Katie, Barr (and Nader) the door

by Will Bunch | Columnist

Published Sept. 25, 2008, 9:13 a.m. ET

There's been a lot of third-party activity in the 2008 race, with a larger-than-usual number of somewhat known quantities -- former far-left icon Ralph Nader, Clinton-era TV fixture Bob Barr, another ex-congresswoman in Cynthia McKinney, and unknown Chuck Baldwin, who will get some votes now that he has the surprise endorsement of Internet-only sensation Ron Paul.

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to these guys, and odds are neither have you. My experience in covering presidential races is that third-party candidates do well at two extreme ends of the scale -- anger and apathy. It was anger that fueled Ross Perot's remarkable 19 percent showing in 1992, anger over the failures of Bush 41 and Reaganomics among voters who weren't culturally disposed to vote for a Democrat, or at least the Democrat named Bill Clinton. Conversely, Nader got 2.7 million votes in 2000 and tipped the election to Bush because of a form of apathy, because the media (myself included) did such a good job convincing voters on the left there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between "Gush and Bore."

I wasn't seeing much of either of these in 2008 -- well, anger at Bush and his 19 percent approval rating, but he's not on the ballot. Now, the $700 billion "financial bridge to nowhere" has changed everything. Voters seem hopping mad -- the worst that I've seen since the '92 election. Check this out:

WASHINGTON — Americans' anger is in full bloom, jumping off the screen in capital letters and exclamation points, in the e-mail in-boxes of elected representatives in the nation's capital.

"I am hoping Congress can find the backbone to stand on their feet and not their knees before BIG BUSINESS," one correspondent wrote to Representative Jim McDermott of Washington.

"I'd rather leave a better world to my children — NOT A BANKRUPT NATION. Whew! Pardon my shouting," wrote another.

Mr. McDermott is a liberal Democrat, but his e-mail messages look a lot like the ones that Representative Candice S. Miller, a conservative Republican from Michigan, is receiving. "NO BAILOUT, I am a registered republican," one constituent wrote. "I will vote and campaign hard against you if we have to subsidize the very people that have sold out MY COUNTRY."

Are the 3rd-party candidates in a position to benefit from this? I think so. Take the case of Nader: Most folks have come to dismiss his quadriennial runs as an ego trip, and he was a non-factor in 2004 when, unlike the 2000 race, Bush and Kerry didn't move much to the center. But now, given the voters' angry mood, his warnings that the Democrats and Republicans have been equally in bed with Big Business will resonate more than it did just last month.

Ditto Barr, who will probably outperform Nader, because of his added appeal to some conservatives as an ex-Republican. Here's his message on the government bailouts:

Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia who is running as a Libertarian, now sends out press releases lambasting the administration for indulging in corporate welfare, festooned with headlines such as "I told you so."

"This administration, supposedly devoted to free markets and fiscal responsibility, has bailed out the housing industry, the quasi-government mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the investment house Bear Stearns, and a leading insurer," read a Sept. 17 statement. "And how will we pay for this ever-rising bill for corporate welfare?"

Some early polls that included Barr and Nader showed them getting as much as 10 percent of the vote in some states. Everyone expected that to evaporate as the Obama-McCain showdown went down to the wire but now I wouldn't be surprised if all of the combined 3-party candidates really did poll 10 percent, expecially if they get increased media exposure over the bailout.

What does it mean? The polls I've seen suggest that success for the 3rd-party candidates helps Obama, which seems counter-intuitive because Nader is thought to appeal mainly to liberals. But maybe it's not so counter-intuitive: Voters don't like Bush and aren't eager to reward the GOP yet again, but some are shunning Obama because of any number of reasons -- his limited experience, "culture war" issues, his name, and yes, for a some, his race. These third-party candidates give them somewhere else to go that's not a Republican.

I can almost guarantee you this: No one will get 50 percent of the popular vote, and the winner could be closer to 45 percent. America may or may not have its first African-American president, but we definitely will enter 2009 with yet another minority president.