Tommy Washbush / Lisa Ferdinando photo
Editor’s note: This article was updated from the print version to incorporate the results of the April 2 primary elections and the end of No Labels presidential effort.
This may well be the most important election of our lifetime. That phrase has been used almost word-for-word since it first appeared in print in 1805. And yet, it might well be argued that in 2024 this presidential election absolutely could be more important than any other in living memory. Donald Trump has not only telegraphed his intent to remake our government, he actually has at least two groups drawing up the very plans to do so. Project 2025 and Agenda 47 are comprehensive and frightening documents. There should be no question about what the former occupant of the White House intends if he should manage to regain that role.
So why is there still so much ambivalence?
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in late January showed that, no matter the question, a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the available choices. Two thirds of respondents (67%) said they were “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.” Much of the media focus has been on Joe Biden’s age (at 81 he is the oldest president in U.S. history, but only four years older than Trump). In terms of domestic policy, the old guy has accomplished a lot. His real Achilles heel, however, is his militarism, particularly evident in the U.S. government support for Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks. It is this military support, which has aided and abetted the deaths of more than 32,000 people (more than 40% of them children) that has resulted in a huge defection of voters from the Biden camp. Records indicate that the average “protest vote” in an uncontested primary is 7%, but in Michigan, Minnesota, and about 13 other states, the totals are averaging in excess of 10%, in one case up to nearly 30% of primary voters.
In Wisconsin’s April 2 presidential primary election, nearly 50,000 voters (8.3%) in the Democratic primary marked their ballots for an “uninstructed” option, and more than one in five Republican voters marked their ballots for either “uninstructed” or for a candidate who was no longer in the race. The protest vote leveled at Biden represented more than twice his slim margin of victory in the 2020 general election.
A number of third party candidates have emerged to address some of this voter dissatisfaction. Most well-known of these is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is polling in some places as high as 10%. But it has never been easy to run outside the two-party system in this country.
A patchwork of election laws across all the different states make ballot access difficult and funding hard to assemble. As of March, RFK had only qualified to be on the ballot in one state, Utah. Independent Cornel West, who was originally planning to run on the Green Party ticket, says he now has ballot access in four states. The Green Party, which has maintained a ballot line in more than 20 states, will not choose its nominee until mid-July, but the current top contender is Jill Stein, who also ran in 2012 and 2016.The No Labels movement planned to run what it called a “unity ticket” in 2024 and spent lots of money, much of it from unknown “dark money” sources, to get on the ballot in all 50 states, including Wisconsin. But on April 4, No Labels announced they would not field a presidential candidate this year, explaining in a statement, since they had found no candidate, “the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
The great fear, raised by many in this crucial election year, is whether these third party candidates will simply act as spoilers — taking away votes from either the Democrat or the Republican. There are many in the United States who still accuse Ralph Nader of being the reason that George W. Bush took the White House in 2000. That analysis, however, ignores the role played by the U.S. Supreme Court, or Al Gore’s own part by not demanding a full recount of every county in Florida.
As of mid-March, one in 10 Americans voting in primaries had selected “uncommitted” or its equivalent on their ballot (in Wisconsin the term is “uninstructed”), sending at least 20 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this summer. The main agenda of the national uncommitted movement, according to Listen to Michigan campaign director Layla Elabed, is to push for “a permanent cease-fire” in the war in Gaza. And they may be able to do it. In 2016, delegates pledged to Bernie Sanders took a lead role in pushing the Democratic Party platform to the left, making it what the senator himself called in a July 2016 press release, “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” That trend continued with Sanders campaign staffers in 2020 pressuring Biden to the left and shaping a more progressive (domestic) agenda.
Will the pressure from the uncommitteds be able to influence the Democratic Party? It remains to be seen, but 100 years ago, in another presidential campaign, U.S. Sen. Robert M. La Follette made his mark on national politics for the next half century by running as an independent third party candidate for the White House. In 1924, La Follette and his supporters had about four months from his July 4 announcement until the election in November to build a new Progressive Party. La Follette was vastly outspent and lost to incumbent Calvin Coolidge, but he garnered nearly 5 million votes (about 16.6% of the electorate), at that time the highest number of votes ever received by a third party contender.
La Follette had achieved what no other progressive candidate had done before. About one in six voters in the 1924 election cast their ballots for a change from the “same old, same old” and a coalition was built that would influence the next half century of American politics — from the New Deal to the candidacy of George McGovern in 1972.
Lessons for outsider candidates today? Build on existing progressive coalitions; stay true to your progressive values; and have a big tent to build alliances across issues.
Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive, founded by Robert M. La Follette in January 1909. The magazine will be celebrating the centenary of La Follette’s presidential campaign with a conference in Madison, April 25-27. For more information, visit progressive.org/progressive-presidency.
