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Tag: independents

  • Most Michigan voters support U.S. aid for Gaza, poll finds

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    Steve Neavling

    Signs at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Wayne State University in May 2024.

    A majority of Michiganders want the U.S. to help secure food, water, and medical supplies for people in Gaza, where Israeli attacks since October 2023 have killed more than 62,000 and led to mass starvation, a new poll shows.

    The survey, released Thursday by the progressive advocacy group Progress Michigan, found that 69% of Michigan voters support U.S. aid to Gaza, including 45% who strongly support it. Just 22% oppose the aid, while 8% were unsure.

    Support was highest among Democrats, with 67% strongly backing aid and another 20% somewhat in favor. Independents also favored action, with 43% strongly supporting aid and 21% somewhat supporting. Republicans were more divided, with 18% strongly supporting aid and 33% somewhat supporting, while 38% opposed.

    Women were more likely than men to support aid, with 50% strongly in favor compared with 41% of men. By race, 68% of white respondents expressed support, with 45% strongly and 23% somewhat, and Black residents also supported U.S. involvement, including 39% strongly and 36% somewhat.

    In each demographic, more people favored aid to Gaza than opposed it.

    A poll from Progress Michigan found bipartisan support among Michigan residents calling for aid for Gaza. - Progress Michigan

    Progress Michigan

    A poll from Progress Michigan found bipartisan support among Michigan residents calling for aid for Gaza.

    “Some things are bigger than partisan politics, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza is one of them,” Sam Inglot, executive director of Progress Michigan, said. “Michiganders recognize that allowing an entire population to starve and suffer without medical care is a moral failure we cannot accept. People are fed up with the foot dragging and the excuses and are demanding an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

    Inglot said the poll shows voters want urgent action, not excuses from elected officials.

    “We have a moral imperative to do everything we can to get food, water and medical supplies to those who still remain in Gaza, and end the bombings and killing of Palestinians,” Inglot said. “It’s time for our lawmakers to stop making excuses for the reprehensible actions of the Israeli government and step up to do the right thing.”

    The results come from Progress Michigan’s monthly Lake Effect polls, which survey voters across the state.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • The State of the Union is shouty

    The State of the Union is shouty

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    In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie welcome back sudden special guest (and former Roundtable host) Andrew Heaton! The editors reflect on President Biden’s recent State of the Union address and look ahead to the unavoidable slog of eight more months of election coverage.

    04:11—President Biden’s feisty, yet empty, State of the Union address

    24:27—Third party election outlook

    46:43—Weekly Listener Question

    55:49—This week’s cultural recommendations

    Mentioned in this podcast:

    “State of the Union (on Stimulants)” by Liz Wolfe

    “The State of Our Biden Is Historically Frail” by Matt Welch

    “Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address” by Joe Biden

    “No Labels, With No Candidate, Says Yes to a 2024 Presidential Campaign” by Matt Welch

    “Biden’s Inaccurate and Inadequate Lip Service to Marijuana Reform Ignores Today’s Central Cannabis Issue” by Jacob Sullum

    “Biden Touts More Forever Wars, Breaking His 2021 Promises” by Matthew Petti

    “Third Party Candidates Widening Trump’s Lead Over Biden” by Matt Welch

    “Biden’s Plan To Subsidize Homebuyers Won’t Work” by Christian Britschgi

    “Biden Says He’ll Make the Wealthy Pay More To Fix Social Security. Here’s Why That Won’t Work.” by Eric Boehm

    “Biden Is Wrong About Student Debt Forgiveness” by Emma Camp

    “Not Again With the ‘Shrinkflation,’ Please” by Eric Boehm

    “RFK Jr.: The Reason Interview” by Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller

    “The Limits of Taxing the Rich” by Brian Riedl

    “How Long Could Billionaires Fund the Government” by Nick Gillespie  and John Osterhoudt

    Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

    Check out Andrew Heaton’s podcast The Political Orphanage here.

