This could be a game changer for radical libertarians.  Comedian and podcaster Dave Smith appeared on Joe Rogan’s show where he hinted at possibly running for president in 2024.

On his own show, Dave came out and said that he was considering a run for the presidency on the Libertarian Party (LP) ticket for 2024.  He said he would only do it if he saw the support.  I took this to mean that he wants his loyal listeners to join the LP, to elect Angela McArdle as the next chairperson of the LP national committee, and then to get out to the national convention in 2024 to support a Dave Smith candidacy.

The LP does not run like the Democrats and Republicans.  The presidential and vice presidential nominees are chosen (separately) at the convention.  If you have just a few hundred loyal followers who are willing to be active, then you can secure the nomination.

Although Jo Jorgensen’s candidacy was somewhat disappointing in 2020, I still think she was a step in the right direction.  She was something of a compromise candidate between the radicals and the pragmatics.  Even if her campaign wasn’t great, it did seem to be a step away from the Johnson/ Weld ticket of 2016.

I believe that the main purpose of having a presidential candidate for the LP is one of education.  It is a platform for the person to use to spread the message of liberty.  This means you need someone who is actually willing to sell a principled libertarian message, and you need someone who is good at selling the message.  Dave wants to return to the days of Harry Browne and Ron Paul.

While I am excited at this prospect, I hope Dave knows what he is getting in to.  He has a wife and kid, with another kid on the way.  If he ever gains any traction, the claws are going to come out.  It will be brutal enough just going through the LP nomination process.  If he gains traction nationally with his message, I can’t imagine what the establishment will do.

Maybe they’ll try to ignore him, but what happens if he starts showing up with significant percentages in the polls?  We all know what they did to Donald Trump just because he dared to question the empire at times.  I can’t imagine what they would do to someone who has a consistent message of being anti war and pro liberty.

I am not naïve as to the prospects of a third-party candidate getting elected, let alone a radical libertarian.  At the same time, I think a Dave Smith candidacy on the national ticket could have a deep and lasting impact on this world.

A Real Libertarian with a Real Message

One of the things Dave addressed on his podcast is that his enemies would be digging up all of the things he has said over the years.  Dave is a comedian.  He is a podcaster.  He is politically incorrect.  He has a foul mouth and tells off-color jokes.

He already knows his strategy.  As soon as someone points out something “bad” he said in the past, Dave will say that the U.S. government has been dropping bombs on Syria and starving children in Yemen (or something to that effect).  He will immediately turn it around.  “Ok, so I said something that was offensive.  You know what’s really offensive?  Killing innocent children in foreign countries.  Why aren’t you as mad at the people doing that?  That’s odd.”

He can turn it around every single time that he is able to respond.  Of course, if the establishment media is forced to deal with him, they will relentlessly attack him, much like they did with Trump.  But if anyone sneaks outside of the establishment media to hear what Dave is actually saying, they will hear the brutal truth.

Dave is a great salesman for liberty.  He is strong and principled without coming across as overbearing.  It helps that he can add humor when appropriate.  He has a somewhat populist message at times while still sticking to radical libertarian ideas.

He has been on Joe Rogan’s show something like six times now.  I believe four of them were with just Dave alone.  Joe Rogan has an audience in the millions.  The average Rogan podcast draws more viewers and listeners than MSNBC or CNN would draw on an ordinary primetime show.

Rogan obviously likes Dave.  I think he is somewhat sympathetic to his ideas.  This may be hard to believe because Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.  But that’s because Bernie was on Rogan’s show.  I believe Tulsi Gabbard was the only other candidate to appear.  I don’t think Bernie is genuine, but I can see where he might come across as genuine, even if you don’t agree with him on some things.  Rogan wasn’t endorsing Bernie because he wants socialism.  He was endorsing Bernie because he was a thumb in the eye of the establishment.

I think Rogan would likely endorse Dave Smith.  That would be millions of people influenced right there.  They would listen to Dave and hear his message.  He would likely convert a certain percentage of these people to libertarians.  Another decent percentage would probably disagree with him on some things but still vote for him anyway because of genuineness.

Let’s also consider that there hasn’t really been a radical libertarian on the presidential ballot in a long time.  The Constitution Party has had some decent candidates in some prior elections, but that is about it.  The LP hasn’t had anyone decent for a long time.  They haven’t had anyone decent since 2007, which is a key period of time.  That is when Ron Paul started his first Republican presidential campaign and managed to convert hundreds of thousands of people towards libertarianism.

We don’t know how a radical libertarian will do on the ballot in a general election.  There are many people who supported Ron Paul who have had nowhere to go.  Some went to Donald Trump just because he rattled the establishment.  Some went to the LP, but I don’t think a lot did.  Some just went back into hiding.

By the time 2024 comes around, a dozen years will have passed since Ron Paul’s last presidential campaign in 2012.  There were people who were 10 years old who will then be 22 years old.  They may not have been exposed to this message yet.

If Ron DeSantis is the Republican nominee in 2024, I think that could take a little steam away from Dave Smith.  DeSantis, while originally imposing a lockdown, opened up Florida in September 2020 when most of the rest of the country was still in partial shutdown mode.  DeSantis deserves some credit for this, at least compared to most other politicians.  I think DeSantis could be a disaster as president, especially when it comes to foreign policy, but I really don’t know.

If the Republican nominee is a bit more conventional, or even if it is Donald Trump, I think Dave Smith could get the ear of a lot of disaffected voters (or non voters).  We need someone who is willing to stand up and tell the truth, and to tell it in a way that sells.

I don’t think Dave’s past will hurt him much.  It may actually help him because people will see him as a real person. They won’t care if he used the F-word a million times or if he told jokes that offended the woke crowd.

Again, I don’t expect Dave Smith to win the presidency in 2024.  If he got anywhere close, I’m afraid what the establishment would do to him.  But let’s imagine that he gets 10 million votes and causes a major stir.  Let’s say that half of those people listen to the radical libertarian message, and it sticks with them.  We could change the world.

The amount of government (i.e., the state) that we get is almost directly proportional to what public opinion will allow.  The reason that the U.S. is more open than Canada right now isn’t because Biden is better than Trudeau.  It’s because Americans stopped tolerating the lockdowns.

As Etienne de la Boetie pointed out many hundreds of years ago, the state relies on the consent of the governed.  Without that consent, it crumbles.  If 5 million people turn into radical libertarians, while another 20 million turn into people with libertarian sympathies, it could radically transform the country and the world.

It is not really the elections that count.  They are more of an effect than a cause.  The key is to spread the message of liberty.  The more hearts and minds that are changed towards living in a free society, the more free of a society we will get.  This can only be done by spreading the message of liberty by convincing others.  Dave Smith may get a great opportunity to spread the message of liberty in 2024 to a wide audience.