Whatever Happened to Voting?

Talk about front-loading. No actual votes will be cast in the 2000 presidential campaign for another seven months. But two candidates just dropped out. Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire dropped out of the Republican Party, though not out of the race. He says he will “seek the nomination of another political party.” Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio dropped out of the race, though he’s staying in the GOP.

The first primary is already over and the results are in: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, 36; Sen. John S. McCain, 4; Dan Quayle, Elizabeth H. Dole and Gary L. Bauer, 3 each; Steve Forbes, Patrick J. Buchanan, Lamar Alexander and Kasich, 2 each; and Smith, just 1. Those are not votes. Those are dollars, millions of dollars, raised from supporters.

The financial primary has winnowed two candidates out. Next month, a straw poll in Ames, Iowa, will probably force a few more out. In essence, the straw poll has replaced the Iowa caucuses as the first “meaningful” event of the 2000 race--though no delegates are selected and only Iowa Republicans who travel to Ames and pay $25 for dinner will participate.

Are ordinary voters being crowded out of the process? Not exactly. They have a say--through the polls. Polls are, in fact, driving the process. What polls show now is Bush has the support of nearly 60% of rank-and-file Republicans. And guess what? He’s raised nearly 60% of the money in the GOP field.

Polls also show that Vice President Al Gore has the support of 64% of Democrats. And guess what? He’s raised 61% of the money on the Democratic side. The money follows the polls. For more than a year now, the polls have shown Bush leading Gore in the general election match-up, usually by double-digit margins. As a result, Republicans are rallying around Bush. He looks like a winner. Those same polls have created problems for Gore and boosted the prospects of his Democratic rival, Bill Bradley. Gore looks like a loser.

Is this democratic? Technically, yes. The people have spoken (plus or minus 3%). But it’s also preposterous. The people’s opinions are being registered before they’ve even started paying attention. There’s no campaign! No one’s really made a decision! All voters are doing is answering poll questions. But those answers are having a real impact. Bush and Gore seem to have sewn up their party nominations. So what’s left to talk about?

The hot topic now is third parties. Smith is talking about running as the candidate of “another party,” most likely the staunchly conservative U.S. Taxpayer Party. Next weekend, the Reform Party meets in Dearborn, Mich., to consider its prospects. The big issue: Will Ross Perot continue to control the party, or will Reformers follow the lead of their highest-ranking elected official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura? Right now, the Reform Party nomination for president looks wide open. But is there a demand out there for a third-party candidate?

The talk about third-party candidates is coming from two different places. One is conservatives disaffected with the Republican Party. That’s the ideological strain. The other is ordinary voters disaffected with politics. That’s the populist strain.

Disaffection ran high among ordinary voters back in 1992. The economy was in terrible shape, and voters didn’t trust either party to solve the problems--like the deficit. Perot captured that discontent and won nearly one in five votes. By 1996, however, the economy had improved, the deficit was shrinking and voter discontent diminished. So what happened? The Perot vote fell by more than half.

And now? The economy’s up, crime’s down, the budget’s in surplus. And angry voters--the kind who drove the Perot vote--have become scarce. A historian once wrote, “Third parties are like bees. They sting and then they die.” So why doesn’t Perot’s Reform Party die? Because it qualifies for $12 million in federal subsidies next year. And because it managed to elect Ventura, a colorful new face. Which happens to be just what the party needs for 2000. “For our party to grow and expand and move forward into the new millennium, we need a new candidate in the year 2000,” Ventura said last week. Meaning: Not Perot. But Ventura insists the new face will not be his own.

Third parties die because the major parties co-opt their message. Remember Richard M. Nixon’s “Southern strategy”? That’s how Republicans co-opted the George C. Wallace vote after the 1968 election. Liberal Republicans who voted for John B. Anderson in 1980 ended up going to the Democrats in 1984 and 1988.

What’s the profile of a typical Reform Party voter? Ventura described it this way: “I’m a fiscal conservative, but I’m socially liberal. I think that’s what a lot of people in the Reform Party are. I really believe that’s what most Americans are.” Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats have become more fiscally conservative. And Bush is trying to move the GOP to the center on social issues like abortion. Both parties want to co-opt the Reform vote because it is, indeed, where most Americans are.

