Third Party Fuckery

 I am struggling to see a path for Donald Trump to win election in 2024 that does not involve extreme levels of fuckery. The combination of Dobbs and January 6th/multiple indictments just feels like independents and some Republicans will just be exhausted by the idea of that bloviating fat sack dominating our airwaves for another four years, forget the existential threat to American democracy. Also, I think the economy is turning around and the culture war issues actually work against the Republicans at this point.

So what a crypto-fascist political movement like the modern GOP to do?

Apparently it's to launch third party campaigns to siphon of anti-Trump votes from Biden. The most prominent potential ratfucking is "No Labels" which is the worst sort of austerity politics wrapped in the toxic centrism of "balanced budgets" at the expense of human decency. In his takedown of why the US has been more successful than Europe over the past decade, Yglesias seems to skip over the disastrous decision by many EU countries to embrace austerity economics after 2008. We didn't do enough, but at least we did something. Austerity is about as bad an idea as the gold standard, yet there are a handful of people who seem to think we still live in a 19th century economic world.

So, yeah, No Labels. They seem perfectly pitched to reach a voter like my late father who hated Trump, but felt that we needed to balance the budget on the backs of human beings. (My dad cast his last vote for Gary Johnson.) I'm not sure that's sufficient to carry Trump fat ass over the finish line, but Johnson did help siphon off center right votes in 2016.

Meanwhile, the GOP seems to be trying to find another Jill Stein in Robert Kennedy, Jr. Sure, there as some aging Boomers who might be enticed by the Kennedy name, but he is quickly sinking into the fever swamps of conspiracy theories and, now, antisemitism. 

The question is: Would it make sense for the Democrats to launch a rat fucking campaign of their own? Would helping to launch a Liz Cheney campaign hurt or help Biden?

One thing I DO think would help is in reliably Red States running a Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger "type" in Senate races. You could start in Wyoming. Run the best Democrat you could recruit and then prod Cheney into running. I doubt it would work, but it might. I'd take a run at Mississippi, Missouri and Indiana, too. You are REALLY unlikely to win there, but if you can divide the right wing vote roughly in half, you could pull off an upset.

Where it gets more complicated would be in Texas, Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Arizona and Montana.

In four of those races (WV, OH, AZ and MT) you have vulnerable incumbents. It would seem to me that those would be good places to divide the rightist protest votes into MAGA and "normal" Republicans. Incumbency has advantages, so add "divide and conquer" and you increase your odds. In Florida and Texas, you could benefit from an unpopular candidates and unpopular state parties.

However, those elections will be really close and I could see institutional Dems worrying about messing up at the margins. 

I think that would be a mistake.

However, the best solution would be to create a puppet MAGA party that would only siphon off votes to the far right. Not sure how to do that legally, though.