When Jo Jorgensen won the Libertarian Party (LP) nomination for president, I was mildly optimistic, and maybe even a little excited.  I thought she was the best nominee since at least 2004 when Michael Badnarik ran, and I still believe this today.

My idea of “the best nominee” may be different from other people’s idea.  There is a reason that Gary Johnson was the nominee twice in a row.  Some Libertarians liked the prestige of having a former governor run on the ticket.

For me, I want someone who is going to advance the cause of liberty.  I think there is an almost zero chance of the LP nominee actually winning the election.  This has been true since the party’s existence beginning in the 1970s.

For this reason, there are some Libertarians who believe it is a waste of time to run a presidential candidate until there is a realistic chance of winning.  I disagree with this.

While the establishment media doesn’t pay much attention to third-party candidates, having a Libertarian Party presidential candidate does provide opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.  The main opportunity is outreach.

The LP nominee always gets some attention.  Some of it is negative, and the attention that is given by the establishment outlets is a tiny fraction of what is given to the two big parties. But there is still attention nonetheless.

I became a radical libertarian because of Harry Browne.  My journey is a little different because I didn’t start following Harry Browne until after the 2000 election.  I was mildly familiar with him in 2000.  I think it is because I saw a story on him on Fox News. I just remember someone talking about an ad the Browne campaign had where there was a wrecking ball knocking down the IRS building, representing that Harry Browne wanted to eliminate the IRS and the income tax with it.

I believe the LP candidate should function similar to what Ron Paul did in 2007/ 2008, and again in 2011/ 2012.  You want to teach people the benefits of liberty, and you want to convert people towards libertarianism. That should be the number one goal.  This is also what Harry Browne did in 1996 and 2000.  Jo Jorgensen should know something about this since she was Browne’s running mate in 1996.

The only way to achieve greater liberty in society is by changing public opinion so that more people are sympathetic to the cause of liberty.  It isn’t a matter of getting the most votes, especially when you have no chance of winning.

I understand that some Libertarians care a lot about vote totals because of ballot access. While I don’t completely ignore this argument, I don’t think ballot access will do much good unless we actually have people who are willing to consider the libertarian message.

Of course, vote totals in themselves don’t do much, except they could send a message to others that there are people who are not in line with the status quo.

Even electing Libertarian Party candidates to major offices won’t do much unless the public is behind them.  I remember back in 2007 when some people would suggest that Ron Paul should not talk about foreign policy and should almost pretend to have a different stance than what he actually had.  Luckily for Ron Paul and us, he didn’t much take this advice, especially in the debates.

It doesn’t do much good in tricking someone to vote for a candidate because they are hiding their true views.  This is especially true for a Libertarian candidate.  If the LP presidential candidate moderates his or her views and then gets elected (which won’t happen anyway), what good does it do?  Is that person going to step into office and say, “Just kidding, I really am going to withdraw all troops from overseas tomorrow morning”?

For anyone who moderates their views in the campaign, I wouldn’t trust them to do what is right anyway if elected to office.  Most people go the other way.  Once they get into office, they favor bigger government than what they campaigned on.  They tend to enact the worst policies that were part of their campaign, and at best ignore the things that would have actually brought greater liberty.

Therefore, I believe it is important – vitally important – for the LP presidential candidate to be radical and firm in libertarian principles.

You can deliver your message in a way that resonates with people, but the message should always be about selling more liberty.

Jo’s Messaging

Unfortunately, I have been disappointed in some of the messaging coming from the Jo Jorgensen campaign.  I still believe she is a better candidate than Gary Johnson was, but she is falling well short for me.

I don’t expect a perfect candidate.  I don’t have to agree with every specific thing, and I don’t have to agree with the focus of every message.  But what Jo is doing, and perhaps more importantly, what she is missing, is bad for the libertarian movement.

Jo’s Twitter account has sent out messages pandering to Black Lives Matter, and it really does come across as pandering.  It is fine if she offers some solutions to issues raised, such as ending qualified immunity, ending civil asset forfeiture, and ending the federal war on drugs.  And to be sure, she has done some of this.  But her main message at times seems to be pandering to the political left.

She said, “It is not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti-racist.”  What does this even mean?  And who will hear that message and decide to flip their vote to Jo Jorgensen?  I think that question answers itself.

When it was announced that Kamala Harris would be Biden’s running mate, Jo tweeted out, “I’m glad that Joe Biden has brought another woman into the race; the vice presidency shouldn’t be a boys’ club.  When I think about the millions of girls and young women across America, I think they deserve a voice this year when it comes to the top job in the country.”

