The Libertarian Party all but assured that its bid for irrelevance on the national stage will continue unabated as it nominated relative unknown Chase Oliver as its 2024 presidential candidate on Sunday evening.
Oliver is no stranger to libertarian electoral politics. In 2020, he ran for Congress in Georgia as the party’s candidate in the state’s 5th Congressional District, and in 2022, he ran for Senate in the Peach State and garnered sufficient support that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and his Republican opponent Herschel Walker were forced into a runoff election.
But why is Oliver’s nomination a disaster for the Libertarian Party? Well, in the past three election cycles, the party has consistently finished in third place behind the two major parties. It reached a high point in 2016 when the party nominated former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who earned more than 3% of the national popular vote.
Given the party’s recent track record, conventional wisdom would seem to indicate that the party’s nominee is poised to benefit greatly from the rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Polling has consistently shown that there is an interest in third-party candidates after a decline in 2020.
But rather than nominate a candidate that would differentiate from the two parties and create some buzz for itself, the Libertarian Party, chock-full of neck-bearded nerds, nominated a bona fide leftist who has praised Obamacare, supports open borders, and seeks to end prosecutions for so-called victimless crimes, a category he conspicuously fails to define.
The Libertarian Party has consistently appealed to would-be Republicans who hold conservative views on guns and education, while appealing to free market principles on economic issues. But in nominating Oliver, the party’s ticket now has more in common with the Democratic Party than the GOP. Furthermore, the presence of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot has sucked the attention away from any other third-party candidates.
The outcome of the party’s convention was arguably the best possible scenario for Trump, who addressed the convention on Saturday amid a chorus of boos. With Oliver on the ticket, the protest appeal for would-be Republican voters was greatly diminished.
The Libertarian Party had an opportunity to nominate Kennedy as its candidate in 2024, a potentially mutually beneficial action that would have helped Kennedy secure ballot access in dozens of states while all but guaranteeing the party would have its best showing in a general election. But Kennedy was eliminated on the first ballot at the party’s weekend convention.
But rather than nominate a candidate who would have assured the party had expanded relevancy but didn’t fit every single ideological litmus test put forth by the party’s delegates, the Libertarian Party all but guaranteed that its 2024 showing will be a low point for the party.
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During a speech at the convention last weekend, Trump hilariously mocked the party’s delegates as they booed him, saying, “keep getting your 3% every four years.”
At this point, 3% may be too generous for a party hellbent on seeking irrelevancy.