Over at the Wall Street Journal, Walter E. Block asks the eternal question: Did the Libertarians Spoil the Election?
Did the Libertarian Party throw the election to Joe Biden? Maybe.
I previously addressed this issue with respect to the Democrats during the run-up to the 2016 election, and some of the arguments there apply to the Republicans as well: Every year, you folks force the Libertarian party to expend money and time jumping through hoops to qualify for the ballots in every state, and then you still exclude the Libertarian candidate from federal funding, briefings, and all the debates. You also ignore most of our key issues.
Since you obviously don’t give a damn about us, why the fuck should we give a damn about you? You want our vote? Start by apologizing for that shit you’ve been pulling all these years.
That argument doesn’t fully work in this case, however, because Block himself is a member of the Libertarian party. But he’s a different kind of Libertarian than me, as his analysis makes clear:
Yes, the Donald is a protectionist, and free trade is the preferred policy of those who favor economic and personal liberty. But when it comes to lowering taxes and easing regulations on business, the party of the elephant is far more closely aligned to the libertarian philosophy than that of the donkey.
If he’s going to gloss over free trade with a “yes-but,” then it shouldn’t be a complete surprise that he fails to mention international trade’s counterpart: International migration. Trump has been terrible on immigration.
I’ll grant that Trump has reduced some business regulation, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to make up for the long-term damage caused by his idiotic trade policy. There’s also the matter of Trump attacking American businesses, such as Amazon, Starbucks, Harley-Davidson, and several media companies. That may not technically be regulation, but it’s an implicit threat of government action, which has a similar effect. (I.e. it’s the equivalent of a regulation reading “Don’t piss off Donald Trump.”) Meanwhile, trump is giving out money to favored groups like farmers, who were hurt when our trading partners predictably retaliated for our trade war. And on top of everything else, Trump’s volatility adds to uncertainty in the investment environment. It’s hard to make a business plan when Trump could trash talk your business and drive away investors at any moment.
It’s also true that Trump has lowered some taxes, but I that’s been offset by his awful spending record. For every dollar the government spends, it’s going to have to eventually tax a dollar from someone, and Trump has been spending a lot of dollars. I don’t think putting taxes off into the future counts as reducing taxes. It’s like buying something expensive and claiming you saved money by putting it on your credit card.
Finally, damn but that man has an authoritarian streak. His losing power doesn’t strike me as a big loss for libertarians.
But even if I thought President Trump was great for libertarians, Block’s argument still doesn’t hold water.
At this writing nominee Jo Jorgensen’s vote total exceeds Mr. Biden’s margin over President Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, enough to change the outcome.
Lets take a look at the numbers he’s talking about. This table shows the number of votes for Biden and Trump, the size of the spread between them, and the number of votes for Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen (according to Decision Desk HQ at the time I wrote this.)
| Arizona | Georgia | Nevada | Pennsylvania | |
| Joe Biden | 1,644,074 | 2,466,634 | 670,344 | 3,362,517 |
| Donald Trump | 1,626,943 | 2,456,014 | 634,158 | 3,317,621 |
| Spread | 17,131 | 10,620 | 36,186 | 44,896 |
| Jo Jorgensen | 50,002 | 61,929 | 13,376 | 77,558 |
Votes are still being counted, and these numbers are still changing, as you can see by the fact that Jorgensen’s vote is no longer larger than the spread between Biden and Trump in Nevada. But that still makes Block right for the 3 out of 4 swing states where getting Jorgensen’s votes would have put Trump ahead, right?
Not really.
Block’s analysis is missing one very important set of numbers. Let’s add them:
| Arizona | Georgia | Nevada | Pennsylvania | |
| Joe Biden | 1,644,074 | 2,466,634 | 670,344 | 3,362,517 |
| Donald Trump | 1,626,943 | 2,456,014 | 634,158 | 3,317,621 |
| Spread | 17,131 | 10,620 | 36,186 | 44,896 |
| Jo Jorgensen | 50,002 | 61,929 | 13,376 | 77,558 |
| Didn’t Vote | 960,133 | 2,249,007 | 503,478 | 2,333,675 |
The fifth row, “Didn’t Vote,” is the number of people who didn’t vote for either Biden, Trump, or Jorgensen (calculated by subtracting the sum of votes for all three candidates from the number of registered voters.) As you can see, non-voters totally swamped the libertarian vote. Votes for Jorgensen make up no more than 5% of of the total number of people who didn’t vote for either major party candidate. Put another way, Jo Jorgensen and the 203,000 people who voted for her aren’t the ones who kept 6 million other people from voting for Trump.
