A few folks, like the usually astute Quin Hillyer, argue that if Liz Cheney wants to run for president in 2024, she must do so as an independent. I concur that there is no realistic path to Cheney getting the GOP nomination against Trump, either in a one-on-one race, or in a multi-candidate field that included someone like Florida governor Ron DeSantis. (If you’re getting blown out in a one-on-one GOP primary in Wyoming, you’re not gonna win the GOP presidential nomination. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you get a respectable finish in the New Hampshire primary.)
But I am skeptical that an independent or third-party bid by Cheney would have much of an impact at all.
Quin makes the best argument available, pointing to the “22 percent of Trump voters, some 16 million, [who] were motivated more against eventual winner Joe Biden than for Trump. It is from that universe of hold your nose for Trump voters from which Cheney could draw, although she certainly wouldn’t attract all of them.”
Yes, theoretically, Cheney could. The problem is, those 16 million or so all ended up voting for Trump anyway. They could have voted for other candidates, who represented the longest of longshots, but they chose not to do so. Maybe some factor like the January 6 riot would make these people not vote for Trump in 2024. But polling and the 2022 primaries indicate those Republicans are relatively few and far between.
The Libertarian presidential candidate isn’t a perfect comparison, because Cheney would be better known, probably better funded, and hold different positions on several issues. But I think the number of ballots cast for the Libertarian candidate gives us a sense of the portion of the electorate that was intractably anti-Biden, and simultaneously found Trump unacceptable. In 2020, Libertarian Jo Jorgenson got 1.18 percent nationwide; that ranged from 2.6 percent in North Dakota to .6 percent in Mississippi. As much as people complained about the options of Trump and Biden, 98.17 percent of Americans who voted opted for one of the two.
It was a similar story in 2016, when Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson did a little better, but not by much. Johnson won 3.28 percent nationwide; that ranged from 9.3 percent in Johnson’s home state of New Mexico to 1.19 percent in Mississippi. Separately, independent Evan McMullin won .54 percent of the vote (a bit more than one-half of 1 percent) nationwide, ranging from 21 percent in his home state of Utah to effective zero in states where he wasn’t on the ballot.
Once again, as much as people complained about the lousy options of Trump and Hillary in 2016, 94.27 percent of voters voted for one of the two major party candidates.
When push comes to shove, roughly 94 to 98 percent of American voters put aside their complaints and pick one of the major-party nominees. That could change in the coming years, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
As an independent candidate, in which state does Cheney threaten to play spoiler? Wyoming and its three electoral votes? Virginia, where she and her husband own a house? You really have to squint to see a scenario where the conservative-but-anti-Trump demographic ends up swinging a state, and leaving Biden or Harris with the largest plurality.
Quin does offer a scenario where the threat of a Cheney independent bid effectively strongarms Republican primary voters into nominating someone besides Trump:
If keeping the dangerous and increasingly deranged Trump from office again is Cheney’s main motivator, her outsider run would thus pose more of a threat to him (if he is the Republican nominee) than to Democrats. In fact, that might be part of her message: Nominate Trump, and she stays on the ballot and hands victory to Democrats; nominate someone else, and she drops out. Such a threat might motivate just enough GOP primary voters to consolidate around another GOP contender to provide that contender a fighting chance against Trump.
But a scenario of metaphorical hostage-taking where Cheney effectively threatens GOP primary voters, “Nominate DeSantis, or I’ll run as an independent and help reelect Biden,” is a scenario ensuring that Cheney is effectively loathed by Republicans for the rest of her days. It also probably wouldn’t help DeSantis much.
Everyone would know, from the get-go, that Cheney had no shot of being sworn in at noon on January 20, 2025. If she launched an independent bid against Trump, everyone would know she was doing so just to ensure that the Democratic nominee won the election. And Republicans have a word to describe a person whose primary objective is to ensure Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or some other like-minded figure heads the executive branch for the next four years. They call people like that “Democrats.”