Representative Justin Amash. Politico/AP.
Representative Justin Amash has announced that he will not seek the Libertarian Party's 2020 nomination for President of the United States. Politico. The representative from Michigan formed an exploratory committee last April. Amash blamed the Coronavirus for his inability to campaign and raise funds, also blaming "media bias" for his campaign not being able to gain any traction. Amash famously left the Republican Party over disagreements with President Trump and was seen as trying to siphon votes away from him to ensure Joe Biden won the Presidency. But many pundits said that Amash was more likely to take away voters from Joe Biden.
My Comment:
Before I say anything else, I do have to say that Amash is right about one thing. The Coronavirus has completely disrupted the 2020 election leadup to the point where no major candidates are actively campaigning, despite the fact that the primary race is still technically going on.
However, I also have to note that Justin Amash is not the only one dealing with that problem. Neither President Trump or former Vice President Biden are on the campaign trail either so it's not like Amash had a unique problem here.
I think the real problem for Amash is that nobody on either side likes him. The vast majority of Republicans love President Trump and absolutely despise Amash for supporting the impeachment fiasco. Democrats hate him because he isn't a Democrat. That leaves who exactly to support him in a 2020 race?
Indeed, when Amash announced I wondered who he was trying to appeal to. His only qualification seemed to have been his anti-Trump bona fides. He doesn't support President Trump's America First platform which is popular among Republicans and he isn't a social justice warrior that makes him persona non-grata with the Democrats. Even the never-Trump brigade, as few of them that remain, want neocons, not a libertarian leaning Tea Party member.
The only people I saw voting for Amash were the Libertarians who already exist. There aren't that many of them and their ideas are getting less and less popular on both the left and the right. The left in this country is not so much falling down the slippery slope when it comes to things like rights, they are jumping off the cliff at full speed. And I think a lot of people on the right, myself included, have realized libertarian ideals don't work in the real world when there are bad actors out there like the Democratic Party. The free market won't solve problems when there are leftist monopolies with a stranglehold on the news and technology.
Indeed, the left has done a very good job of purging many of my libertarian beliefs. I used to be in favor of police reform but then Black Lives Matter and Antifa showed up and convinced me that if anything the police should have more freedom to hunt them down. I used to think that freedom of speech should be absolute to the point where tech companies could ban whoever they would want but then the left used that as a cudgel to silence anyone who disagreed with them. Indeed, I have a hard time taking the Libertarians seriously as they somehow believe that they won't be lined up against the wall and shot along with all the Republicans if the left in this country gains total control.
This is a fairly huge blow for the Libertarian Party. They had hoped having a well known name like Justin Amash out there might give them a small chance at getting federal funding. Their candidates in the past have been a joke, with Gary Johnson being a pot smoking hippie that didn't know what Aleppo was when the Syria conflict was raging. Amash might have brought them some more credibility with a "serious" candidate, if only in comparison to the clown car that is the 2020 race. With Amash out and no other real candidate showing up I expect that the Libertarian Party will do worse in 2020 than they did in 2016.
With Amash out of the race and no other real third party candidates out there I do think that this race will come down to just President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. The Libertarians and the Green Party will put forth candidates but nobody will take them seriously. And I think there will be fewer people that will vote third party in general. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were unknown factors in 2016 but both Trump and Biden are known and the question for the voters is going to be "do we want the pre-Trump or post-Trump status quo?"
As for Amash himself, I think this is the end of his political career. I can't see him winning his congressional district back. Indeed, I think there is a decent chance that he comes in third in his own race as both the Democrats and the Republicans are putting up candidates to oppose him. The only question is how bad he will lose by and if he drags down the GOP candidate with him, giving a safe GOP seat to the Democrats. Without even knowing who the candidates are yet (Michigan's primary is in August) it's too early to speculate what will happen.
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