Americana

Biden’s third-party challengers look to capitalize on Gaza

THE SCENE

President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war has angered and alienated Democrats. In polling before last week’s temporary truce — which collapsed on Friday morning — up to 70% of them were unhappy with the administration’s course.

Some of those disgruntled 2020 Biden voters are threatening not to vote at all, a problem that Democrats think they can fix. But those voters are also being pitched by third party candidates — a non-factor in the 2020 election but an emerging one ahead of 2024.

At campaign stops and in interviews, both independent Cornel West and two-time Green Party nominee Jill Stein have called for a “permanent ceasefire,” wooing unhappy Democrats and independents who won’t hear that from their president.

“I was already considering a run,” said Stein, who entered the race a month after the start of the war. “It felt much more urgent once I saw the overwhelming support from the two war parties for the Netanyahu regime’s campaign of mass slaughter, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and blatant war crimes.”

DAVID’S VIEW

Democrats aren’t terribly worried right now about Stein or West, for the simple reason that each candidate will need to put time and money into swing state ballot access. West’s candidacy starts with none; the Greens have automatic access in 19 states, including Michigan, but have failed to make the ballot in other swing states in close races.

The third-party candidate with the most resources right now doesn’t offer much to those who oppose Biden’s approach to Gaza. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose criticism of Ukraine war funding intrigued some Biden critics, is less critical of Israel than the president.

“Israel is doing more right now to protect human life, and has done more over the past 16 years to avoid this outcome, than we would expect of any nation in the world,” Kennedy told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo this week.

Still, Biden simply didn’t have a problem on his far-left flank in 2020 — and now, he does.

Stein’s 2016 run followed the usual pattern for modern third-party candidates. That summer, after Hillary Clinton had defeated Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, she polled as high as 5% in national surveys; Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s nominee, hit double-digits. Their support contracted on Election Day, but in swing states, their combined vote was larger than the gap between Clinton and Donald Trump.

Democrats fixed that problem in 2020, as millions of anti-Trump voters who’d rejected Clinton cast a strategic ballot for Biden. But the president is far less popular than he was then, and polls that include a range of third-party candidates — West, Stein, and Kennedy — have found Biden’s support slipping below 40% in key states.

“They’re taking votes out of the Biden column, and that’s going to help Republicans,” said Jason Roe, a Michigan GOP strategist. “The natural back-and-forth between the parties is going to force some of these Democrats to say things that will alienate pro-Palestinian voters. They will not be able to help themselves; they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.”

THE VIEW FROM MICHIGAN

Muslim and Arab-American political activists have been working through those concerns. Emgage, a group that turns out and educates Muslim voters, conducted polling after the start of the war that found a massive drop-off in support for Biden and a surge of interest in supporting an alternative to Trump or Biden. It’s too early, said Emgage CEO Wa’el Alzayat, to say what could happen with those voters.

“Our assessment is that third party candidates are not viable,” Alzayat told Semafor. “Given the elections and the reality of American politics, we assess that a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Trump.”

The issue may be most acute for Biden in Michigan, where there are an estimated 200,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, and more than 300,000 voters with roots in the Arab world. “The majority of Americans support a ceasefire,” Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib said outside the White House on Wednesday evening, joining a hunger strike and vigil that commemorated the Palestinians killed since the start of the war. “Seventy-one percent of Michigan Democrats, in my district, support a ceasefire.”

Democrats in the state tell Semafor that they’ve been working proactively, with “internal discussions and outreach,” to calm those groups. Meanwhile, some influencers on the anti-Biden left are already looking to head off accusations that third parties are threatening to play the role of spoilers.

“Third party voters are mostly people who were never going to vote for Biden,” said Briahna Joy Gray, the national press secretary for the 2020 Sanders campaign, and the co-host of The Hill’s talk show “Rising.” “But to the extent that Biden’s support among key Biden voting groups, like Arab-Americans in Michigan, is way down, that’s because of his own policies — not the appeal of third-party candidates.”

NOTABLE

• In Politico, Brittany Gibson got the first look at West’s plans to campaign in Michigan: “We’re the only major candidate, I think, who’s bringing any kind of sanity and sensitivity to the suffering in Gaza,” he said.
• In the New York Times, Kayla Guo surveyed Gray and other 2020 Sanders supporters who were frustrated with how he wasn’t joining them, and the rest of the Vermont delegation, in pressuring Biden on a ceasefire.

Americans for Prosperity Action, “We Have a Country to Save.” The Koch network’s endorsement of Nikki Haley came with three benefits: A grassroots campaign network, access to potential new donors, and tens of millions of dollars in direct spending. This 60-second spot is its first flex, telling early-state voters that Donald Trump and Biden “had their chance,” but only Haley can turn the country around, reducing the national debt by taking on “reckless spending from both parties.”

