Another big ugly L for the Libertarian Party and movement in America.
Primary losers dumped their own nominee only to endorse Donald Trump despite him openly supporting policies that they considered disqualifying.
Not everyone was grateful this Thanksgiving. There has been much buzz since Nov. 5 about a political party that disappointed in a major way this year, and I’m not talking about the Democrats. Last Monday comedian/podcaster Dave Smith hosted an X (Twitter) space where he invited critics of the decision by his faction of the Libertarian Party, the Mises Caucus, to voice their grievances after his preferred candidate Donald Trump had nominated several cabinet members that diverged significantly from libertarian attitudes. It went as expected. If ever there has been a forume that is grounded in petty disputes and semantic arguments, it would be the Libertarian Party. The LP achieved elevated notoriety in 2016 when former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson earned 3.3% of the vote as its presidential candidate, however they regressed in 2020 to just 1.2% under Jo Jorgenson. In 2024 they experienced a whirlwind convention in which non-party presidential candidates Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. openly coveted their endorsement, however their May convention awarded the party’s nomination to Chase Oliver, a representative of its “classical liberal” wing. Oliver’s message and approach quickly led most of its members to abandon him, with many deciding to throw their lots in with Trump. As a result Oliver earned a paltry 0.42%.
Since the election libertarian sphere has concentrated its fire at the Trump cabinet picks and against others in their movement who are insufficiently angry at what they consider a betrayal. The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire even went so far as to claim that it was libertarians who got Trump elected. This is easily proved to be false, since New Hampshire is the state with the most active and well organized LP voter base, and they failed to "deliver" the state to Trump as Kamala Harris won the state by about 23,000 votes and an almost 3% margin of victory.
Likewise, in Michigan and Arizona, two swing states that Trump did win his margin was large enough that the Libertarians would not have made the difference. More than 60,000 voted for the party's previous ticket in the Wolverine State in 2020, and 22,000 voted that way in 2024, meaning that balance of forty thousand votes that were missing this year would have lowered Trump's victory margin by one half, assuming that those votes would not have gone to Harris.
Finally, in Arizona, Trump's nearly 200,000 vote margin of victory was more than four times as much as the 50,000 who voted Libertarian in the state in 2020, while less than 18,000 voted Libertarian this year. Deducting the balance of 32,000 "MAGA Libertarians" from his victory margin would not have changed the result.
Claiming that Libertarians "won" the election for Trump belies the other big swings among other groups to Trump, such as unions, blacks, Latinos, and Jews. Many of those voters would support policies that are diametrically opposed to libertarian positions such as import tariffs, opportunity zones in minority communities, and (gasp) siding with Israel in the Middle East.
What Dave Smith should have done instead of argue was eat his humble pie and acknowledge that he traded whatever influence he had with voters to Donald Trump, a candidate he once labeled a "war criminal", for nothing and for that he now looks like a buffoon no matter what side of the spectrum one looks at him.
Dave Smith calls his podcast “part of the problem”, after a phrase that he often uses to start sentences. I continue to believe in the principles of "small l" libertarianism: free speech and other civil liberties, economic freedom at home, peace through trade, and non-interventionism. Part of the problem is that the Libertarian Party has once again failed to put forward a candidate that speaks to those issues and the daily concerns of Americans. It chooses instead to fight other third parties to see who can be the most hard core pro-Palestine stans in the room, while the majority of the country doesn't vote based on that issue. I don't begrudge Dave Smith or his colleagues like Tom Woods - who I otherwise have much in common with - for having those opinions. But the average small business owner or gig employee is more directly affected by the policies enacted here in the US than they are by a war happening in the Middle East. Most if not all LP candidates, whether it was Oliver or Smith’s preferred pick Dr. Michael Rectenwald, were stridently or even militantly anti-Israel.
Hinging one’s position on foreign policy can alienate just as many or more voters as one attracts, but in this case it is even more extreme: Libertarians gain nothing for wading into the Israel/Palestine conflict because most other third parties are more attractive to voters who share that position. As a share of the total vote, all third parties actually earned a higher vote share in 2024 (1.9%) than 2020 (1.86%), even as the LP itself lost significant votes and may have only equaled 2020’s totals if Smith & Co. had not dumped them. So who were the ones that gained? Most of them were third parties on the radical left who took even more militant positions on Palestine than Chase Oliver and the LP.
The Green Party of Jill Stein who earned 772,000 votes, a 90% increase from 2020. Stein had previously run also in 2012 and 2016.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist-Leninist party earned 152,000 votes, a 76% increase from 2020. The party actively and publicly supports violent Palestinian resistance against Israel.
Independents Cornel West and Shiva Ayyadurai who each earned tens of thousands of votes. West is a longtime pro-Palestine activist and Ayyadurai has even called for arming the Palestinians against Israel.
This doesn’t mean the LP candidate should ignore foreign policy altogether like Gary Johnson did in 2020 when he got exposed for not knowing where Aleppo was, but it shouldn’t be treated as the primary issue ahead of other voter concerns. The only libertarian world leader so far was elected in 2023, President Javier Milei of Argentina, and he was elected on a wave of populist anger at runaway inflation and state spending, but he is barely mentioned anymore by LP bigwigs, perhaps due to his close support for Israel. A libertarian awakening in America has to be predicated on promoting liberty for Americans, it will not be conjured by yelling “Free Palestine” louder than the competition.