Open Letter to Thom Hartmann: Who's Deceiving Whom About Independents and Minor Parties?

Dear Thom,

Two decades ago, during the 2004 presidential election, you accused Ralph Nader of attempting to “deceive” voters about “the role of third parties” in our electoral system. By running as an independent in a first past the post, winner take all system, you claimed, Nader was making the process “less democratic” because his candidacy would split the progressive vote and help Republican George Bush win even if a majority preferred Democrat John Kerry. You argued that progressives should therefore “support” the Green Party but focus on “infiltrating” the Democratic Party: “As more and more progressives join the Democratic Party … we will gain enough power to bring about changes … that will … pave the way for third, fourth and fifth parties to participate in a truly democratic fashion in America.”[1]

Twenty years later, you’re still at it. In 2024 you warned of the peril posed by the centrist ticket No Labels intended to run: “The simple reality is that in our political system … a third-party candidate always hurts the party it’s most closely aligned with.” Just as Green candidates Nader (in 2000) and Jill Stein (in 2016) “hurt the Democratic nominee,” you claimed, a “moderate” No Labels candidate would hurt “moderate” Joe Biden and “throw the election to Trump.”[2]

Your position on this issue, which perfectly reflects the prevailing orthodoxy among Democratic Party leaders and loyalists, seems an odd fit for a progressive who claims to support the Green Party. But before we get to that, let’s start with some basic facts. You say Nader’s candidacy “hurt” Al Gore in 2000 because you assume more of Nader’s 97,488 Florida voters would have preferred Gore to Bush. Since Bush “won” Florida by only 537 votes, you conclude Gore would have won if Nader hadn’t run. But what makes you so sure? No one knows what those 97,488 voters would have done, much less how the election would have turned out, if Nader hadn’t run. Some would have voted for Gore, but others would have voted for Bush, others would have stayed home, and others would have voted for one of the other seven presidential candidates on Florida’s ballot. The only thing we really know about these voters – apart from their support for Nader – is that they declined to support either Bush or Gore.

Before you dismiss such skepticism as a bad faith denial of the obvious, consider the widely-cited study two political scientists who shared your belief about Nader voters conducted to test that assumption.[3] After reviewing the evidence, they were surprised to find that “at most” 60 percent of Nader voters in Florida preferred Gore to Bush, while “at least” 40 percent preferred Bush to Gore. And even this equivocal finding, they conceded, is biased in Gore’s favor because their data came exclusively from ten heavily Democratic counties and thus omitted a substantial number of Nader voters who preferred Bush to Gore. The evidence thus suggests the split is closer to 50–50.

Setting aside your unfounded assumption about Nader voters, there’s a bigger problem with your position. Simply put, reality is not as simple as you say. Has it occurred to you that Nader’s 2000 candidacy had impacts beyond the one you fixate upon and consider outcome-determinative?[4] For example, how many disaffected progressives do you think Nader mobilized, who ended up holding their noses and voting for Gore? Nader consistently polled higher than 5 percent during the election, but received only 2.74 percent of the vote – a margin of difference that translates to a few million votes. Based on your own assumption, these erstwhile Nader supporters must have defected to Gore, right? And that’s just what professor Solon Simmons found in a study of voter turnout: Nader’s candidacy caused a statistically significant “mobilization effect,” the result of which was that “some large number but small proportion of the Gore vote would not have voted for Gore had Ralph Nader not been in the race and reminded them what a left agenda could feel like.”[5]

Now consider how many independents voted for Gore only because Nader was in the race. How so? By running to Gore’s left, Nader enabled Gore to position himself more credibly as a centrist, and to capture a larger chunk of that all-important constituency. In effect, Nader’s Green Party candidacy neutered the standard Republican charge that the Democrat was a left-wing extremist – a line of attack to which Gore was particularly susceptible given his penchant for environmentalism and big government solutions. So Thom, in your estimation, how many independents would have swung from Gore to Bush if Nader hadn’t run? Law professor Robert Fellmeth puts that figure at 5 to 10 million nationwide, including “a lot more than 100,000” in Florida alone.[6] In other words, without Nader in the race, Gore would have lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