Nikki Haley for President, “Moral Clarity.” Haley’s own early-state ad – the first from her campaign, after months of spending by her SFA Fund super PAC – is entirely narrated by the candidate herself. Neither Biden nor Trump is mentioned by name. Instead, she portrays a country in danger, with “chaos on our streets and college campuses,” that can’t be fixed by some unnamed alternative candidate who’d maintain “the chaos and drama of the past.”

Democratic National Committee, “Your Family.” The president’s campaign spent the week hammering Trump over a free-flowing Truth Social post that promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act — a goal no other GOP candidate discusses anymore. But this swing state ad doesn’t mention Trump at all. A pediatric nurse from Nevada refers instead to “the last administration” and how she doesn’t “want to go back” to a time before Biden lowered healthcare costs.

A little more than one month ago, the House voted in a landslide to support Israel’s war in Gaza – 412 members for, and just 10 against. Public opinion isn’t that lopsided. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans support the actions taken by Israel, but independents are split down the middle, and 63% of Democrats oppose it. Just 30% of adults born after 1988 back Israel, and just 30% of all non-white adults, and that explains the swoon in support for Biden since Oct. 7.

Weeks after they voted to put Democrats in control of Virginia’s legislature, most adults in the commonwealth still approve of GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, disapprove of Biden, and highly disapprove of Trump. Just 23% of adults say the country is “going in the right direction,” but 50% say Virginia is, and that number’s been fairly stable for the last seven years, through multiple changes in local government.

White House. Ron DeSantis debated California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday night — a “Great Red State vs. Blue State” showdown, hosted by Fox News, that the Democrat used to mock DeSantis for his stalled-out poll numbers.

“When are you going to drop out and give Nikki Haley a shot to win?” Newsom asked, after pointing out that the Florida governor trailed Trump “in your home state.”

Across three televised primary debates against Republicans, DeSantis never spent so much time attacking or fending off attacks. And on Thursday, hadn’t shaken his habit of telling long-winded anecdotes; pressed on Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which polls terribly in swing states, he mused that “some states have done later and obviously they have a right to do that.” But he got and took multiple attempts to attack Democrats over the cost of living — especially when Newsom said that Biden was “doing fantastically” and would serve another term.

“How great is it when you’re going to the grocery store now?” DeSantis asked the TV audience. “How great is it when you’re trying to afford a home? How are those interest rates doing? What about affording a new car?”

In Florida, the three Democrats challenging Biden cried foul after the party canceled its March 2024 primary. The reason? As Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried previously told Americana, all presidential candidates had to notify the state party that they will be on the primary ballot before its convention — an event that was held the last weekend of October, as Rep. Dean Phillips entered the race.

Neither Phillips nor Marianne Williamson or Cenk Uygur checked off that box. On Nov. 1, Florida Democrats told the state that Biden was the only candidate who’d qualified for the ballot; under Florida law, if only one candidate files for a primary, the primary isn’t held at all. Phillips threatened to sue, and Uygur and Williamson scheduled a Friday press conference on their own plans to protest the move.

“The Democratic Party elite seem to think there’s no reason to open this up and listen to our base since they in their infinite paternalistic wisdom simply know what’s best,” Williamson told Semafor. “One of the reasons they will have a spoiler problem is how disgusted people are by Democratic efforts to block any candidacies except Biden, their suppression of democracy in the name of saving our democracy.”

House. Now-former New York Rep. George Santos was expelled from the House on Friday, setting up a wintry special election on Long Island, which under state law will have to take place within 90 days.There won’t be a primary — the Democratic and Republican parties in Queens and Nassau County, which encompass the vacant 3rd District, will select the nominees.

Eight Republicans were already running in the regular 2024 primary to replace Santos; ex-police officer Mike Sapraicone and Afghanistan War veteran Kellen Curry had built the most robust early operations. Six Democrats, including ex-Rep. Tom Suozzi, had entered their primary. Biden carried the seat by 8 points in 2020, but ex-Rep. Lee Zeldin carried it in his 2022 run against Gov. Kathy Hochul.

In his new book, the Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini makes a confession: He went to college. The co-founder of Echelon Insights, a veteran of the 2004 George W. Bush campaign, was as surprised as anyone when Trump won the presidency. That victory made sense when Ruffini realized that an education gap — college-educated voters versus everybody else — was supplanting the decades-old class gap between Republicans and Democrats. His field work and research on that phenomenon turned into “Party of the People,” a look at how Democratic mistakes and MAGA policies (like abandoning entitlement reform and free trade) could turn the GOP into a multi-racial populist party. This is an edited transcript of our conversation about it.

Americana: Republicans had a pretty mediocre 2022. What are the trends that can make them the majority, working-class party? Did they stall out?

Patrick Ruffini: The Dobbs decision was the difference between a five- or six-point Republican landslide and their barely eking out a House majority in 2022. But if Trump or another Republican were to simply recreate the GOP’s performance in the House in the midterms, they’d win. Despite clearly falling short in a number of races, the GOP got a record high number of Black and Hispanic voters for a midterms. Part of having a working-class coalition is that Republicans may now have an easier time in presidential rather than downballot elections, in a direct reversal of the Obama era.