    Today’s sponsor:

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    Matt Welch

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  • Third-Party 2024 Candidates Can’t Win, But They Can Help Trump

    Third-Party 2024 Candidates Can’t Win, But They Can Help Trump

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    This man isn’t going to be president, but he may help Trump or Biden win this November.
    Photo: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

    There’s no telling what the 2024 presidential general election is going to look like after what will probably seem like an endless campaign between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But both the early polls and recent history suggest that the contest will be close, just like six of the last seven presidential elections. Thanks to widespread disgruntlement with this choice, the odds are also high that the non-major-party vote will be relatively high (more like 2016’s 5.7 percent than 2020’s 1.9 percent) — and that may decide the election.

    But as Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times points out in an important column, the one thing we know for sure is that none of these third-party or independent candidates is going to win:

    [T]o have any hope of fulfilling the constitutional requirement to win a majority of electoral votes, a third-party candidate would need at least a plurality of voters in a huge number of states. The party would need, on a state-by-state basis, to outcompete one of the other two parties, so that it could notch electors under the winner-take-all rules that apply in most states.

    This, unfortunately for anyone with third-party dreams, has never happened. 

    Yes, there is an argument (being suggested most recently by the No Labels crowd, which is seeking ballot access for a yet-to-be-identified presidential candidacy) that a non-major-party candidate can crucially influence the direction of the nation by picking off a few states and deadlocking the Electoral College, thereby gaining massive leverage in the resolution of that deadlock in Congress. But to do that you need a very big regional base of support, as Bouie notes:

     In 1948, with Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as its candidate, the States’ Rights Democratic Party — better known as the Dixiecrats — won four states and 39 electoral votes despite gaining just 2.4 percent of the national popular vote. Twenty years later, George Wallace and the American Independent Party won 46 electoral votes and 13.5 percent of the popular vote.

    What both results suggest is that under the Electoral College, the next best alternative to a large and well-distributed national constituency is to have a small and intense regional one. It is, it seems, the only other way to win electoral votes as a third party. 

    Both those efforts failed, of course. And if you scan the list of likely non-major-party candidates in 2024 — independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West; Green Party aspirant Jill Stein; whoever the Libertarians choose to run; and the “centrist” worthies under consideration by No Labels — there’s no one with the kind of regional base Thurmond or Wallace (or Teddy Roosevelt in his Bull Moose run of 1912) enjoyed. There is a nascent argument that Kennedy might augment his already-significant but highly diffused support (13 percent in the national RealClearPolitics averages in a five-way race) by winning the Libertarian nomination. That’s a bit of a reach given Kennedy’s lefty background and erratic views; he’s just not the sort of person you can imagine as a hero in an Ayn Rand novel, and his support for strong environmental policies might be a deal-breaker for the Libertarian Party, which has plenty of true believers from whom to choose. In any event, whatever RFK Jr. might gain from the easy ballot access Libertarians might offer would be offset by the number of voters who are decidedly non-libertarian.

    As for No Labels, the group may back away from its threat to run a “unity ticket” thanks to internal dissension and the fury of former allies who think the whole effort would just guarantee a Trump victory. But even No Labels’ own highly dubious polling shows any foreseeable candidate would struggle to win electoral votes. To cite one example, the West Virginia voters whose antipathy to Joe Manchin led him to give up his Senate seat aren’t going to back him for president against Donald Trump.

    What all of this suggests is that non-major-party candidacies should be viewed by voters and pundits alike strictly in the context of how they affect the Biden-Trump binary choice. Sure, there are ideological reasons some voters might pull the lever for the candidates of parties like the Libertarians and the Greens; those voters may believe that in the broader scheme of things it really just doesn’t matter whether Biden or Trump is the 46th president. For everyone else, the choice to go independent or third-party isn’t really a choice of that candidate, but of either Biden or Trump.

    Things could change by November, of course, and the implications of non-party candidacies may depend on how many of them there are and who they are. But current polling shows that the current five-way race we are contemplating will likely help Trump defeat Biden, which makes sense when you consider the cohesiveness of Trump’s MAGA base and his inability to win a popular-vote majority. As Bouie puts it: “If Americans want different choices, they will need a different system.” But let’s not accept the premise that those who vote for Kennedy or Stein or Mapstead or Manchin or West are “choosing” any of these people to take office. Like it or not, the only real choice is binary.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Are Democrats Burying Their Heads in the Sand Over Manchin’s Flirtations With a Presidential Run?