You might quibble with Fellmeth’s numbers, but the larger point he and Simmons both raise is unassailable: the claim that Nader cost Gore the election by dividing the progressive vote relies on cherry-picked facts and disregards all evidence to the contrary. Take that study of Nader’s Florida voters referenced above. It is widely cited as “proof” that Nader cost Gore the election, but like you, it assumes away almost every other possible outcome. It assumes that if Nader hadn’t run, each of his 97,488 Florida voters would have voted either for Gore or Bush, that none of them would have stayed home, none would have voted for one of the other seven presidential candidates on Florida’s ballot, and all other voters nationwide would have voted as they actually did. But these aren’t reasonable assumptions. Without Nader in the race, the entire dynamic of the election would change, and as Fellmeth and Simmons show, there’s good reason to believe Gore would have received even fewer votes.

Now let’s return to your claim that minor parties and independents make our system less democratic when they participate. If that is so – and it isn’t – it’s fair to ask how your proposed alternative is faring. Have progressives infiltrated the Democratic Party to any significant degree in the last two decades? Have they built sufficient power to impact the party’s platform in a measurable way?

Even you must concede the answer is No. On issue after issue, the Democratic Party remains indifferent if not hostile to progressive policies. Does the Democratic Party support single payer healthcare? No. A living wage? No – Democrats don’t even prioritize raising the minimum wage, stagnating at $7.25 since 2009, much less an increase that would allow working Americans to afford food, housing and other basic necessities. Meanwhile, rich Americans’ wealth has spiked such that the gap between rich and poor is greater now than any time since before the Great Depression, yet Democrats refuse to utter the word “poverty” and cannot conceive of a plan – like the Green New Deal, for instance – to address the vast wealth inequality that places a modest standard of living out of so many Americans’ reach. What about reducing military spending by eliminating the rampant waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon budget? No again. Democrats don’t even question it. Not coincidentally, congressional Democrats voted nearly unanimously to authorize the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 (Greens, Libertarians and independents like Nader, you may recall, stood alone in their opposition to that war crime), President Biden gave Ukraine a blank check to repel Russia’s invasion but evidently did nothing to broker a peace, Democrats unfailingly support and enable Netanyahu’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza, and Democratic leaders did not even object when dictatorial Donald Trump openly announced his unconstitutional intention to bomb Iran without congressional authorization, which he has now done.

Admittedly, there are counterexamples and exceptions, but the overwhelming reality is that progressives have not infiltrated the Democratic Party so much as they have been subsumed, stifled and neutralized when they try. Just ask Bernie Sanders. He ran for president as a Democrat in 2016 propelled by a groundswell of grassroots progressive support, but his “revolution” was stopped cold by DNC superdelegates empowered to disregard primary election results and pledge their support to Hillary Clinton. Sanders then endorsed Clinton, without extracting concessions, and his influence within the Democratic Party remains negligible. Democrats haven’t adopted his positions. 

That’s not to say it can’t be done. You cited the conservative movement that brought Reagan to power in 1980; more recent examples include the Tea Party and MAGA movements. But you make a stronger claim – that “infiltration” of the Democratic Party is progressives’ only viable electoral strategy unless and until major reforms like Instant Runoff Voting – which the Democratic Party still doesn’t support – are enacted. How can you stand by that claim when your strategy has failed for 20 years and counting?

Besides, your claim is not even historically accurate. Our two party system has never been one in which only two parties participate. Instead, minor parties have always played a critical role by injecting new ideas into the public debate and championing innovative policies the major parties either ignored or opposed but later adopted. These include the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, social security and the progressive income tax.[7] Aren’t you glad minor parties led the way on these issues? You can add opposition to American war crimes to the list, to cite just one present day example. Don’t you wish Democrats had listened to Nader and the Greens and Libertarians instead of authorizing the illegal invasion of Iraq? Don’t you wish Democrats would listen to them now, instead of aiding and abetting Netanyahu’s genocidal destruction of Gaza?

