US: After Embarrassing Prez Debate, People Seek Third Option

For many people in the United States, the televised debate on June 27 between the presidential candidates of the country’s two major parties was an unwelcome realization about the two men most likely to become the 47th president. Although incumbent Joe Biden’s mental fitness has long been the butt of jokes in the country, his disastrous performance set panic among leading Democratic leaders, donors, and the mainstream media. 

Polls increasingly show that fewer and fewer people trust in Biden’s physical and mental fitness to continue running the country, especially Democratic voters. And despite debate watchers largely agreeing that former president Donald Trump had the strongest performance, under half said that his performance was good or excellent (40%).

Following the debates, more and more Democratic voters simply want Biden to be replaced. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this week, one in three Democratic voters now think that Biden should pull out of the presidential race entirely. A CNN poll from July 2 found that an overwhelming majority, 75%, of US voters say that the Democratic Party would have a better chance of winning the election without Joe Biden as the nominee, with most voters favoring Trump over Biden. 

Even before Biden’s disaster at the debate, and before his unconditional support for genocide in Gaza, he was an unpopular candidate among those who should makeup his base. According to a CNN poll from September of 2023, 67% of Democratic Party-leaning voters said they wanted a different candidate to run on the party’s presidential ticket. 

A third option?

Both the Democratic and Republican parties remain firmly rooted in the establishment politics of the country, and third party candidates, due to both legal repression and media blackouts, are still relegated to the margins of politics. But third party candidates present a clear political alternative in a political system that just 4% of US adults say is working extremely or very well, according to Pew Research Center polling from last year.

“We are witnessing something historic—in huge numbers not seen in a generation, people are turning away from the two-party system,” says Claudia De La Cruz, a socialist running against both Biden and Trump on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation alongside her running mate, Karina Garcia. De La Cruz is a South Bronx-born educator, activist, theologian, and mother, from a Black Dominican background. Garcia also has a working class, immigrant background, growing up in a Chicano family in California. De La Cruz’s campaign has reported “a huge surge of interest” since the debate, with “more and more people are signing up to volunteer, petitioning for ballot access, and helping spread the word about our socialist program.”

“On the one hand we have a genocide-enabling career politician who can’t even string a sentence together, and on the other we have a racist billionaire promising to shred people’s rights. But there is no reason we have to settle for the lesser of two evils,” said De La Cruz. Her political program, with eight major points united under the slogan “end capitalism before it ends us,” contains a vision for the future that goes far beyond what the two major political parties have ever proposed. Her first proposal is to seize the 100 largest US corporations and turn them into public property, to “serve as the foundation for a total reorganization of the economy in a way that guarantees that everyone in society will have their basic needs met, massively rebuild urban and rural infrastructure, and bring down prices and rents.”

Thus far, the third party candidate that has captured the most attention in the media is the controversial Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of the famous Kennedy political family and the nephew of former US President John F. Kennedy. Also known by his initials RFK, he has generated significant buzz for a bold independent presidential campaign, but also for his contentious views against vaccines and other medical views, which many say border on conspiracy. 

Another candidate that has captured the attention of many seeking an alternative to the two-party system is Cornel West, who has for many years been a celebrated scholar and activist on the left. West also identifies as a socialist, and is running independent of any political party or organization. West’s running mate is Dr. Melina Abdullah, who is a founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots.

In response to the presidential debate, West wrote on X, “This presidential debate is pure farce! Trump’s lies, contempt and hatred are beyond appalling! Biden’s lies, senility and emptiness are pathetic! Both are simply living in worlds far removed from the realities of America and abroad! Both will continue the barbaric genocide in Gaza! Is America now addicted to self-destruction?” 

West also has a radical platform, addressing many issues that the two major establishment candidates leave unaddressed, such as Black maternal health in a nation where Black mothers experience disproportionately high maternal mortality rates. On economic issues, West pledges to work towards numerous measures to eliminate wealth inequality, such as the eradication of poverty and homelessness. West also advocates for a USD 27 per hour minimum wage, far above the current rate of USD 7.25 per hour. “If a person works, they deserve to live—not merely survive but to live with dignity, in communities where this wage is the floor, not the ceiling, of their aspirations,” West’s campaign website reads. 

Physician and activist Dr. Jill Stein is once again running for President of the United States with the Green Party. Following the Biden and Trump’s debate, Stein also reported a “surge” in support for her campaign, as well a fourfold jump in donations. Stein seeks to create an “economy that works for working people, not just the wealthy and powerful” through measures such as guaranteed free public education, including preschool, trade school, and graduate school, as well as abolishing student debt and guaranteeing free childcare.

Bipartisan domination maintained through legal repression

Despite the fact that third party candidates with radically different and transformative visions of the United States are increasingly capturing the attention of masses of people, the electoral system remains rigged against those not running as Democrats or Republicans. The legal hoops that independent and third party candidates must jump through to even get a spot on the ballot are numerous, often necessitating major spending or numerous hours of hard work to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot in each state. 

Ballot access in one of the most populous states in the country, New York State, has now become nearly impossible for working class, anti-establishment candidates. In 2022, the state increased the required signatures for ballot access for independent candidates from 15,000 to a whopping 45,000, to be collected in the span of six weeks. Even for candidates who might be running on a third party ticket, the barrier of entry in New York for a “group” to qualify as a “party”, thus gaining automatic ballot access, has become almost insurmountable. There is no procedure for a group to transform itself into a party in advance of an election, a process that exists in 39 states. For a group to qualify as a party, it must poll 2% in elections for state Governor or US President, which in 2020 was 172,337 votes. This makes ballot access in New York State essentially impossible for candidates who don’t have an excess of money to spend on petitioning drives. 

These difficulties are compounded by the often deliberate efforts made by establishment parties to keep alternative candidates off the ballot. In 2022, Jacobin published a piece about the shocking attempts by Democrats to block the Green Party from the North Carolina ballot, including going to someone’s house to persuade him to remove his name from a ballot access petition for the Greens. 

Nonetheless, establishment political leaders will have a formidable threat to contend with, as alternative candidates have managed to secure ballot access in dozens of states, including states which will be the site of pitched battles between Trump and Biden such as Georgia.

“In many states, the petitioning threshold is so high and the ballot access rules are so ridiculous that it is clear they are not designed to facilitate the exercise of democracy, but instead to obstruct it,” said De la Cruz, in a statement regarding ballot access. “Instead of having multiple parties who represent the same imperial foreign policy consensus, we need multiple parties that challenge it. I have proudly stood with Jill Stein and Cornel West on many platforms over the years in the mass movements for peace and justice and will continue to stand with anyone that is working sincerely to stop the siege and destruction of Gaza.”