Be Libertarian With Me: A Gary Johnson Timeline

I think the room for growth is there as a centrist alternative to the major parties. The Republicans have abandoned free trade and open immigration policy for white working class identity politics. The democrats are also starting to move much further left on fiscal and economic issues.
An experienced governor like Bill Weld could be a good nominee. America''s tired of the war and drugs and the war on terror, so issues like that could attract more votes for a libertarian candidate. I'm a libertarian, and I'd end the war in Afghanistan on day one if I was elected to office. The US could cut its military budget in half and still have an edge over Russia and China. We can worry about Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan once we've ended mass incarnation, held cops accountable for police brutality, and Flint, Michigan has clean water.

If the election was held tomorrow, how many votes could Weld get? 5-6 percent?
 
If the two became major parties, they would eventually all into the trap of polarization.
Yeah, there would still be polarized politics and a major divide on fiscal issues. We'd have fierce debates over fiscal/economic issues like the minimum wage to the mess we have now. Ron Paul in 2012 and Bernie Sanders in 2016 were pretty much on the same page as far as foreign policy and the war on drugs is concerned.
That polarized America would probably have much lower military spending and less nonviolent criminals in jail.
 
If the election was held tomorrow, how many votes could Weld get? 5-6 percent?
In a Pew Survey from 2014, 11% of respondents agreed that the word libertarian "describes me well". About 20% of the US is probably libertarian or libertarian leaning, depending on how strictly "libertarian" is defined and on which issues.

The percentage vote that a libertarian could get in 2020 depends on who the democratic nominees are and how badly the Trump administration governs. Libertarian leaning voters have become more politically homeless since 2016. The republicans have pretty much abandoned free trade and open immigration. The democratic party is either moving leftward on economic questions, or fissuring between a more centrist faction and a leftist faction. We're eventually due for another recession, and an economic contraction could still hurt the incumbent even if its not as severe as '08.

I care more about the right policies getting passed than which party takes power. A minor party doesn't have to take power if it can pull the conversation towards its positions. UKIP didn't need a PM or a majority in parliament to push a larger party into supporting the Brexit referendum. Ultimately, a libertarian ticket faces the same systemic challenges as all third parties in the US.
 

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If the election was held tomorrow, how many votes could Weld get? 5-6 percent?

Not tomorrow because most Americans outside of New England have no idea who Weld is. If Weld runs a campaign that can get sufficient media attention he might pull a decent number of voters. He adds much needed gravitas to the LP and handles the media a lot better than I think Johnson was capable of doing.

I am, however, skeptical of this because the media has little interest in promoting third parties. If John Kaisch or Michael Bloomberg were to embark on a vanity run they would get a lot more attention than the standard bearer for the nation's third largest political party because the media can spin it as an intra-party war within the GOP.
 
Not tomorrow because most Americans outside of New England have no idea who Weld is. If Weld runs a campaign that can get sufficient media attention he might pull a decent number of voters. He adds much needed gravitas to the LP and handles the media a lot better than I think Johnson was capable of doing.

I am, however, skeptical of this because the media has little interest in promoting third parties. If John Kaisch or Michael Bloomberg were to embark on a vanity run they would get a lot more attention than the standard bearer for the nation's third largest political party because the media can spin it as an intra-party war within the GOP.
If the democratic party has a total rupture between Pelosi-style liberals and Occasio-Cortez style leftists, the field is open for a crowded, 1912-style election in 2020. People in power care most about monopolizing their influence within an institution, even at the expense of the institution as whole. Working within one of the major party's existing infrastructure is a sensible strategy, but it will takes a major defeat to force a party establishment to change.

The disgust that a lot of Bernie supporters had with the DNC is eerily reminiscent of the way a lot of Ron Paul supporters felt about the Republican party after 2008 and 2012. The core activists from each campaign formed the core of new activist groups, Our America and Young Americans for Liberty.
 
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I'd bring Larry Sharpe into any redone version of this timeline. He's a veteran and businessman from New York City. He was in second place for the LP's Vice Presidential nomination in 2016, and he's currently running for governor of New York State. So far, he's in second place for the amount of funds his campaign has raised after the incumbent, governor Cuomo.

In NY State the winner only needs a plurality of the voters, so Larry Sharpe can do well in a crowded field.

As of July 26th 2018, fundraising is as follows

Andrew Cuomo $20,474,696.32
Cynthia Nixon $1,607,222.03
Marcus Molinaro $1,082,395.01
Larry Sharpe $224,647.06
Stephanie Miner $177,582.43
Howie Hawkins $23,999.35

Sharpe was only second in fundraising because nobody wanted to give money to Brian Kolb.

Coming second to Bill Weld in a runoff convention isn't saying too much considering how much disdain there was for Weld going in.
 
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