How 2024 could be the year of the third-party president

The Democratic and Republican parties are moving inexorably toward a mutual political suicide pact — at this point, it’s not a question of which side’s self-inflicted wound will prove fatal but whether both will.

The problem is the likely renomination of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as the 2024 presidential candidates. Most Americans do not want either man in the White House for a second term. Yet the parties’ nominating processes, if not changed, strongly favor another Biden-Trump contest.

The Democrats’ dilemma is the result of past success, while the GOP problem is caused by past failures.

As the incumbent president and leader of his party, Biden cannot realistically be denied the nomination short of some serious health crisis — unless responsible, and brave, Democratic leaders privately counsel him to forgo yet another presidential campaign. Only five presidents have been rejected as their party’s successor nominee, with four becoming president only because of the death of their predecessors. Franklin Pierce was the only elected president denied a second nomination, because of his embroilment in the slavery issue in 1856.

Biden’s age and growing incapacities, and doubts about Kamala Harris’s ability to take over the presidency, have generated concerns among Democrats that it may be a mistake to rest the party’s fate — and the country’s — again on a Biden-Harris ticket. There is a pervasive sense that they were fortunate to have had Trump as their 2020 opponent — possibly the only Republican Biden could have beaten.

But, lo and behold, the GOP is again poised to serve up Trump as the nominee. That is because 60 percent of Republican convention delegates are chosen in states that use winner-take-all systems. Those states award all their delegates to the candidate earning a mere plurality of the popular vote in the primary. That means a zealous, committed minority — e.g., Trump voters — can accumulate a majority of convention delegates by winning as little as a third of the primary vote in several early states. A large field of perhaps better qualified candidates inevitably splinters the majority of the primary voters who want someone else to lead the party. It was the story of Trump’s nomination in 2016.

The flawed and undemocratic GOP nominating system was why former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan decided not to run for president in 2024: He did not want to divide further the non-Trump and anti-Trump vote. Other qualified Republicans, such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, may have opted out for the same reason — to the party’s and the country’s detriment.

For 2024, the situation is even more skewed in favor of Trump because of changes his allies engineered since the 2020 election. Several states have transformed their delegate selection process from proportional allocation — the way Democrats generally do it — to the winner-take-all approach. Other states have imposed a 20 percent minimum share of the primary vote for candidates to qualify for award of any delegates.

Further, despite Trump’s many legal problems, what some view as prosecutorial overreach in New York has created a backlash that strengthened Trump’s hold on a dedicated minority of the party.

Republicans need to reverse this undemocratic and counterproductive trend and change their rules before Oct. 1 to attract their strongest candidates to compete and have a fair chance at winning the nomination. States that prefer winner-take-all to proportional allocation of delegates should at least consider requiring a victorious candidate to earn 50 percent of the primary vote, with a runoff where necessary within no less than 10 days or more than 30.

With majorities in both parties unhappy with their prospective nominees, and with a vast number of independent voters dissatisfied with the choice offered by the two parties, 2024 may prove to be the first time since the emergence of the modern Democratic and Republican parties that a third-party candidate has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency.

Enter No Labels.

This independent, bipartisan organization, associated with the Problem Solvers Caucus, a centrist congressional group focused on bringing the political parties together to find solutions instead of partisan strife, offers the following mission statement: “This moment demands American leaders and citizens alike declare their freedom from the anger and divisiveness that are ruining our politics and most importantly, our country.”  

The message is one that stands to resonate with a huge number of voters, and if the candidate the group says it will present next April reflects that unifying approach, and also possesses the competence and experience to do the job as president, he or she could strike a responsive chord with the American electorate.

As someone who signed the Never Trump letter in 2016 but could not abide the Clintons’ return to power, I voted for a third-party candidate as a voter in the District of Columbia. After Trump’s election, I was impressed enough with the performance of his national security team, especially its transformative policies on China — and worried enough about Biden’s foreign policy record of mistakes — that I was comfortable in voting for Trump in 2020. But his actions since the 2020 election have disqualified him from ever serving in public office again.

In different ways, he and Biden both present dangers to the nation’s security. America’s enemies are salivating at another Biden-Trump contest. Most Americans want to avoid it; as of now, voters are justified in believing the worst Democrats and Republicans are saying about each other. A fresh start with their leaders will entitle them to start believing the best of what they say about themselves.

The Democratic and Republican parties should put the national interest first — or third-party groups like No Labels will do it for them.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.