Although the results of the 2020 election are not final, it is not too early to assess the Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen campaign representing the Libertarian Party (LP).

One person’s success is another person’s failure.  In the case of a long-shot presidential campaign, I don’t think not winning, by itself, can reasonably be called a failure.  Everyone, including Jo Jorgensen, knew she was not going to be elected president.

While the final numbers aren’t in yet, Jorgensen looks to have received a little over 1% of the total vote. In some states, her total did fall below 1%.  Since the turnout was high, her vote total will be around 1.8 million.  This is the second strongest finish for an LP candidate in terms of vote totals, second only to Gary Johnson in 2016.

This is well short of the nearly 4.5 million votes received by Johnson in 2016.  Unlike some other libertarians, I don’t consider the 2016 LP campaign to be a success.  It was a success if you are just trying to get a lot of votes.  But I consider success to be converting others towards libertarianism, or to be moving the needle towards liberty in some way.

I don’t think there were many libertarians created in 2016 because of the Johnson/ Weld ticket. I did hear one person once on a podcast say he found libertarianism because of Gary Johnson, so I can’t say he converted nobody.

Of course, people have different definitions of what it means to be a libertarian too.  I’m sure Johnson created a few “libertarians” who consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I have come to despise that definition.

I don’t know that I have the most perfect and precise definition of what it means to be a libertarian, but I think the LP pledge does a pretty good job of it.  It says, “I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.”

Unfortunately, after all is said and done, I doubt that Jorgensen and Cohen moved the needle much towards liberty.

I have been somewhat critical of both of them.  I think they are both decent people.  And to be sure, I believe this was the best LP ticket since at least 2004.  But after getting mildly excited after the nominating convention, it all went out the window quickly.

2020 – A Different Kind of Year

I think, in many ways, this was a tough year to run.  A large portion of the electorate loves Donald Trump.  A large portion of the electorate hates Donald Trump. And while Trump is far from libertarian on most issues, he is somewhat anti establishment in his rhetoric. Therefore, I think it would have been tough for Jorgensen to get over 2% no matter what she did.

I believe this also made it tough to get media appearances.  But she didn’t get zero coverage either.  She was on Kennedy’s show on Fox Business. She was on some podcasts that have relatively big audiences.  But the few times I saw her or listened to her, I just don’t think she had a big impact.  She was the opposite of Donald Trump, in a bad way.  She wasn’t bold.  She wasn’t confident.  She certainly didn’t come across as a fighter.  And if you are going to have a personality like this while running for president, then you sure better be principled and bold with your policy proposals.

While 2020 is a tough setup in many ways, it was easy in others.  There have been riots across the country in big cities at the same time that people and businesses have been locked down due to the hysteria over a virus.

There were tens of millions of people forced out of work.  A lot of those people are back to work, but some of them aren’t. And some of them are back to work at lower pay.  Meanwhile, there are tens of thousands of businesses that are closed down for good.  They couldn’t survive months of being forced to shut down.  Worse, they didn’t know if and when they would be allowed to continue with business as usual, meaning business as usual prior to March 2020.

You can’t get an easier libertarian and populist issue at the same time.  It is also current.  It has been the number one issue for most people since March.

Now, one could argue that it isn’t a federal government issue because it was governors and mayors who officially shut things down.  But, the recommendations were coming out of Washington DC.  And Biden is still talking about locking things down and having a national mask mandate.

Jorgensen and Cohen should have been hitting hard on this issue saying that we need to defend private property and voluntary association.  It should have been issue number one in every single interview.  If the subject wasn’t brought up by the interviewer, then change the subject in your answer. The unemployed and the small business owners need a voice.  Jorgensen could have been that voice.  She could have converted thousands of small business owners towards libertarianism for life.  These people must despise the government for ruining their livelihood and their dreams.  They need an advocate.

Instead, they had to settle on Trump.  Trump was wishy-washy on the whole thing.  He got duped into the whole coronavirus hysteria in March and was never able to fully recover.  By the end of the campaign, Trump was at least saying that we need to move on and not let the cure be worse than the disease.  It was better than Biden who was still threatening more lockdowns. I believe this was a giant mistake by the Jorgensen campaign and the LP for not hammering away at this important issue.

I went through Jorgensen’s Twitter feed a couple of times just to see what she was saying (or whoever was running her Twitter account).  I agreed with most of what was being said, although I didn’t always agree with the emphasis on certain things.