In 2020, the same trends we saw realign working class white voters came for nonwhite voters, Hispanics especially, but some Black and Asian American voters too, especially in the working class. This tells us that the divide in the country is more cultural, along education lines, than it is racial, and it turns out that the nonwhite working class has a lot more in common with the white working class than people thought. That’s particularly true when you have a candidate like Trump who plays on populist themes, instead of the old country club, Chamber of Commerce-style Republican.

Americana: What did Trump do to advance this? There’s a lot in the book about mistakes that Democrats made, but what actual actions was he taking to convert these voters?

Patrick Ruffini: The economy was growing in a way that uniquely benefited Latinos. Their incomes went up by about 20% during a period that spans from the end of Obama’s presidency through most of Trump’s presidency. Trump, being on the tail end of this, got the credit. And border regions like the Rio Grande Valley are at the top of the heap in terms of income growth. On top of it, you had the fracking revolution and young men from the region getting jobs in the West Texas oil fields. Then COVID happens. The oil industry and the economy generally shuts down, and Trump is the one talking about getting things reopened. This was not a community that could just go to work on Zoom.

Americana: You point out that some Democrats, like John Fetterman, have been able to win despite lower turnout from Black voters. How much of what Republicans need is conversion, and how much is drop-off from working-class voters who used to vote for Democrats?

Patrick Ruffini: In 2016, most of Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin comes from changes in the Black vote, both in turnout and persuasion. Without Obama at the top of the ticket, this isn’t entirely unexpected. But it has a knock-on effect. What does Hillary Clinton do to try to keep Black turnout high? She talks more about race than Obama did, using terms like “structural racism.” And in so doing, she probably ticks off the white working class. If you’re a laid off steelworker in Ohio, you don’t exactly feel like you’re basking in white privilege.

Americana: Before Hillary gets into the race, she talks about criminal justice reform, mass incarceration, maybe we should reverse some of the 1994 crime bill.

Patrick Ruffini: Right. And there was this belief that Trump was a uniquely noxious figure on racial issues that would keep Black voters engaged. This assumption turns out to be totally wrong. And in 2020, Trump seems to take a hit in the polls because of his handling of the George Floyd summer, and still does better among Black voters that fall. The priorities these voters have, like safe streets, are not the ones white liberals think.

Americana: So what policies should Republicans, when they’re back in power, be enacting to win more of these voters? And what should they be avoiding?

Patrick Ruffini: It’s a little hard to answer, because you’ve seen a lot of these trends play out without a big shift in Republican policy priorities. But let’s say that hypothetically there’s a Republican trifecta in 2025. If Republicans view that as a license to run back the 2005 Bush Social Security plan, or do some sort of massive entitlement reform, that would jeopardize the gains in this new coalition. Same goes for trying to repeal Obamacare. Trump was pretty successful at narrowing the perceived gap between the parties on economic issues. The days of a GOP focused on marginal rate cuts are probably over.

Americana: Right, the Biden administration has leaned into this problem. It hasn’t gone back to Obama-era free trade policies. It passed an infrastructure bill, it’s backed labor, and it hasn’t gotten a political benefit. Why is that?

Patrick Ruffini: Inflation has just overshadowed everything. As a Republican, I’ll concede that Trump’s initial COVID spending did as much to cause inflation as Biden’s policies have. But Trump got all of the upside politically from this spending, and Biden got all the downside as inflation starts to tick up right after he takes office.

Americana: There are Democrats who say Trump brings out people other Republicans don’t — we’re talking about that now — but if Republicans run DeSantis or Haley, we can pin them down on Social Security, Medicare, the retirement age. So is Trump actually the strongest potential nominee they have?

Patrick Ruffini: He has a long list of strengths and a long list of weaknesses. The assets and liabilities for the other candidates are more of a question mark. What you’re seeing in the polls right now, at least with Haley, is that she doesn’t really lose many voters Trump would get, and gets back some of the suburban voters Trump lost. This is essentially what you saw with the Team Normal Republicans like Youngkin and [Georgia Gov. Brian] Kemp. They don’t lose any votes in places Trump did really well, and they win back enough suburbanites. We seem to be locked into the Trump coalitions as a baseline, but the question is how well can you do in the suburbs?

And yet our ideas about this are cryogenically frozen in 2016, where there were just two starkly different coalitions. There was a Romney coalition, and then a Trump coalition, and you had to choose which to embrace. Now there’s a stable Trump coalition and I don’t think you’re going to see much erosion in rural areas, nor will we see a massive reversion to Romney-era support levels for the GOP in suburbs. Those old voting patterns are gone. But if you’re Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, and you hold that rural coalition and win back even a third of the Romney-Biden voters in suburbs, you’re winning Georgia comfortably.

• five days until the fourth Republican presidential primary debate
• 45 days until the Iowa Republican caucuses
• 53 days until the New Hampshire primary
• 85 days until the South Carolina Republican primary
• 339 days until the 2024 presidential election

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