    Are Democrats Burying Their Heads in the Sand Over Manchin’s Flirtations With a Presidential Run?

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    On the surface, Democratic politicians are acting very nonchalant about the possibility that one of their own could mount a third-party presidential challenge against President Joe Biden. “There are often third-party candidates running, so I’m not overly troubled,” Senator Tim Kaine told Vanity Fair. Connecticut senator Chris Murphy said Thursday that it was too early to be concerned: “It is not on my list of things to worry about right now. I understand it’s an interesting conversation of a political class, but it’s a little premature to worry about it.”

    Others merely expressed their support for Biden and Kamala Harris. “Ah, let the pundits do that. But I’m all in for Biden-Harris,” Senator Raphael Warnock said when asked about the threat of a third-party candidate. “I think Joe Biden has a strong record to run on,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said. “I don’t think anybody can touch that.” Tina Smith echoed the sentiment. “Honestly, I’m focused on reelecting President Biden and reelecting a Democratic Senate and maybe even adding seats,” the Minnesota senator said.

    But Smith did add that the hubbub over a third-party candidacy was certainly not “helpful,” even if “it doesn’t change the fundamental dynamic of the race.”

    Center stage is Joe Manchin and continuing speculation that he may make a bid for the White House as the independent, centrist, “No Labels” candidate. The latest development in Manchin’s will-he-or-won’t-he saga came Wednesday when news broke that the West Virginia senator will appear next week in New Hampshire for a town hall hosted by No Labels, a group that very firmly believes 2024 could be the year of the third-party candidate. While Manchin billed his planned appearance as an opportunity to engage in a debate “around common sense solutions to solve the pressing issues facing our nation,” he also stopped short of shutting down the possibility of a presidential run. “I’ve never ruled out anything,” he told CNN.

    No Labels’ reasoning? Voters are tired of extremism and their candidate could siphon off enough voters from each major party for a victory. Thus far, polling does bear out this narrative in part: A No Labels candidate could very well pull voters away from the two major parties (that alone prompted Dritan Nesho, the chief pollster at No Labels, to tell Axios that the data shows “an unprecedented opening for the independent ticket”). But when it comes to who actually wins, No Labels’ own survey indicates that a third-party candidate is more likely to be a spoiler for Biden. According to a recent poll commissioned by the group, Biden wins 52% to Trump’s 48% in a head-to-head contest between the two. But in a three-way race, Trump wins 40% to Biden’s 39% with the third candidate securing 21% of the vote.

    Privately, it appears, Democrats are fretting about this. “What we hear universally from Democrats is deep concern about this,” Matt Bennett, the executive vice president of public affairs at Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank that has come out in opposition of a third-party candidacy. “We have not encountered a single Democrat who doesn’t think this is bad, other than, you know, Senator Manchin himself, basically.”

    “If [Manchin] runs for president, our message to him is: ‘You have no chance of winning. You are almost certain to end up a Jill Stein–level loser,’” Bennett says, a reference to the 2016 Green Party candidate, who only won 1.1% of the vote. “Do you want that to be your legacy?”

    Whether or not Democrats want to acknowledge it, the agita around Manchin is being put on their radars. As reported by Politico, Bennett and Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn—a progressive group that is also in opposition to a third-party candidacy—are scheduled to brief all the Senate Democratic chiefs of staff on July 27. Bennett told VF that Third Way has already met with leaders in both the House and Senate and with the Democratic National Committee. “The major concern is reelecting Trump, which is the horror of horrors,” he said, but added that an independent candidate could be a potential drag on down-ballot Democrats as well.

    Some House Democrats are more up-front about the stakes. “Everyone has a right to run,” Congressman Eric Swalwell told VF. “But I think it’s clear that this country is Team Community or Team Chaos right now—and anything that hurts Team Community helps Team Chaos.” Swalwell’s fellow California colleague had a similar take. “I don’t think it helps to have someone take away potentially suburban moderate votes, and I’ve always said that the challenge to the president isn’t from the left, it’s from the more right-, center-right wing of the party,” Congressman Ro Khanna said.