I believe the biggest blunder, which happened not that long after the nomination, was Jorgensen (and to a lesser extent, Spike Cohen) trying to appease the far left.  She was attending Black Lives Matter (BLM) rallies.  As I joked after the election results were coming in, I guess Jo didn’t reach out to BLM hard enough.

There was one particularly bad tweet where Jorgensen said, “It is not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti racist.”

With that, she probably lost a few hundred thousand votes.  I doubt if this gained her one vote from the left, but it alienated a lot of libertarians who were tired of the rioting and the over exaggerations of systemic racism.

Jorgensen should have been reaching out to Ron Paul-type people.  I should have been an easy vote for her, but she lost my vote. I still considered it at the end, but I didn’t want to reward her terrible campaigning and her mostly terrible message.

If she is that weak in a campaign and feels the need to pander to the social justice warriors, then I can’t imagine how weak she would be as a president.  She would end up being less anti establishment than Trump.  She probably would have folded over to the military-industrial complex in a heartbeat.  I don’t know this for sure, but I get that sense.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with making some common ground with some of the protesters.  Sure, preach the LP message of ending the federal war on drugs.  But it was ridiculous to do what seemed like pandering with the expectation of winning any of these people over.

Spoiler

There have been articles since Election Day blaming the LP for giving us Biden or for giving us a toss-up in the Senate.  The Jorgensen vote total covered the spread in several states.  In other words, if all of the Jorgensen voters had voted for Trump instead, then Trump would have won certain states that he otherwise may not.

I don’t think the LP should be criticized for this, but I also don’t think the LP should brag about it.

If the LP brags about this, it just makes Trump Republicans madder.  They will be less likely to ever consider the LP in the future when someone other than Trump is running.

At the same time, it isn’t fair to blame the LP for what happened.  Most people who voted LP wouldn’t have voted for Trump or Biden (Republican or Democrat).  And for those who would have, it would have been split.  I can’t even tell you if Trump or Biden would have benefitted if there had been no LP candidates.

The biggest accusation is coming out of Georgia, where the LP candidate for Senate got about 2% of the vote.  One of the Republicans just missed the 50% threshold, which means there will be a run-off.  It may not matter in the end though. Anyway, if most of those LP voters were supposed to go Republican, then the Republican in the race shouldn’t have any problem winning in the run-off election.

Education

I think it is good to have an LP.  Not all libertarians feel this way.  There was progress made this year.  Again, I believe Jorgensen/ Cohen was the best ticket since at least 2004. Maybe we can get a more radical ticket with a better message in 2024.

I believe the main purpose of the LP should be education.  We have to change hearts and minds.  That is the only way to move towards liberty. Donald Trump has done some good in educating others, sometimes inadvertently.  He has helped expose the evil deep state.  He has also shifted the Republican Party on foreign policy to being less interventionist than before.

Assuming Trump has to step down in January, the LP should be reaching out to Trump supporters. It won’t be easy, but I think it would be easier than trying to recruit anti Trump Democrats.

I know many in the LP say that the LP needs to win political offices.  They say that you can only change things by electing liberty candidates to office.  But I believe they are putting the cart before the horse.

You have to convert people to libertarianism first.  Otherwise, it will do no good.  Ron Paul in 2007/ 2008, and again in 2011/2012, converted more people than anyone else, probably ever.  Harry Browne recruited many people in his LP campaigns in 1996 and 2000. I actually became a radical libertarian because of Harry Browne.  But I didn’t start following him closely until after his 2000 campaign.

We aren’t going to achieve greater liberty by putting the “right” people into office except to the extent that they will help spread the word.  You have to have a strong base of support from the people. Even a libertarian president would find it difficult to enact bold and lasting change without the consent of the people.

With this standard in mind, I give low ratings overall to the Jorgensen/ Cohen campaign of 2020. I don’t think they changed a lot of hearts and minds.  They were better than the last three LP tickets though, which probably just moved us backwards.

You can see that most of the people who voted for Johnson in 2016 did not go on to vote for Jorgensen. There was no move towards liberty by Johnson/ Weld.  They received a lot of votes by LP standards, but there wasn’t much else to show for it.

I hope that people in the LP learn this lesson.  Unfortunately, I fear the opposite will be learned.  Some will say that Jorgensen/ Cohen didn’t do as well because they weren’t high profile enough.  Therefore, they’ll conclude that we need to recruit former politicians, even if they don’t follow all of the libertarian principles.

I don’t care about electing the “right” people.  I don’t care about having a respectable showing.  I don’t care about candidates who garner media attention, unless they are going to preach a principled libertarian message.  We need to educate others on the benefits of liberty.  Only then can we make strides towards a more libertarian society.