Trump and the Republicans did that to themselves.
Mark wrote, “Put another way, Jo Jorgensen and the 203,000 people who voted for her aren’t the ones who kept 6 million other people from voting for Trump. Trump and the Republicans did that to themselves.”
That’s a fine example of Liberal Magical Thinking* there Mark.
*Liberal Magical Thinking: is thinking that when an Liberal thinks a thought, any thought, then that thought is automatically considered logical and should be presented as truth.
So your argument is that…I said a thing that I believe to be true. Well I admit it: I said a thing that I believe to be true. You got me. You won my comments. You should cherish this moment.
Mark Draughn wrote, “So your argument is that…I said a thing that I believe to be true. Well I admit it: I said a thing that I believe to be true. You got me. You won my comments. You should cherish this moment.”
Sarcasm and snarky innuendo aside; I thought you might be intelligent enough to reevaluate your own statement that I quoted before you opened your mouth to change socks. I was wrong and I apologize for misreading your level of intelligence.
Now I know now that this is likely above your pay grade Mark, but I’m at least going to try. If you would simply apply a small amount of logic you would keep your feet out of your mouth.
There is absolutely no evidence to support your initial conclusion. Trump and the Republicans did not cause 6 million people to not vote for him any more than Biden caused the exact same 6 million people to not vote for him. As much as your Liberal magical thinking mind wants there to be, there is no evidence to support your ridiculous claim, there is no cause and effect. Your conclusion in your initial argument was nonsense and was not supported by the facts you presented.
Correlation ≠ Causation no matter how much you want it to.
I personally know people that don’t vote anymore and haven’t voted for many years because they hate politics and politicians and you’re claiming that the only reason they aren’t voting is because of Trump and the Republicans. You’re full of shit Mark.
None of what you say has anything to do with my main point, which is that it’s silly to blame Jorgensen for stealing 200,000 voters from Trump when there are 6 million other voters that Trump failed to win over.
One more thing:
“You’re full of shit Mark.”
You’re no longer welcome on my blog, Steve.
Rhetorical coward.
Hm. Didn’t this guy tell me that continuing to comment on someone else’s blog after being told you aren’t welcome there was unethical a while back?
On the other hand, he can’t claim not to know.
My apologies Mark but I just saw Chris’ comment above and this needs to be said.
Chris wrote, “Hm. Didn’t this guy tell me that continuing to comment on someone else’s blog after being told you aren’t welcome there was unethical a while back?”
As usual; Chris is making up things to impune the character of someone who’s opinion he opposes. No Chris I don’t use double standards and I’m not a hypocrite, you’re a liar and here’s the proof.
Here is exactly what I wrote and a link to the actual comment…
If Chris can provide evidence to support his claim, I’ll read it and if it’s accurate then I’ll retract my comment; however, I save absolutely every comment I wrote online plus a link to the comment and if someone, like Chris, misquotes or misrepresents my words I’ll know and I’ll publicly expose their lies using actual facts. Chris tried to pull this same kind of misrepresentation/lies on Ethics Alarms and was exposed.
Mark,
I know you said I’m not welcome on your blog but if you continue to allow the internet troll Chris to come back and blatantly lie about what I’ve written I will reply when I see it; otherwise, I’ll respect your statement that I’m no longer welcome on your blog. Try telling Chris, the troll, that his lies are no longer welcome on your blog and you’ll not likely hear from me again.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year and Peace to you and yours Mark.
Steve
A sincere congratulations goes out to Chris and his wife on the birth of their son yesterday. Life as you knew it will never be the same. Enjoy, persevere, support each other and get as much sleep whenever you can.
I just went back and realized that I never formally apologized for the two disparaging phrases above; I went too far Mark and I apologize.
Accepted. I was in a bit of a mood at the time and may have overreacted.
Me too.
Well that was a fun journey. To the actual topic at hand; I agree. 100%.
The Republican party needs to do something about the proportionately shrinking base that supports them. The fact is that they haven’t won the popular vote nationally in 20 years, and that should concern the living hell out of them.
They’re winning elections in the short term, and that’s a feature, not a bug, because the Democrat’s support is disproportionately in California and New York and the electoral college was designed to bias against regional candidates, but if the trends continue as they are, they’re going to start losing more than they win.
Blaming that on Libertarians is navel gazing… There’s a reason that those Libertarians didn’t vote for Trump, and there’s a reason the Democrats didn’t vote for Trump. It’s the party’s job to court voters, not voters jobs to get in line.