The LP will fail to make a dent in presidential politics again this cycle. I guarantee it. Here’s why.
First, I know my haters will say “what do you know? you didn’t even get any tokens in 2020”. Fair question. Well let’s start with WHY I was running.
Did I think I was trying to win?
No. In fact, I stood by John McAfee while working on his campaign when he said “let us not delude ourselves into thinking we can win”. I entered the race for one reason. To run alternate strategies and convince the LP to do things differently. It was the only way, because everyone in the LP seems to be doing their own thing. Some will blindly support the people at the top, but the people at the top often have no real strategy. They pull together little bits and pieces of things that are common in political campaigning, but with no real overarching strategy. It’s why the entire party echoes with “we just need better messaging.” Yes, the LP has plenty of problems, but this is not accurante.
My campaign was both a success and a failure. If you don’t see the success, you don’t know what the campaign was about. During the campaign, I reached millions using the “statistically worst message” of “taxation is theft”. Many people started out hating me, but with enough reptition of my messaging and dialogue with my enemies, I changed socialists to ancaps and gained the support of libertarians who initially hated my campaign, my message and my appearance. I spent very little time with libertarians because i didn’t care about their votes. I wasn’t trying to win. I was trying to get the LP out of their echo chamber. I was trying to prove that there was a way to pull votes from the old parties. And I did.
I took the results of this to libertarians. The most I got was “that’s interesting, but screw those people from those other parties.” That’s a losing mentality. They make up over 200 million voters and you think you are going to win without them? You think it’s easier to convince the other 40% of non-voters, people who don’t believe in the system, to get out and vote? That is the strategy that has been in place for decades and has never worked.
Ironically, I hear libertarians all the time saying “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
My only interest in the LP with my campaign was to get them to organize debates for two years before their convention. Some states participated but only during their already planned conventions. National refused to play any part. “That’s not our job.” and “We don’t have the resources.” This is despite the fact that donors spent over $100k to ensure that 3L Productions, a libertarian company that was working underpaid and unappreciated, specifically to make these debates happen. The LP refused to promote any of it. National refused to even share content posted by the states, though there may have been one or two exceptions. Meanwhile, they gave plenty of attention to Trump’s campaign.
Even worse, my campaign was forced to file with the FEC in order to appear in some of the debates, even though it was pointed out that there was absolutely no legal requirement to do so. The LP was acting as an enforcement arm of the state in a situation where there were no legal consequences not to comply. I was told that if I did not comply and file with the state, I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a candidate. Why not? For standing up against the state and refusing to comply with unlawful orders? So now being a good libertarian means being a bad candidate? I complied to be a part of these debates. Though I was never working to win votes for the nomination. I was working to convince the LP to fight harder.
The purpose of a political party is to create collective support for political power. That is done by getting people elected. People are elected by votes. How do you expect to get people elected who nobody has ever heard of. You need votes and votes don’t come without exposure. Presidential debates by the big 2 parties are not there for the public to pick their candidate. These are designed specifically with the intent to collectively draw votes to the party as a whole. Usually the winner is already known by party insiders and all of the debates are organized by the same committee. This creates not just a single day of debates but the illusion of one single, month long process of narrowing down the candidates from a large group to just a few. This is all done behind the scenes without any votes by the public. It is unseen by most, but it is a single strategy that is implemented from start to finish. It takes a lot of money and people to make it happen, and I know the LP does not have those resources. But their inability to use the resources that they have to even try to put something together is enough to see that the party still lacks the leadership that is needed to break 5% in a major national election.
I mentioned the failure of my campaign earlier. I did fail. I failed to convince the leadership of the LP to use their resources to help promote their candidates.
