Third Party Watch

Well, he did tell us what President-elect Obama’s administration would be like. So he may not be a spoiler this year, just a prophet. Here’s Ralph Nader’s post-election, in-the-midst-of-the-transition analysis of the incoming administration:

While the liberal intelligentsia was swooning over Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, I counseled “prepare to be disappointed.” His [...]

Sean Fenley, who describes himself as “an independent progressive blogger,” obviously was impressed enough by small-l libertarian Ron Paul to want to team him up with various progressive candidates in 2012. Writing in Op-Ed News, he has a proposal for “real hope, real change”:

Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul should run together in the next [...]

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader discusses his presidency in this video of his appearance on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

The Washington Post’s Reliable Source blog has some fun with Ralph Nader for suggesting that third-party candidates should be invited to President Obama’s inauguration:

The sometimes cantankerous outsider has sent an open letter to Barack Obama asking that third-party candidates—the Libertarian Party’s Bob Barr, the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin and the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney—be included [...]

Ballot Access News

From preliminary election returns, it appears that these are the best counties for five particular presidential candidates:

Nader: Morgan County, Tennessee 5.2%
Barr: Esmeralda County, Nevada, 2.7%
Baldwin: Millard County, Utah, 5.6%
McKinney: either St. Bernard or LaFourche Parish, both in Louisiana, each 1.1%
Brian Moore: Essex County, Vermont, 2.1%

Thanks to Jack Ross for doing the laborious job [...]

David Weigel of Reason takes a look at the votes for Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney, all of which were disappointing to their backers and in historical context. He then concludes:

So if you add together Paul with the four candidates he gathered at the National Press Club to endorse (and [...]

Ballot Access News reports that independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader “did not seek the nomination of any nationally-organized party. But he did seek out the nomination of various parties that are just organized in one state. Also, in a few states, for pragmatic ballot-access purposes, he created new one-state parties.”

It continues:

In eight states, parties that [...]

The following message is from the Ralph Nader presidential campaign site:

Hold Your Heads Up High

Posted by The Nader Team on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 12:56:00 PM

Hold Your Heads Up High .

Against all odds.

We prevailed.

On $4 million total — what Obama raised in one day.

Nader/Gonzalez overcame ballot access obstacles.

We put our shift the power agenda [...]

In three states—Missouri, Indiana, and North Carolina—the victor in the presidential race did not get 50% of the vote. And the vote for third-party candidates conceivably may have altered the outcome.

The problem is trying to determine the mindset of the voters who took the third-party route, an impossible task. Would they have voted [...]

With about half of today’s projected 140M votes counted, independent Ralph Nader has about 350K votes and Libertarian Bob Barr has 300K. If this pace holds, Barr would finish with a disappointing 600K (barely over 0.4%), and Nader would get a surprisingly low 700K. Both were polling at 1% on election eve.

Thanks to Bradley Jansen for providing this cheat-sheet service on Nolan Chart. He lists 14 “likely battleground states with information of the main third party candidates on the ballot and their history of support in the state (and how they may affect the electoral outcomes).”

Now if we could get only one of the mainstream [...]

... but it’s as close as we can get until Intrade has more granularity and liquidity in its prediction markets for third-party results. Intrade is giving Libertarian Bob Barr a 28% chance of winning more than 1% of the vote, but only an 8% chance of winning more than 2%. Its numbers for Nader [...]

Is this the way the campaign ends, not with a bang but a whimper? Time magazine thinks so, noting that both Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are polling only around 1% nationally as we hit election day. And Time wonders why this is so:

Given the current political environment, third parties really should have [...]

Ballot Access News

On November 1, a Deseret News/KSL-TV presidential poll was released. It is based on 1,205 voters, sampled between October 24 and October 30. Results: McCain 57%, Obama 32%, Baldwin 2%, Barr 1%, Nader 1%, undecided or refused 7%. Thanks to Frank Fluckiger for this news.

In 2004, the presidential vote in Utah had been: [...]

According to Ballot Access News:

Barack Obama has the top spot on the ballot in 15 states and the District of Columbia. John McCain has the top spot on the ballot in 14 states. Chuck Baldwin has the top spot in 6 states. Ralph Nader has the top spot in one state. Cynthia McKinney has the [...]

November 3, 2008
www.votenader.org

Open letter to Senator Barack Obama

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the [...]

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr, and Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin will debate tonight, October 30, in Cleveland, Ohio.

When: Thursday, October 30, at 4:30 p.m. EDT.
Where: The City Club of Cleveland; 850 Euclid Ave, 2nd Floor, Cleveland, OH
Topic: The Economy: “Where do we go from here?”

According to the [...]

Agency France Presse (AFP) takes a look at the campaigns of third-party candidates:

...the libertarian candidate Bob Barr, independent Ralph Nader and, to a lesser extent, Chuck Baldwin’s Constitution Party and Green candidate Cynthia McKinney, could have a significant impact on the hopes of McCain or Obama, who remain locked in tight races in key battleground [...]

Here is the entire 90-minute debate video via YouTube of last week’s debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin. This was aired on C-SPAN.

Covering the debate, The Nation said of Nader:

Nader didn’t spend any time actually scrapping with Baldwin, a Baptist minister and radio host who defeated [...]

Ralph Nader, the Independent presidential candidate, and Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate, went back and forth talking about the issues never letting the discussion devolve into one [...]

The following is a media release from Free and Equal Elections:

Free and Equal Elections
230 E. Ohio Street, Ste. 212 Chicago, IL 60611
phone 1.312.320.4101 fax 1.866.309.7803

Contact: Christina M. Tobin
Phone: (312) 320-4101
Email: christina@freeandequal.org
http://www.freeandequal.org

Third Party Presidential Debate to Take Place on Thursday, October 23rd

This morning, Christina Tobin, Director of Free and Equal, announced an Independent/Third Party Presidential Debate, [...]

Maria Recio of McCletchey Newspapers writes that “the troubled presidential debate for third-party candidates scheduled for Sunday at Columbia University in New York was canceled Friday after none of the four candidates had committed to the event.”

Barr claimed a conflict while McKinney opted for an online debate originally scheduled for that evening. Baldwin was reluctant [...]

Floyd Norris, writing in The New York Times, notes that “the most important legislation passed by the current Congress almost certainly was the bank bailout bill,” yet “neither man [Obama or McCain] chose to mention it in this week’s final presidential debate.”

Norris notes that the public was strongly against the bailout, and “there is virtually [...]

The New York Times’ Julie Bosman writes:

In the $700 billion bailout plan for the financial system, Mr. Nader, now on his fourth presidential run, has finally found a real-life event to illustrate what he has made a cause of his career.

“Oh yeah, it’s got everything,” Mr. Nader said in an interview after the rally. “Taxation [...]

Steve Duin, writing in The Oregonian, remarks that “at 74, Nader’s stamina, like his anger, shows no sign of fading. He has no intention of abandoning the stage to presidential candidates who don’t share his standards of fairness, his advocacy for single-payer national health insurance, or his disdain for compromise.”

And he quotes Ralph Nader on [...]