Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article on the “debate over debates” in Indiana’s 9th District. Democrat Baron Hill is chiding Republican Mike Sodrel over his current reluctance to debate. Meanwhile, Libertarian Eric Schansberg is chiding Hill over his reluctance to debate him. It’s an interesting dynamic.
Says Weidenbener of Schansberg:
[I]t’s likely that neither Sodrel nor Hill will need additional publicity. The race will undoubtedly receive tremendous attention in the local and national media, and both candidates will have deep pockets to pay for whatever advertising they want.
Schansberg, though, will likely be looking for a little attention.
Sodrel’s chief of staff, Cam Savage, said the Republican wants to attend “multiple debates.” And it’s likely Hill and Schansberg will want the same.
The real question will likely be whether any debates that develop will include Schansberg.
After all, his chance of winning the race is slim to none, but his chance of affecting it is quite large.
In 2004, Sodrel had only about 1,400 more votes than Hill. So even if Schansberg takes just 2 percent or 3 percent or 4 percent of the vote, he could determine the outcome of the race.
Also, Schansberg is a professor, economist, prolific writer and articulate speaker. So it’s possible that he could hurt both of his opponents in a debate or at least stir up some issues that neither really wants to address.
I’ll be interested in Schansberg’s reaction when, presumably, the major candidates decline to include him in the debate. Will he argue that it’s in the best interest of society that all candidates be included in debates? Or will he take what I would regard to be a more libertarian approach of cheerfully agreeing that if it’s not in Hill and Sodrel’s personal best interest to debate him that they ought not agree or be compelled to agree to it?
You’re right that Sodrel and Hill have nothing to gain by including Schansberg, but the public does, for as cited in your post, he is likely to bring up issues the others would sooner not discuss.
No candidate has the ability to compel another to debate, or to include someone in the debate. Usually, those who are inclined to exclude succumb to the court of public opinion. While a libertarian could shrug and walk away and be forgiven by the public, the Democrat or Republican who works to exclude just ends up looking un-American, especially if that excluding candidate invokes Iraq and an effort to bring democracy there.
As it happened, in 2004, Libertarian candidate Al Cox earned more votes than the margin of victory in this contest.
Contemporary politics on the part of the two major parties has evolved into a game of energizing your base (through phone banks, voter data bases) while simultaneously seeking to demoralize the opposing side, typically through attack adds or push polling. I think that the so-called “two party” system has contributed much to this evolution. In a duopoly every loss to one side is a gain for the other. So while the two “major” parties compete, after a fashion, the public gets less and less. Indeed we get something that looks and feels suspiciously like a monopoly. As with a monopoly, where the products offered grow fewer and fewer in number and the quality of the products slips, with duopoly politics the issues that are “safe” to discuss (and what can be said with respect to them) become fewer and fewer in number as the duopoly candidates grow more and more careful (evasive?) in what they say.
In such a system third parties, any third party, are seen as dangerous, destabilizing factors in the choreographed waltz of the two “major” parties. Accordingly they are marginalized with the noxious throw away line of “don’t throw away your vote”.
Consider too the opprobrium leveled against the Greens, and Ralph Nader, by the Democrats after the 2000 election. The Greens turned tail and ran in the face of what was their greatest electoral triumph to date. Yes they denied Gore the presidency, and in doing so they had made it clear to the country that they were a factor to be taken into account. There is always a price to be paid for upsetting the existing order.
On the other side, (though it is less obvious that the Libertarians take votes exclusively from the Republicans as compared to the dynamics between the Greens and the Demorcrats) the Libertarians are the best vehicle today for exposing the hollowness of the Republican’s claim to be the party of classical liberal economics and free markets. And the targets here are plenty, particularly with our governor shoving a state sponsored transportation monopoly onto the residents of the northern tier of counties, and using the proceeds, not to put the state on a solid financial footing by looking to its grossly underfunded pension liabilities, but almost entirely on mostly toll free highway projects for other parts of the state (a “socialist” program if ever there was one). And, if this is an investment in our future as the Governor claims, whatever happened to diversifying your portfolio with this “windfall”?
I welcome a stronger presence of the Libertarians in state races and would welcome a stronger Green presence for that matter. Because the results of the Secretary of State race control automatic ballot access it is the one race I’ve long let (the Libertarian) Party label control my vote on.
Paul, as the Libertarian candidate for Secretary of State, I appreciate that deeply!
As it happens, taking the “wasted vote syndrome” head-on will be one of my messages in the weeks running up to the election, and on the grounds you cite: the GOP fails to deliver on its rhetoric of smaller government. Mainly, if you are voting Republican expecting smaller government, then *you* are wasting your vote.
I expect that to resonate with disaffected small government supporters who have watched the GOP use its majority to run up deficits on the federal level, engage in redistribution of wealth via Major Moves at the state level, and enlarge local government where they have majorities, often via forced annexation. It’s pretty simple to make the case that Republicans simply lack the will to deliver. They have the majorities.