If Dean Loses, Will He Quit?
The Dean third party threat.
By Mickey Kaus Slate
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003, at 4:43 PM PT
Several eminent emailers have suggested that Everett Ehrlich's prediction of party decline ignores the major U.S. deterrent to splinter-party formation--the combination of the Electoral College and the rule, in all but two states, that the candidate winning the most votes gets all that state's electors. It doesn't pay to be a third party, in this scheme, unless you can actually win a few states. (The tendency of such winner-take-all systems to produce two-party politics is sometimes called Duverger's Law.) ...
The short answer to this argument is, that's all true, but who or what will the two parties be? Surely it matters whether we have 1) a two party system in which the two parties are familiar institutions that carry over from election to election (e.g. Republicans and Democrats) or 2) a fluid two-party system in which the #2, or even #1 banner is up for grabs every election, to be captured by one of several competing self-started Internet-organized groups that may not even have existed the year before. If the latter is true, the Internet will still have 'ended parties as we know them.' The label "Democrat" will be a sort of title to be won in the start-from-scratch organizing wars. It won't come with an existing cadre of officials, or even necessarily with any ideology.
But there's no reason the two major party slots would even continue to be called "Democrat" and "Republican." Suppose John McCain ran as an independent in 2004 or 2008; he might win a few states and come in second in most others. The McCainiacs would then be the opposition party, and it might suddenly be the Democrats who are the third party looking in vain for a reason to stay alive. .... If McCain doesn't work for you, substitute Dean. (In a Dean vs. Gephardt vs. Bush race, is it clear Dean would finish third? Not to me.) I still think Ehrlich is onto something fairly big. ... (As my colleague Bob Wright notes in his book Nonzero, changes in information technology tend to be followed by big political/cultural shifts. It's no accident that the Reformation happened a few decades after Gutenberg. Suddenly, you could nail a few theses on a door and they'd be distributed across a continent in days. Now--to exaggerate for a moment--you can put up a Web site and fill out some Meetup.com forms, and you can have a party-like political organization in all 50 states in a few weeks. Who needs Terry McAuliffe?) ... 2:06 A.M.
If He Loses, Will He Quit? Alert reader B.B. points out at least one more implication of Everett Ehrlich's high-ramification analysis of party decline in the Internet era: What happens if Dean loses in the Democratic primary? As Ehrlich notes, Dean's essentially built an entire new party for himself on the Web ("his own lists, his own money, his own organization"). Suppose one of the establishment party types he denounces, like Gephardt, defeats him and captures the Democratic "brand name." Will Dean really just pack up and go home? Why should he? He can take his new personal portable party and keep on running, as an independent, the way John Anderson did back in 1980. His followers are fanatical enough (he could tack back to the left to keep them stoked) and the front-loading of the primary system gives him more time to make this switch and get on the ballot in enough states, no? He could argue that Gephardt will lose to Bush anyway, that it's more important to build a movement for the future, etc. And you thought Ralph Nader was a spoiler. ... What are Democrats to do? 1) Make Dean pledge right now that he'll support the Democratic nominee [see Update 'n Salvage below]; 2) If he's beaten in the primaries, offer him the vice-presidential slot. That might not be a bad idea anyway, given his fervent following. 3) Encourage a compensating breakaway spoiler candidacy on the right. [Reader D.H. nominates an embittered Trent Lott] ... Update: Reader "Kevin from Sacramento" writes that "Dean has stated, repeatedly, that he will not run as a third party candidate and he will support the Democratic nominee if that nominee is not him." Good point! (He does it in this October debate, more or less.) Salvage: But campaign promises have a way of changing when opportunities open up. Bill Clinton pledged he wouldn't run for president in 1992. Hillary's said she won't run, and nobody seems to quite believe her. It wouldn't be hard for Dean to come up with a reason to change his mind--especially if the Democratic nominee is pro-war--now that it's clear he has the power to mount a national campaign independent of the party. ... Make him promise again, now, when everyone's paying attention! ... More: At the very least, the unspoken threat that Dean might break his promise and launch a third party candidacy gives him lots of leverage at the convention, even if he doesn't win the nomination. ... 4:39 P.M.
Mickey Kaus, a Slate contributor, is author of The End of Equality.
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