A presidential election rematch in 2024 between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has helped pave the way for renewed interest in third-party candidates. The most dominant interloper is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently polling at a healthy 11.7% and is being taken seriously, particularly by the DNC. This cycle has also seen No Labels threaten, and then fail, to field an alternative candidate, which nonetheless points to voters seeking an alternative to the status quo. This Washington Examiner series, Three’s a Crowd, will look at how and why third-party candidates could play a major spoiler come November. Part three will take a closer look at the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Hillary hatred, and the DNC’s lessons learned.
Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton, smarting from her surprise loss to then-reality star Donald Trump, started apportioning blame to 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein, contending she siphoned much-needed votes from her.
Now, with Stein poised to be on 2024 general election ballots, President Joe Biden appears to be heeding Clinton’s advice to take third-party and independent candidates seriously amid extremely close, margin-of-error polling between himself and Trump before this November.
The Green Party will be on the ballot in the key battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, with the potential of Georgia, though the party has only been able to mount write-in campaigns there in the past, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. The Green Party has not been on Nevada’s ballot since 2008, but it was on Pennsylvania’s ballot in 2012 and 2016 before organizing a write-in campaign in 2020.
But as the Green Party and Stein, who is tipped to become her party’s nominee after Cornel West decided last fall to continue his 2024 presidential run as an independent, keep up their campaign for broader ballot access, the Democratic National Committee has stood up a special team, led by top strategists Ramsey Reid, Mary Beth Cahill, and Lis Smith, to counteract their efforts.
“We find it both offensive and pathetic that the Democrats are choosing to use their vast resources, acquired in large part through their donors in the fossil fuel industry and the war machine, to impede democracy rather than support it,” Stein campaign manager Jason Call told the Washington Examiner. “If Democrats were truly committed to voters and progressive policies, they would be working to solve the real problems Americans face.”
“Voters deserve better, and we intend to give them that choice,” Call said. “Votes are not owned; they are earned.”
The DNC has deployed more of those resources against Democrat-turned-independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., including spending money on ads calling him a spoiler for Trump in English and Spanish and filing multiple Federal Election Commission complaints against his super PAC American Values 2024, but DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni told the Washington Examiner the party knows that “the stakes are high in this election” and it is “not taking anything for granted.”
“In close elections, every vote matters, and you can’t wish these things away,” a Democratic aide added. “The difference between ’16 and ’20, and, honestly, ’24, is that, in 2016, Donald Trump had never been president and he was still kind of a joke, right?”
“In 2020, people had experienced him being president, and him being reelected was very terrifying for people,” the aide said of Trump. “So, in 2024, when it comes to October and there’s actually a binary choice in front of people, I suspect you will see more of the 2020 patterns than 2016.”
The DNC also knows that although Green Party and independent candidates, such as Kennedy and West, will not be on enough ballots to win the general election outright, their presence, for instance, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, could swing the contest toward Trump as Clinton and her allies argue they did in 2016. There were other factors at work that cycle, but, of the almost 1.45 million votes that Stein received that year, 51,463 of them were in Michigan, where Clinton lost to Trump by only 10,704 votes. Another 31,072 were in Wisconsin, where Clinton lost to Trump by 22,748 votes, while another 49,941 were in Pennsylvania, where she lost by 44,292.
Biden and Clinton reportedly discussed third-party and independent candidates and their repercussions for his campaign last fall during the former secretary of state‘s trip to the White House for a Japanese-sponsored art award ceremony. There, Clinton implored Biden to them “seriously” and “come up with a way to compensate for it,” according to NBC.
A spokesman for Clinton did not return the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, but the former senator and first lady has not hidden her dislike of the likes of Stein.
“That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton told David Plouffe, former President Barack Obama‘s 2008 campaign manager, in 2019 of Stein’s 2012 and 2016 bids. “Yes, she’s a Russian asset. I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”
In the present, Biden’s campaign is particularly susceptible to third parties and independents because of his low approval ratings as Trump leads him nationally by an average of less than a percentage point, 46.4% to 45.8%, according to polling aggregator RealClearPolitics.
In Michigan, for example, the state with the country’s highest number and percentage of Arab Americans, 101,623 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the party’s primary in February to protest Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, more than Trump’s margin of victory there in 2016 and almost matching Biden’s counterpart in 2020. Trump currently has an average 3-point advantage over Biden in Michigan, 48% to 45.2%.
Anger with Biden in Michigan ranges from members of the Abandon Biden campaign, who are encouraging people not to support Biden in November over his leadership during the war, with several even considering voting for Trump, to members of Listen to Michigan, who will probably cast a ballot for Biden in November but are hoping to change his policy toward Israel.
“Absolutely, they need to be more worried about Michigan,” Sameh Elhady, vice chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party’s Arab American caucus, told the Washington Examiner of Biden’s campaign. “The Arab American and Muslim community [is] very reluctant of supporting President Biden and other Democrats for other positions in the upcoming election, unfortunately, and this will impact maintaining, the possibility of maintaining Michigan as a blue state in the upcoming election.”
“I don’t see the campaign going in the right direction here in Michigan, and, from my own analysis, I see Michigan is not going to be a good supporter for President Biden,” Elhady said. “He’s most likely going to lose unless something dramatic happens to shift the votes again and bring back the party members who are against what’s happening. Not only Arab American or Muslim, progressive, minorities, black and Latino, are also upset.”
The Rev. Horace Sheffield, III., a Michigan pastor and radio host, as well as the CEO of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, agreed that “there is certainly some disgruntled part of the black electorate in Detroit who are undecided.”
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“My life’s work has been about fighting for civil rights and championing democracy,” Sheffield told the Washington Examiner. “I am concerned, however, of third-party candidates who could tip the scale in this election.”
“I understand voters want more choices in November — that’s what I hear on the ground — but the real choice is Biden or Trump,” he said. “President Biden and the [Democratic] Party must go harder on the messaging and remind people about the stakes of this election or I fear black voters could stay home. We must engage our voters on what this election means for your wallet at the store to the future of democracy at the ballot box.”