That’s got conservatives upset. As Smith said last week, “I’ve come to the cold realization that the Republican Party is more interested in winning elections than in supporting the principles of its platform.” By running as a third-party candidate, Smith can blackmail the GOP into trying to co-opt him.

In his speech, Smith offered the familiar conservative argument that Republicans lost in 1992 and 1996 because they betrayed the conservative cause. It’s the idea of a hidden majority: Conservatives did not turn out to vote for George Bush in 1992 or Bob Dole in 1996 because they were mushy moderates.

It’s also complete nonsense. Bush lost because the economy was so bad in 1992. Dole lost because the economy was so good in 1996. No one but the most feverish ideologue can imagine Bush and Dole would have won if they had run harder to the right.

Yes, Ronald Reagan won in 1980 and 1984 with a fairly hard-line message. But he won in spite of his ideology, not because of it. Reagan almost lost in 1980 because he scared voters. He was reelected in 1984 because his program was working. And voters found out Reagan wasn’t so scary. The GOP took Congress in 1994, not because it ran a hard-line campaign, but because Clinton was discredited. Like Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Is Clinton discredited now? Personally, yes, but not programmatically. Voters don’t like Clinton and they don’t trust him, but they think he’s doing a good job. What the country has is a bad case of Clinton fatigue. Voters want a new president, preferably one who has nothing to do with Clinton. But they do not want a radical change of direction. Clinton and Gore are not so discredited that Republicans can win with a right-wing agenda. The GOP establishment understands that. That’s why it’s going for Bush.

A third party has the greatest impact when a major party splits. Abraham Lincoln won in 1860 when the Democrats split over slavery. Woodrow Wilson won in 1912--the first Democrat elected in 20 years--when the GOP split between incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt. Is today’s GOP on the verge of splitting up?

No. Actually, it’s surprisingly united. With 10 candidates running for president, Bush has more support--and more money--than all the others put together. What’s holding the GOP together? Desperation to win. And hatred of Clinton. The same kinds of things that kept liberals with Clinton in 1992, when they were desperate to win. And in 1996, when they were horrified by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the GOP Congress.

Right now, conservatives are split. Some, like Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, are supporting Bush. Some are rallying to Steve Forbes as the best way to stop Bush. And some, like Smith, are talking third party.

Of course, Republicans are right to be worried about a conservative third-party candidate who would take votes from Bush. Does Gore have anything to worry about? Ventura says his man for the Reform Party nomination is former Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker, an Independent who was once a liberal Republican. How would a Weicker candidacy affect the race? His answer: “No. 1, I don’t care. But I think clearly, philosophically, it would probably take more votes from the Democratic candidate.”

Third-party candidates could determine the outcome of the race. Wallace split the anti-Democratic vote in 1968 and almost elected Hubert H. Humphrey. Back in 1935, the Democratic National Committee commissioned a poll that showed if populist Huey Long ran for president, he could take enough votes to deny Franklin D. Roosevelt reelection. Roosevelt responded by moving left, to co-opt the Long vote. We’ll never know what would have happened because Long was shot later that year.

In fact, however, third-party candidates rarely do well enough to determine the outcome. Voters understand that when they vote for a third party, they’re helping elect the candidate they like least. Conservatives who vote for Smith would be helping elect Gore. Why would they? Only if they believed--like Smith and Weicker--that it really doesn’t make any difference whether Gore or Bush wins. “I think there’s one political party in this country,” Smith said last week. “It’s led by moderate Republicans and Democrats.”

There’s probably only one potential third-party candidate who could pull together conservatives and populists. That’s Buchanan. Could he be nominated by the Reform Party? Ventura says, “I think Pat Buchanan would have a very hard time fitting into the Reform Party platform. He puts such a big focus on those social issues, which we do not.”

Perot has also been critical of Buchanan. But they agree on trade. And they have something else in common: a well-known hostility to guys named George Bush.*