River News: Our View

President Donald Trump. A lot of people like saying that, and a lot of people don’t, but, after last week’s Libertarian Party convention, it’s more likely than it was before that The Donald will reclaim the title.

Like it or not.

That’s because the libertarians — such as they are — went out and nominated a guy named Chase Oliver for president. What’s that you say? You never heard of him? Well, let us introduce you to him because he’s the real spoiler in the 2024 election, and he’s bad news for President Joe Biden.

Now, one might ask, just how is a Libertarian Party candidate whom few people have ever heard of going to hand the election to Donald Trump? 

Well, by voting, that’s how. We know it seems like a stretch, but we think our theory has legs. Or at least moderately taped ankles.

First, a little background. Libertarians with a small ‘l’ — those who abhor big government and stress the primacy of the individual — tend to be more right-leaning than not, though purer in their insistence on adhering to political theory and more spoiled and unrealistic in political practice.

For some reason, they think their ivory towers really resemble the real world. They have never realized that what works well in the laboratory doesn’t necessarily perform as successfully in a world filled with humans possessing free will. That’s why they insist on absolutely unfettered markets in trade — totally free of government interference — even when it results in multinational corporations amassing enough power to ship all our well-paying jobs overseas.

Those who actually win public office — think Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and his father before him, former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul — are more libertarian-ish than actually libertarian.

Then there is the Libertarian Party. Once upon a time it resembled actual libertarianism in its political platform, but it has been drifting off course for years now, slowly captured by big-government-loving leftists who are accepted as libertarians simply because they call themselves libertarians.

Traditional small-government libertarians still have significant numbers in the Libertarian Party — the Mises Caucus, for instance — but the “left libertarians” have come to represent a majority, and so the amazing upside-down world of our modern politics continues. The American Civil Liberties Union no longer believes in civil liberties, and anti-semitism is considered progressive, as is adherence and unyielding allegiance to government authority, to cite just a few examples.

And now, in another twist, the Libertarian Party isn’t actually libertarian anymore, at least not a majority of its members.

And so that’s why they nominated Chase Oliver, a former Democrat from Georgia. Here’s a sampling of his platform: He’s pro-illegal immigration and says open borders are the best way to “export” liberty; he has called the Israeli war for survival “genocide”; he supported allowing businesses to discriminate based on a person’s vaccination status; he supported Antifa and called for ending cash bail; and in 2012 he organized a fundraiser for Obama.

Weirdest libertarian we’ve ever seen. Truth is, this guy, with some libertarian quirks here and there, is actually a left-wing Democrat.

The question is, does it matter? After all, the Libertarian Party candidate tends to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 percent or less of the vote, and the expectation is that Chase Oliver should do no better this time.

Not to mention that, if we’re asking about spoilers in the election, what about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is polling between 15 and 20 percent in many polls?

Chase Oliver is not. Still, his candidacy matters big-time in an election that will come down to a handful of votes in about seven states. Here’s why.

First, it’s anybody’s guess who Kennedy will hurt more, Biden or Trump. It could be a wash. Even more important, Kennedy has still got mountains to climb to get on the ballot in most states, including in battleground states. He may not even be a choice in states where it matters the most.

Kennedy may get there, but right now he’s qualified in only six states. Compare that to the Libertarian Party, which has ballot access for Oliver in 38 states.

And then there’s the politics. In 2020, the Libertarian candidate was Jo Jorgensen. It was perhaps the traditionalists’ last hurrah, but Jorgensen was a far more traditional libertarian candidate in the mold of Ron Paul — she supported privatizing Social Security and Medicare and opposed the Democrats’ plans for socialized medicine.

She didn’t appeal to Democrats, in other words, and that’s why she got only 1.2 percent of the national vote, about a third of what a more leftist Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, got in 2016. 

It could well be that Oliver’s leftist chops could increase that total, bringing disaffected Democrats back to the banner, just as they did in 2016, especially in a year when Democrats are not enthused about Joe Biden. The siren call could especially influence younger voters.

Returning the Libertarians to their 2016 numbers — and likely pulling those votes from Biden — could put the president in real danger in the battleground states he must win.

This isn’t just idle speculation. It’s a reason why Trump became the first ever major presidential candidate to address the Libertarian convention last week, and it’s the big reason Kennedy was there as well: They made the trek to the convention because they are aware the libertarians could be a major factor in a close election.

Trump may have gotten booed, but a substantial portion of the more traditional liberty-loving libertarians pledged their support for the president in the aftermath. 

So maybe the Libertarian candidate will have a major impact. But even if he doesn’t, the landscape at the Libertarian convention exposed an ongoing realignment in American politics.

The Libertarian Party may have strayed to the left, but its anti-big government streak is still significant, and all the factions are united on various other issues such as ending foreign wars, ending the Federal Reserve, and pardoning such controversial figures as Ross Ulbricht — which Trump promised to do — and Julian Assange.

The appearances of Trump and Kennedy garnered the Libertarian Party more media coverage than it has had in decades and could foreshadow a new relevance in politics, if it can prevent a wholesale take-over by the left.

And there was the glaring absence of President Joe Biden at the convention. There was not even a video message while Trump and Kennedy made their appearances count. It was a sobering reminder of two important points — Biden is still campaigning from his basement, speaking metaphorically, because that is essentially the only way he can function. 

More important, it shows the current Democratic Party’s hostility to individual liberty, even when those principles are mostly draped in leftist policy proposals.

That the Democrats cannot bring themselves to support liberty-oriented rhetoric, succumbing to ever more brazen calls for censorship and authoritarian policy, is a sure indicator of where the party is, and of the danger it poses to our future.

Thankfully, with a hat tip to Chase Oliver, the Libertarians — large “L” thank you very much — may ride to our rescue in November.