Dan Quayle has this op-ed in the Sunday, April 4, Washington Post. Thanks to Nancy Hanks for the link.
Quayle repeats the cliche that a minor party or independent candidate always injures the major party closest (ideologically) to that minor party or independent candidate. Social science and historical research substantially rebuts that idea.
Dan Ariely’s best-selling book “Predictably Irrational” describes the findings of research that describes how individuals choose, when there are three choices. “Predictably Irrational” says that if two of the three choices are markedly similar in some way, but one of those two choices is obviously superior to the other similar choice, that superior choice then gains a significant advantage over the third choice, that is, over the choice that is not similar to either of the other two.
A real-world example is the 1948 presidential election. Pollster Samuel Lubell, who later became a political scientist, learned that Henry Wallace actually helped Harry Truman. Conventional wisdom, including the Quayle op-ed, would predict just the opposite. Lubell’s book “The Future of American Politics” explains how Wallace helped Truman by running against him.
The Communist Party understood this, and in 1936 ran its own presidential candidate, Earl Browder, even though the party in 1936 was very much in favor of Roosevelt’s re-election. The Communist Party’s campaign was run to boost Roosevelt, even though superficially the party was “taking votes away” from Roosevelt.
Who needs communists on the ballots when there are New Age Donkeys — with their super-communist agenda platforms ???
I was a major player in Arid Zona in 1980, and I have come to the conclusion that Perot did some thing right in 1992!
In 1970, James Buckley, running as the Conservative Party nominee for US senator from New York, beat a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican. Do you think Buckley would have won if there had only been one liberal running? (Buckley got 39% or 40%, as I recall.)
In 1976, Buckley ran for re-election as the nominee of both the Republican and Conservative parties. He lost to a liberal Democrat.
Do you think the independent John Anderson, a liberal, helped the Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980? As I recall, there were several states in which Anderson polled more votes than the difference between Carter and Ronald Reagan.
Carter obviously considered Anderson to be a threat to him, since Carter steadfastly refused to debate him.
Reagan, for his part, considered Anderson to be a friend. Reagan helped raise Anderson’s stature by debating him one-on-one.
In 1976, the Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated President Gerald Ford (R). There were several states in which the independent Eugene McCarthy, a liberal former Democrat, polled more votes than the difference between Carter and Ford.
Note the biased categories implicit in the analysis in #3 and #4. If a third candidate gets more votes than the difference between the Democrat or Republican that candidate is a ‘spoiler’ for one or the other. If the third candidate doesn’t get enough votes to be a ‘spoiler’, that candidate is a ‘fringe’ candidate. Nobody really knows why people vote as they do it the split second of decision, but I doubt many people are deliberate ‘spoiler’ voters or ‘fringe’ voters. Why do we expect jurors to decide ‘wisely’ but the same people as voters are often manipulated fools? It could be both, but which is which and when?
No surprise. Dan Quayle was never known for being smart.
How about Palin / Quayle (or vice versa) for the airhead Elephants in 2012 ???
Which of them can/would make the most New Age moronic comments ???
In response to Quayle’s 7th paragraph, maybe the voters did not want to re-elect his team for another term. One thing about the D’s and R’s that they cannot seem to understand is that if they were running a smooth-running machine they would probably have a vast majority of people vote to continue said well-running machine. It appears be wants a disheartened electorate to vote for the same parties that have wasted more money than they have brought in….
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