Now suppose Greens took your advice and continued to “support” their party while leaving it to join the Democratic Party – how would that work? The Green Party would soon cease to exist. Millions of Americans who support the Green Party’s agenda would have no representation within the electoral arena and that support would wither away. The Green Party doesn’t make our system “less democratic” by giving these voters a voice and an opportunity to build political power. And their effort to do so is no less valid or legitimate than your effort to infiltrate the Democratic Party – particularly when Democrats don’t support the very reforms that would address your concerns about minor parties’ participation in the electoral process.  

So who is attempting to deceive whom, Thom? After 20-plus years without results, you sound a bit like a Pied Piper of politics, urging progressives to follow you down a path from which they will never be seen or heard again. What’s worse, when you claim Nader tipped the 2000 election to Bush or Jill Stein tipped the 2016 election to Trump, you are not only treating rank speculation as if it were proven fact, but also repeating Democratic Party talking points intended to scapegoat Greens. This serves Democratic Party leaders’ dual interests in evading responsibility for their own failings and deterring other candidates and parties from challenging Democrats’ presumptive entitlement to the votes of any American to the left of Richard Nixon. But it does not serve the interest of truth. And it is an affront to the fundamental principle underlying our democracy, that “government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed,” as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence.

My sincere hope is that you and other progressives will successfully infiltrate the Democratic Party – and soon. But I don’t think your commentary about Greens and other minor parties furthers that effort. Democrats don’t pay attention to progressives because they don’t think they need to compete for progressives’ votes. And when you tell progressives their only option is to join the Democratic Party, you are also telling Democrats they are right.

Sincerely,

Oliver B. Hall

[1] Thom Hartmann, Ralph Nader: Let the Voter Beware, CommonDreams.org (August 6, 2004), available at https://www.thomhartmann.com/articles/2004/08/ralph-nader-let-voter-beware.

[2] Thom Hartmann, Will “No Labels” Usher in a Trump or DeSantis White House in 2024?, The Hartmann Report (April 13, 2023), available at https://hartmannreport.com/p/will-no-labels-usher-in-a-trump-or.  

[3] See Michael C. Herron and Jeffrey B. Lewis, Did Ralph Nader Spoil a Gore Presidency? A Ballot-Level Study of Green and Reform Party Voters in the 2000 Presidential Election, Quarterly J. of Pol. Science, Vol. 2, No. 3, pages 205-226 (August 2007).

[4] To provide further perspective, here are just a few reasons why Gore lost, each of which had a far greater impact on the outcome of the election than Nader’s campaign for the fledgling Green Party: 1) the Electoral College gave Bush the win, even though 543,895 more Americans voted for Gore; 2) five Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices ensured Bush’s victory by halting a recount that was ongoing in Florida; 3) Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican who also served as state chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, improperly purged thousands of Democrats from the state’s voter rolls; 4) faulty ballot designs in several Florida counties cost Gore thousands more votes; 5) at least 250,000 registered Democrats in Florida voted for Bush instead of Gore; 6) Gore lost his home state of Tennessee; and 7) Gore lost Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas. Wouldn’t Democrats be better served by focusing on these factors, rather than attempting to blame Greens?

[5] See Solon Simmons, One in Ten Thousand: Ralph Nader Takes on the Presidency, Wisconsin Pol. Scientist (U. of Wisconsin, Madison, Summer 2004).

[6] See Robert C. Fellmeth, Why Democrats Should Thank Nader, The San Diego Union-Tribune (Nov. 12, 2000).

[7] See generally Steven J. Rosenstone, Roy L. Behr, and Edward H. Lazarus, Third Parties in America (Princeton U. Press 1984).