Unity '08: 2008 is like 1860

TNR's Britt Peterson presents the right take on Unity '08 -- a third-party presidential candidate has no chance:

Of course, Unity '08's coherence problem may be the least of their hurdles. As John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader can attest, the deck is stacked against third-party candidates. Getting on the ballot in all 50 states, securing a podium at the debates, facing voters repelled by the idea of feeding a spoiler, and managing to win in the electoral college's winner-take-all system is well-neigh impossible for an outside contender. "The American political process is, in effect, hypergerrymandered [against third-party candidates]," Micah Sifry, author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third Party Politics in America, tells me. Even Perot, in some ways an incredibly successful third-party candidate (and, incidentally, another one managed by Hamilton Jordan), who was able to buy his way onto ballots in all 50 states and the debate stages, won 19 percent of the popular vote but not a single electoral vote.

It's doubtful that Unity '08, even if it's able to spend at a Perot-campaign level (certainly easier if Bloomberg signs on), will fare any better. "We'll go through the period during the election season where it sure would be fun to imagine the possibilities," says Stephen Rosenstone, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota and an author of Third Parties in America. "And we will be told, if that campaign goes forward, that this is the exception. [But] all the previous candidates: they, too, were going to be the exceptions."

The best part, though, is the response of the Unity '08 guys, who compare this election to 1860, the last time a third party presidential candidate won the presidency (Lincoln):

Bailey and Rafshoon have an answer: This is the most important election ever, so all bets are off. But might the current situation, brought on by a vastly unpopular Republican President, send voters to the opposition party, rather than to a Democrat/Republican ticket? Not always, they say. "There is a tendency also to say that it's never happened, there's never been a third-party candidate. Not true. Not true," Bailey says. "At a moment of truth for the country--and that's where we think we are--in 1860, the country elected a third-party president. It was Lincoln. And the Whig Party went out of existence." Right on cue, Rafshoon quips, "There was no real crisis then, was there?" Sure, it's nice to see a Democrat and a Republican joking together--just like it would be nice to see the end of partisanship in America. But Gerry and Doug's show doesn't seem ready for primetime.

To make an obvious point, there's an important difference between "a moment of truth for the country" and being on the brink of civil war. The fundamental reason that a third party candidate could win in 1860 is that race had deeply split the parties. There is no cross-cutting issue that is even remotely comparable to race in this election.

Update 8/24 11:34 AM: Phil Klinkner correctly points out by email that the Republicans superseded the Whigs in 1856 and were not a true third party by 1860.

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[Chris Matthieu]

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