Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
Jim Messina, who ran President Barack Obama's re-election campaign and served as deputy chief of staff in the White House, is the latest Democrat to argue that a No Labels “unity ticket” would lead to a Donald Trump victory because a ticket featuring a Republican and a Democrat would siphon votes from the President Joe Biden. I am not aware of anyone who has brought forward as much impressive data as Messina did in his recent Politico Magazine article to show why third party candidates have never won a U.S. presidential election.
Messina is probably right. If Trump and Biden win their respective parties’ nomination and a No Labels ticket is on the ballot, then Trump probably wins. The key word is "probably." Most arguments about the future are inductive in nature. If you take 99 beans out of a bucket containing 100 beans and all 99 are green, you would be wise to bet a lot of money that the remaining bean is green.
Inductive arguments build up evidence of the observed from which inferences to the unobserved can be made. The stronger the evidence, the stronger the inference will be. You can never infer a conclusion that "must" be true. That is the way deductive arguments work.
In deductive reasoning, an argument is valid if the conclusion follows logically from the premises, and it is sound if it is both valid and the premises are true. When you argue “all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal,” you have given a sound deductive argument. Your reasoning is valid, your premises are true and your inference therefore gets you to a conclusion that must be true.
Messina runs a strong inductive argument. He really is giving an analogical inductive argument. He is saying that our political situation today is similar to the political situation of every presidential race, including those where George Wallace, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and Jill Stein ran third-party campaigns. He argues that third-party candidates always lose big because the Electoral College system makes it nearly impossible for them to win states – only Wallace has won states in fact.
Messina’s reasoning indicates that even if a No Labels ticket can get 35 percent of the overall votes, it will not be clustered in a way to win 270 Electoral Votes; and if no one got to 270, Messina would presumably say, the House of Representatives would pick the nominee of majority’s party and not a third-party candidate.
This is the fundamental question for Messina and others: Are the political and social conditions in America today sufficiently analogous to every previous presidential election year to argue that a third-party ticket has virtually no chance of winning?
In an analogical argument, you say that Object X and Y are similar in having properties a, b, c and d. Object X has property e. Thus, Object Y also has property e. In our case, Object X would be previous third-party candidates and Object Y would be the No Labels unity ticket. The relevant properties are: running in a presidential race, the Electoral College system determines how to count the votes, a two-party system dominates politics and both parties have considerable respect, and the public is not severely polarized. Property e represents losing the presidential race.
The question is whether Object Y, the No Labels ticket, is really running in a race with properties c and d. Given both the low regard both major parties have in public opinion polls, and given the threat to our democracy of a Trump presidency felt by over half of the public and which is a major cause of polarization, it could be argued that the political and social conditions are not similar to the political and social conditions when previous third-party candidates ran. Thus the inference to e (the third-party candidate will lose) is not strong.
Perhaps enough Democrats and Republicans would vote for a No Labels unity ticket, particularly Democrats, Republicans and independents who were not planning to vote at all. When the world changes it frequently does because situations in the present are not analogous to situations in the past.
Are we at such a point? No one really knows the answer to this question. Yet it is just as important to try to answer this question as it is to gather the data Messina has gathered to argue that Trump would win the election if there is a No Labels unity ticket.
An Independent Voter's Perspective on Current Political Divides
In the column, "Is Donald Trump Right?", Fulcrum Executive Editor, Hugo Balta, wrote:
For millions of Americans, President Trump’s second term isn’t a threat to democracy—it’s the fulfillment of a promise they believe was long overdue.
Is Donald Trump right?
Should the presidency serve as a force for disruption or a safeguard of preservation?
Balta invited readers to share their thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
David Levine from Portland, Oregon, shared these thoughts...
I am an independent voter who voted for Kamala Harris in the last election.
I pay very close attention to the events going on, and I try and avoid taking other people's opinions as fact, so the following writing should be looked at with that in mind:
Is Trump right? On some things, absolutely.
As to DEI, there is a strong feeling that you cannot fight racism with more racism or sexism with more sexism. Standards have to be the same across the board, and the idea that only white people can be racist is one that I think a lot of us find delusional on its face. The question is not whether we want equality in the workplace, but whether these systems are the mechanism to achieve it, despite their claims to virtue, and many of us feel they are not.
I think if the Democrats want to take back immigration as an issue then every single illegal alien no matter how they are discovered needs to be processed and sanctuary cities need to end, every single illegal alien needs to be found at that point Democrats could argue for an amnesty for those who have shown they have been Good actors for a period of time but the dynamic of simply ignoring those who break the law by coming here illegally is I think a losing issue for the Democrats, they need to bend the knee and make a deal.
I think you have to quit calling the man Hitler or a fascist because an actual fascist would simply shoot the protesters, the journalists, and anyone else who challenges him. And while he definitely has authoritarian tendencies, the Democrats are overplaying their hand using those words, and it makes them look foolish.
Most of us understand that the tariffs are a game of economic chicken, and whether it is successful or not depends on who blinks before the midterms. Still, the Democrats' continuous attacks on the man make them look disloyal to the country, not to Trump.
Referring to any group of people as marginalized is to many of us the same as referring to them as lesser, and it seems racist and insulting.
We invite you to read the opinions of other Fulrum Readers:
Trump's Policies: A Threat to Farmers and American Values
The Trump Era: A Bitter Pill for American Renewal
Federal Hill's Warning: A Baltimorean's Reflection on Leadership
Also, check out "Is Donald Trump Right?" and consider accepting Hugo's invitation to share your thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
The Fulcrum will select a range of submissions to share with readers as part of our ongoing civic dialogue.
We offer this platform for discussion and debate.