would be three candidates? Because I mean, three parties, because I've covered European politics for a few years in Brussels, and it's very normal to have coalition governments, multiple parties, and
Obviously, they don't spend a billion dollars to try to run for reelection. So it's very different. But is that what the root of your organization was? Like, where did you guys kind of come from? The word third has been super difficult for us in the last year in dealing with this problem. The name comes from Bill Clinton's philosophy of government.
which when we were formed in 2005, that was still a kind of salient thing for people in politics. It sort of isn't anymore, but it was a third way between the far left and the far right.
Those two things, I mean, there is now a real far left and a real far right, but it's not a center point between those two things. It is we are moderate Democrats, and we wanted to signal with our name that we were kind of Clintonian moderate Democrats. Now, Clintonism is now 30 years ago. Things have changed. We are Biden Democrats.
We do believe we need electoral reform. We're all for, you know, final five voting to kind of take the parties out of the primary system. And we would not be necessarily opposed to third parties operating inside Congress. I mean, there are already. Angus King is a member of third party. But in a presidential system, unlike the European systems that are mostly parliamentary, in presidential systems,
We just don't have room for a third party. It's never worked. And it certainly hasn't really worked at the presidential level. It might work in limited ways at legislative level. But, you know, and there's been a handful of independents as governors. I would say Jesse Ventura's experiment with that did not go particularly well in Minnesota. But
But we believe that at least for now, we've got to operate inside the two-party system. And when we are standing at the edge of the abyss, when Donald Trump becoming president could end the American experiment, then this is definitely not the time for a third party. All right, Matt, this was really interesting. Thanks for coming on the show and kind of really blaring the siren of the risks of voting for a third party candidate. I think, you know, a lot of
my listeners and people who have reached out, they're just kind of like, they're unhappy about our options. But I think you're right that a protest vote has real implications. It does. Well, thank you for having me. And I really appreciate both the opportunity to talk about it. And let me just reiterate, your coverage of this has been spot on. And I hope other reporters will follow and recognize how important this is and could actually swing the outcome.
Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Connor Nevins and Christopher Sutton. If you like my reporting, sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. Go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri. And if you like this podcast, subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. And I'll be back on Thursday.
