Iowa is over and New Hampshire looms large as former President Donald Trump aims for inevitability as the Republican nominee for president.
Still, his horse race with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis goes round and round with vigorous news coverage.
We were hit with a blizzard of coverage last week for the Iowa caucuses, where less than 15% of Republican voters in that state engaged in the process as sub-zero temperatures descended with the candidates.
Now Haley and DeSantis are finally ramping up criticism of Trump ahead of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. File that under: Too little, too late.
The real action is in November’s general election when third-party contenders who can’t win can still influence who loses. We’re all watching the wrong race.
The electorate is antsy. President Joe Biden won in 2020 by promising the restore the normal order of government that went so stupendously awry during Trump's one term. But now Biden is deeply unpopular.
Again, voters face an election where the choice is less about who you support and more about who you oppose.
Schwarzenegger for president?Arnold should run – and not just because he'd beat Trump.
While all this unwinds, the third-party types are already deep into planning for the general election and pitching especially hard to the country's largest voting block – people who identify as independent.
The math here looks like bad news for Biden, since the the third-party candidates seem far more likely to draw from his pool of support then to tap into Trump's base.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t going to be president. But his campaign can tilt the margins if his independent bid, which preempted his initial Democratic primary push, gets on the ballot in enough states. He formed the “We the People” party this week to push that process.
Kennedy is best known as a controversial conspiracy theorist who doubts the effectiveness of vaccines. But he brands that with one of the best-known names in American politics, an imprimatur that rings nostalgic with some older Democrats.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found Biden and Trump tied at 35% each in a general election rematch while Kennedy took 18% and 17% said they would back another candidate or were unsure. Another 13% said they just won’t vote.
Biden’s remaining Democratic primary challengers – U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson – are locked in a race for irrelevancy.
Jill Stein lingers like a hangover for Democrats. The Green Party’s nominee for president pulled in just enough 2016 votes in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to match the margins Trump won with there over Hillary Clinton.
Stein is back for more this year. Her campaign has virtual training scheduled for Monday to show volunteers how to help her get listed on state ballots. Stein's campaign said she's already on the ballot in 20 states and is aiming for the other 30, plus the District of Columbia.
Take Trump off the ballot?Supreme Court should ban Trump from the ballot. And not worry about the political fallout.
Look for state-based Democratic parties to explore legal loopholes to knock the Green Party candidate off the ballot, as they did in Pennsylvania in 2020 to avoid a repeat of those critical 2016 margins.
The Green Party howled with outrage in 2020, calling the legal challenge "voter suppression." But they were playing a game with rules. Want to win? Don't give your opponents opportunities to beat you.
Cornel West, a progressive activist and academic, seems to be running the least organized of the third-party efforts. But he loves a television camera and the chance to deride Biden as a disappointment. That could chip away at Biden’s support on the left spectrum of his party.
No Labels, a nonprofit pushing for ballot access for what it hopes will be a third option in November, went on the offensive this week, filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice that claims hardball politics being thrown at would-be contenders and political consultants active in the movement amount to illegal harassment.
No Labels has been assailed for the last year by critics who contend that a centrist “unity ticket” it desires will draw votes from Biden, helping Trump take back the White House.
The group, which critics note does not disclose who funds it, has repeatedly insisted it does not want to play the spoiler. But it sure looks to be headed in that direction.
Let's recap: A dark-money group is looking for a path to significantly impact American politics in a way that could very well create a result it claims it does not want. And they want the Department of Justice to force people to stop being so darn mean about it.
No Labels said Thursday it has already secured ballot access in 14 states and hopes to increase that to 32 states by March, when it will decide whether to back a presidential candidate. That candidate would be responsible for getting on the ballot in the remaining 18 states.
Don't like Trump or Biden?No Labels is working to give you alternative candidate in 2024.
Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut and founding chair for No Labels, said Haley would “deserve serious consideration” as a candidate if she expressed interest.
There’s never been a bigger platform for third-party types.
Poll after poll show that voters just don’t want what they certainly will get – a 2020 redux of Biden versus Trump. If you can’t stand the two biggest brands on the ballot, why not go shopping for someone new?
Gallup’s annual Governance Poll in October found support for a third-party candidate at 63% among U.S. adults, the third time it rose above 60% since 2017. That’s driven by a sense that Democrats and Republicans do “such a poor job” running the country.
Gallup also reported last week that 43% of Americans identified last year as political independents, making them the largest voting bloc in the country.
Jeff Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told me this week that voter dissatisfaction with both major party candidates is driving these sentiments. In the late 1990s and early 2000s voters tended to look positively on both parties and their presidential candidates.
Then came Trump’s 2016 contest with Clinton.
“In 2016, we had the least popular candidates running for office,” Jones said. “We may set a new record in 2024.”
That seems like a safe bet. And all the more reason to start paying close attention to November right now.
Follow USA Today elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ByChrisBrennan.
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