    As for No Labels, itself, lawmakers have no shortage of complaints. “Who are they and who is funding them?” Smith asked. “They start to look and sound a lot like a political party, but they’re not putting out any of the information that political parties need to put out. So those are my questions about their effort.” 

    Murphy was even more blunt. “They appear to be a pretty classic Republican front group designed to try to elect a Republican president.” 

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    Abigail Tracy

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  • Sinema ditches Democrats, but analysts say it’s no Senate earthquake, just a re-election gambit

    Sinema ditches Democrats, but analysts say it’s no Senate earthquake, just a re-election gambit

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    Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced Friday that she’s leaving the Democratic Party to register as an independent.

    So what does that mean?

    The initial reaction from analysts is that the Arizona lawmaker’s move won’t shake up how the Senate functions that much, and that it has more to do with her possible 2024 campaign for re-election.

    “At this point, we don’t expect Sinema’s defection to formally change the balance of power in the Senate,” said Benjamin Salisbury, director of research at Height Capital Markets, in a note.

    “Two independents, Senators Angus King [of Maine] and Bernie Sanders [of Vermont], formally caucus with Democrats,” Salisbury noted. “While Sinema declined to say which party she would caucus with, she did say that the change would not change how she votes, and she plans to keep her committee assignments, which is an indication to us that she will keep her affiliation with Democrats. In our view, the move is more about positioning herself for a tough 2024 reelection.”

    Sinema, who has been criticized frequently by progressive Democrats for moves such as opposing changes to the so-called carried-interest loophole, was expected to face a challenge from the left in a Democratic primary. But as an independent, she can avoid a primary and focus on the general election in her battleground state.

    Her calculation is that “the progressive Democratic ‘brand’ won’t help her to reelection in Arizona, but centrists and some from each party will,” Terry Haines, founder of Pangaea Policy, wrote in a note. “So there’s no percentage in doing anything but emphasizing her independence, and this is a high-profile, direct, and effective way of doing it.”

    Haines said the senator’s move isn’t an earthquake for the Senate: “Sinema herself says it’s not so, that she’ll continue to do the job in the same way — and there’s no reason to dispute it.”

    He also wrote that the “basic result for 2023-24 is as it was before Sinema’s announcement: domestic gridlock, basic fiscal/government spending stability, and continued foreign policy unanimity, particularly on China and Ukraine.”

    The Biden White House offered a similar reaction on Friday, saying that Sinema’s decision to “register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her.”

    Sinema has voted with Democrats 97% of the time, according to Bloomberg Government data.

    Related: Mitch McConnell praises Kyrsten Sinema as ‘the most effective first-term senator’ he’s seen in his career

    And see: Republicans clinch slim majority in House, likely signaling 2023 gridlock ahead

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sinema would keep her committee assignments.

    “I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, also said. “We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.”

    For the past two years, Democrats have controlled the 50-50 Senate only because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tiebreaking votes.

    Following Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s win on Tuesday over Republican challenger Herschel Walker in their closely watched runoff election, Democrats were expected to enjoy a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

    There’s talk that Sinema’s announcement on Friday may have changed that, but analysts such as Salisbury and Haines are pushing against that view.

    “Sinema’s defection is another sign of the tentative rise of overt bipartisanship in Congress,” Haines wrote. “There’s an increasing view that solving issues is what the vast majority of voters want, and some legislators seem prepared to risk the wrath of their party establishments to achieve it.”

    Most U.S. senators have been affiliated with a major political party, but more than 70 have been independents or represented a minor party, according to Senate records.

    Former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is a recent example of that group, as he started out as a Democrat, then became an independent but still caucused with his former party. That’s even as Democratic leaders criticized him for backing the late Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.

    U.S. stocks 
    SPX,
    -0.73%
     
    DJIA,
    -0.90%
    traded mixed Friday and were on track for weekly losses.

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