The "Terrible, Unserious Choices" Offered By Third Parties

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(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Catherine Rampell tells us what most of us already know, but bears repeating, regarding the candidacies of "Scary Gary" Johnson and Dr.! Jill "WiFi" Stein:

...[T]hese third-party options are bad candidates not simply because of their impracticality, or their underdog status, or their lack of exposure, or some nonsense about a rigged political system.   

Johnson and Stein are, on their own merits, terrible, unserious choices. They are unfit for office. 

Rampell leads you through the reasons why both Johnson and Stein are unfit, then concludes:

These candidates have received relatively little media scrutiny, let alone attacks from competitors. This allows many Americans to think of them as the purer choices for the presidency. If all the mudslinging misses them, their feet of clay go unnoticed.  

Which is precisely why they probably haven’t felt the need to do their homework. If you give them your precious vote, you haven’t done yours, either.  

Let's say it again:  the next President will be either Hillary Clinton or neo- fascist buffoon Donald "Rump" Trump.  Voting third party or not voting is tantamount to a vote for installing the authoritarian buffoon in the most powerful office in the world.  Would you want that on your conscience for the rest of your life?

BONUS:  There's also this buzzed about review of a new book about Hitler that has striking parallels to the current environment.

Today's Neo-Fascist Fan Fic

Recently, we called out the once great Washington Post's Bezos Bugle's dim- witted David Ignatius for an op/ ed suggesting the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party look for the very model of a modern major-general to save it in 2016.  (David Petraeus?!?)

Not to be outdone, former Bezos Bugle stenographer and Politic-ho founder Jim VandeHei has now written a "think piece" minus the "think" for Rupert "Aargh!" Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, in which he talks about a third party candidate representing "Normal America" (no link - there's a WSJ paywall we refuse to deal with).  Two of his points of reference are his hometown of Oshkosh, WI, and current home Lincoln, ME.

We'll let Jamelle Bouie commence with the disembowelment:

Oshkosh is 90% white and Lincoln is 97% white. Interesting that this is “normal” America. https://t.co/F6YXKOo4FS

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) April 26, 2016

Also, if pundit types want a taste of "normal America" they can just talk to 100s of 1000s of working people who live in and around DC.

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) April 26, 2016

VandeHei's ideal candidate and campaign sounds suspiciously proto- fascist (Trump with impulse control is the model):

Exploit the fear factor. The candidate should be from the military or immediately announce someone with modern-warfare expertise or experience as running mate. People are scared. Terrorism is today's World War and Americans want a theory for dealing with it.

"Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran."

But who he ends up with as potential presidential timber, mmm, not so much (wait for it): Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg!  Keep in mind VandeHei is the caliber of pundit that is treated as a Very Serious Person by, well, other Very Serious Persons.  As such, he is ceded valuable space on the nation's opinion pages.

As Bouie concludes,

Congrats, you spent 20 years covering politics and emerged as an ignorant, vapid, proto-fascist. https://t.co/YoeIJLsLkO

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) April 26, 2016

BONUS:  Steve Benen says VandeHei has met "Establishment Ameerica," and it is VandeHei.

BONUS II:  Charlie Pierce facetiously wonders if VandeHei's piece is a satire - if only.

BONUS III:  Five Thirty Eight clues VandeHie into what "Normal America" really looks like.

Friedman's Odd Fixation

The "Mustache of Understanding," a.k.a. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, has a well-known hobby horse: a "centrist" third party on the ballot in 2012. He might as well be a paid publicist (hmmm) for one of these political unicorns -- "Americans Elect." Not surprisingly, he's used his valuable space in the Sunday Times to once again ride the same nag. Outside of a few anonymous billionaires pulling its strings, and deluded, misinformed or co-opted people like Friedman, it's hard to detect a clamoring for an "Americans Elect" third party, especially in an election year as critical as 2012. What then is Friedman fronting for? Robert Kuttner has this (excerpted) analysis:

"Tom Friedman of the New York Times is at it again, claiming that what America needs to fix our economic and political mess is a radically centrist third party. Radical in this case means conservative when it comes to belt-tightening. Friedman in Sunday's Times urges a third party 'to fill the space between the conservative Santorum (or even Mitt Romney) and the left-of-center Barack Obama.'

"Friedman has written this column before. [snip]

"As the Friedman column suggests, a lot of the pundit class laps up this 'radical-center' malarkey. The Washington Post ["Kaplan Daily"] editorial page has been an ongoing commercial for fiscal austerity, and (former U.S. Comptroller General David) Walker has generally gotten a very respectful press. It was the influence of the deficit hawks that pushed Obama into appointing the late and little-lamented Bowles Simpson commission, which in turn compelled the president to waste nearly a year obsessing about budget balance when he should have stayed focused on recovery. [snip]

"The combination of bad economic advice, a ballot slot bought and paid for by secretive private equity and hedge fund players, and a candidate who became a media figure courtesy of Peter G. Peterson, epitomizes everything messed up about our politics. How fitting that Tom Friedman should be its tribune."

On a "Centrist" Third Party

Some of the Beltway Kool Kids have recently been plumping for a third party candidate to run for president in 2012. The argument generally goes like this: we need a middle-of-the-road/ centrist who will bring the country back to a less polarized place, because the left and right are making a mess of things! Here are two takes on this "thinking," the first by Jonathan Chait:

"What... are we to make of third-party activists like [NY Times columnist and "Mustache of Understanding"] Thomas L. Friedman or Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz? They have a president who supports virtually everything they want—short-term stimulus, long-term deficit reduction through a mix of taxes and entitlement cuts, clean energy, education reform, and social liberalism. Yet they are agitating for a third party in order to carry out an agenda that is virtually identical to Obama’s. In a column touting the third-party Americans Elect, the closest Friedman comes to explaining why we should have a third party, rather than reelect the politician who already represents their values, is to say that such a party 'would have offered a grand bargain on the deficit two years ago, not on the eve of a Treasury default.' He agrees with Obama’s plan, in other words, but proposes to form a new party because he disagrees with his legislative sequencing."

Now from E.J. Dionne:

"Some of my middle-of-the-road columnist friends keep ascribing our difficulties to structural problems in our politics. A few call for a centrist third party. But the problem we face isn’t about structures or the party system. It’s about ideology — specifically a right-wing ideology that has temporarily taken over the Republican Party and needs to be defeated before we can have a reasonable debate between moderate conservatives and moderate progressives about our country’s future...

In the meantime, a broad range of economists agree that America’s sputtering jobs machine needs a sharp and quick jolt. It is unconscionable that in the face of mass unemployment, Republicans continue to foil measures to spur employment, including an extension of the payroll tax holiday. How can conservatives declare simultaneously that (1) it would be a terrible crime to raise taxes on the rich in the long term, and (2) it is an act of virtue to raise taxes on the middle class immediately? Has class warfare ever been so naked?

...We need moderation all right, but a moderate third party is the one way to guarantee we won’t get it. If moderates really want to move the conversation to the center, they should devote their energies to confronting those who are blocking the way. And at this moment, the obstruction is coming from a radicalized right."