The Independent Trump Candidacy
And the Real Two Party System
Barring the apocalypse or the actual revolution, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President.
Same goes for Joe Biden on the Democrat side, though the chances of his just wandering off – most likely to the background hum of his fellow Democrats, channeling their inner Willy Wonka, half-heartedly mumbling “stop, don’t, come back” - cannot be dismissed entirely.
But will Trump strictly be the Republican nominee or does the hatred of the DC elephant nomenklatura make him more of a third-party candidate? In other words, can Trump’s 2016 victory be seen as a third-party/independent win and would a 2024 win be the same?
The answer depends in part on how you define “party” – is it the people in it or is it the leadership? Trump is supported by more than most Republicans, and loathed by more than most Republican party functionaries.
Or is the answer better formulated in comparison to other past (and current) third party candidates. Trump stormed the citadel in 2016, despite the vats of boiling oil being pored over the battlements.
The national party was not terribly helpful to his effort, leaving Trump to run a less traditional, more “third party feeling” campaign. And it worked.
He became the titular head of the party as president and did move the chairman over to the White House, one Reince Priebus who, a few months later after being dropped from the post, called Trump an “idiot.”
Between 2020 and now, the party did not warm to him to any great degree, and the donor class, by ludicrously backing Nikki Haley – way too late, way wrong person – still clearly despises him.
It could also be helpful to look at the concept of the political phenom, a rare occurrence when, for better or ill, a candidate grabs the zeitgeist of the moment by the scruff of the neck and says “okay, now this is happening.”
Barack Obama - again, for better or ill – was one such candidate. He seemed – or was made to seem - to transcend normal party politics in a way that most other presidential candidates do not. But Obama was not an insurgent candidate and was a creature of all of the bits of the Democratic Party not named Hillary.
Ronald Reagan’s candidacy was Obama-like (or, more accurately, Obama’s campaign was more Reganesque) in that sense of being transformative but still of the party, a culmination of the on-going “yankees versus cowboys” internal struggle.
A different comparison: JFK won a very close race but transcended the culture – LBJ won in a landslide and had a much longer lasting, to the nation’s detriment, impact on the nation but did not transcend.
As for actual third party candidates, Trump is comparable to Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and Ross Perot in 1992 – ground up efforts based solely on a person and their ideas, not a party and its.
Even this time around we can see similarities with the crop of independent presidential candidates. Cornel West is on a mission as is RFK, Jr. Right or wrong, they are there to speak their truth to that power.
Unlike Trump, coverage of their campaigns has been rather slight and mostly confined to the outskirts of presentable, proper media (even though presentable, proper media is dying, it still desperately tries to perform its gatekeeper function, never mind that more people listen to Joe Rogan than read the New York Times.)
West and RFK Jr. are mentioned by the major media as either threats to Joe Biden or as lunatics – nothing more. Of course the same could be said about Trump, but Trump – unlike the other two – draws massive viewership and clicks and notoriety (i.e. money) so the attention given to him is not just a political nicety but a financial necessity.
The Green Jill Stein and whomever is going to be the Libertarian candidate are, by definition, third party candidates but they are (will be) still creatures of their party’s milieu to a greater extent than Trump is of the Republicans.
Trump - whose party affiliation has waxed and waned over time - reportedly flirted, years ago, with the idea of an independent run but decided against it as being nearly impossible to pull off successfully. He ran for the Republican nomination because he saw a chance in a crowded field and felt he needed the cover (and ballot placement guarantees, etc.) that a party could provide.
That use of, rather than dedication to, the party has not been forgotten inside the beltway – by either party, hence RFK Jr. being shooed away (something Republicans wished they would have done in 2016, if they had thought of it and didn’t see Trump as a mere sideshow) by the Democrats; they could not – would not – allow what happened to the Republican Party with Trump happen to them.
While Trump convinced Republican voters to support him, he did not “capture” – a term that has been bandied about of late - the party. In other words, Trump did not marry it, but had – and continues to have – a rather tumultuous affair with the Republican Party.
But does even the idea of Trump actually being an independent/third party candidate miss the point? Stylistically and tactically, it holds true, but it also holds true if you see Trump as the candidate of neither established party but as an independent force against the party the Republican and Democrats have jointly established in DC: the Uniparty.
The Uniparty exists – it is made up of lobbyists and electeds and bureaurcrats and pundits and think tankers and media types and consultants and lawyers and spies and cops and contractors and influencers and foundations and non-profits and validators and wannabes. The D or the R matters little and neither of the parties at heart want to significantly change the system.
Once you are on the roof, you don’t kick the ladder away – you just make sure other people can’t climb up it.
In this rubric, Trump is part of the two party system, except the system is not the one we see on the news everyday (or it really really is if you listen closely.) It is the Uniparty versus the Everyone Else Party and Trump is - again, for better or ill - the standard bearer for Everyone Else, just as Biden is the nominee of the Uniparty.
As for Nikki Haley, she would love to the be the nominee of the Uniparty and the Uniparty would love to have two members running against each other in November – hence the burst of stop Trump support - but that is not going to happen.
And Everyone Else can be seen as an authentic independent movement, hence Trump not really being a creature of the fig leaf of a two party – R and D – system.
Not everyone else supports Trump as the candidate of Everyone Else – serious and genuine policy differences, the grating personality, the high drama, the legal turmoil, and the lies - see collusion, etc. - of the past eight years that have stuck with millions of people all contribute to that fact.
But even people who dislike Orange Man Bad have begun to understand over the past three years exactly what the Uniparty is about: establishing absolute control over the political environment in all four dimensions to ensure the permanence of their power.
And that’s what is at stake in November for everyone else, party monikers be damned.