Sure, Kamala Harris is an authoritarian, establishment, war hawk, but let’s cheer that she is a woman.  Who is Jo trying to appeal to in this?  Does she think that a bunch of women who are Democrats are all of a sudden going to switch their vote to Jo?  Again, the question answers itself.

I also saw a tweet from Jo’s account talking about abortion and a woman’s right to choose.  I know this is a contentious issue within the libertarian community, but I don’t know why she would send something like this.  Is she trying to turn away anyone who believes that abortion is murder?  As president, she would have no role in this issue anyway, except to push for overturning Roe vs. Wade on constitutional and decentralization grounds.

I have seen suggestions that Jo may not be running her own Twitter account.  If that is the case, then she should have fired whoever is running it a while ago.  She should be controlling the words that are sent out in her name.

For me, even worse than the bad messages are the missed opportunities.

I haven’t followed a lot of what she has said and done, but it is easy to get someone’s general message when you watch them a few times.  She is usually good on the big issues from a libertarian standpoint, but messaging matters.  The focus of your attention matters.

Jo is getting involved in the culture wars.  She is allowing the establishment media to dictate what she talks about instead of creating her own narrative.  It may be impossible to avoid talking about the culture wars, but why put so much focus on it without even really selling a message of liberty?

We still have wars raging on overseas.  If Black Lives Matter, do Foreign Lives Matter?  Do Foreign Black Lives Matter?  Unfortunately, to most Americans, foreign lives really don’t seem to matter.  There are probably at least a thousand times the number of foreigners who die at the hands of U.S. bombs and interventions than there are black Americans who die at the hands of police brutality.  Of course, Jo would never say this because it might upset the people she is trying to pander to. 

While I think war and interventions are always a major issue, there is another major issue that Jo is mostly ignoring at her own peril.  She has been handed an issue in the year 2020 that is a populist issue and one where she can easily sell libertarianism.

The issue is the American middle class.  There are 50 million people who have filed for some kind of unemployment this year.  There are tens of millions of more people who are struggling financially and are scared at what comes next in this crazy world.  There are hundreds of thousands of people who have had to shut down their businesses due to government.  We have seen the debt run up by several trillions of dollars in the matter of months.  We have seen the Federal Reserve balance sheet expand by nearly $3 trillion in the matter of months.  We are hearing about contact tracing and forced vaccination.

In terms of government shutdowns, it is largely due to governors and mayors.  Still, she can speak to it as a human being, and the federal government is largely responsible for pushing the propaganda that resulted in the fear and the subsequent shutdowns.

She should talk about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that were forced to close that may never reopen again.  She should talk about the tens of millions of people who were forced out of their jobs.  She should talk about the anxiety and depression that largely get ignored in place of more virus fear propaganda.

She should speak boldly about libertarian solutions.  She should state that the answer to the economic problems is not more government spending and regulation.  The answer is less.  We need a dramatic reduction of spending from the federal level instead of having these resources consumed and misallocated by politicians and bureaucrats.

She should speak boldly about the damage being done by the Federal Reserve – the nation’s central bank.  She should point out that the monetary inflation will be very harmful and will only serve to enrich the already-wealthy people at the expense of the rest of the American people.

Jo should show empathy for the tens of millions of Americans who are really hurting right now, largely because of government policy.  This is a message that resonates.  It is a message that sells.  And when people are hurting, they are open to hearing a new message.

Instead, Jo is pandering to cultural leftists who won’t vote for her anyway.  If she focuses her message on the struggling American middle class, she may actually convert people towards libertarianism.  She may inadvertently get a few million more votes than she otherwise would have.

If she sold this message and ended up receiving five million votes in the general election, there would be no mistaking these votes as votes against the status quo and votes in favor of smaller government.

There is a real opportunity in 2020 for libertarians to sell a principled message of smaller government, while also exploiting a populist issue.  What normal American doesn’t want more prosperity at this point?

Unfortunately, Jo Jorgensen has largely failed up to this point in selling a strong libertarian message.  So far, it is just another election year of disappointment.

I don’t know whether or not I will vote for Jo at this point, and I am not trying to tell anyone else what to do.  It is still a vote against the establishment and the status quo. But it would be nice to vote for someone for more than a protest vote.  To paraphrase Jo: It is not enough to be passively not an advocate of the establishment; we must be actively anti-establishment.