Juan Williams: Third party chatter opens door for Trump

Donald Trump — meet Kyrsten Sinema.

Sen. Sinema (I-Ariz.) recently departed the Democratic Party to become an independent.

If Trump follows her lead and runs for president as an independent he instantly launches the most consequential third-party candidacy in American history. 

Think about it. 

Polls now show GOP voters increasingly rejecting the disgraced ex-president as the party’s 2024 nominee. 

If Republicans turn on him, is there any doubt the notoriously thin-skinned Trump will soon start threatening a run as an independent to spite his former party?

A third-party platform allows him to stay in the media spotlight and continue to raise money off his shrinking base of gullible supporters. 

It is all about him. Always has been. Always will be. 

And Sinema’s move to independent indicates the time is ripe for high-profile politicians to take a serious look outside the two-party system.

In the midterms, independents made a big difference, preventing any GOP “red wave” by favoring Democrats by four percentage points, according to a voter analysis commissioned by the Associated Press (AP) and Fox News.

The importance of independents was in the spotlight earlier this month as a new term entered the political lexicon: the “Double Haters.”

These are voters who hate the whole political mess and disdain candidates of both major parties, according to a report by Aliza Astrow, a senior political analyst for the center-left think tank Third Way.

In the 2016 presidential race, the “Double Haters” identified by Astrow had a distaste for both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump. 

The haters who went to the polls went with Trump.

As the populist newcomer, he won their vote by 17 percentage points, according to the AP-Fox News Voter Analysis.

But in 2020 the “Double Haters” turned against Trump. They voted for President Biden by 15 percentage points.

But what will “Double Haters” do if Trump is an official third-party candidate? They are sure to hear Trump express their views by damning all politicians as corrupt, especially establishment Republicans in the House and Senate.

If Trump runs as an independent in 2024, he will principally take votes from Republicans. 

But he might also pick off some “Double Haters” who respond to anti-establishment rhetoric.

Thirty years ago, Ross Perot ran a populist third-party presidential campaign and won almost 20 million votes, about 19 percent of all ballots cast. Some conservatives maintain to this day that Republican President George H.W. Bush would have been reelected if not for Perot.

Last week, a CNN poll found most Democratic and Republican voters say they don’t want a rematch between Trump and Biden. 

Earlier this year, a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that 58 percent of voters would consider a moderate, independent candidate if Biden and Trump were the major party nominees in 2024.

An August Economist/YouGov survey found more Americans saying a third party is necessary (39 percent) than saying the Democratic and Republican parties are sufficient (30 percent.) 

This thirst for something new on the ballot opens a path for Trump.

“Anyone backing a third-party candidate should be clear eyed: they are not establishing a new political faction, because their candidate is not going to win,” wrote Astrow of  Third Way. “Rather, they are creating a spoiler who will help elect Donald Trump.”

Even with that warning, there remains an appetite for a candidate willing to curse status quo politics.

One new entry in the sweepstakes for an alternative to the current two-party system is the Forward Party. For now, its focus is on state and local races. The long-term goal is to create a nationwide base that eventually might produce a credible and strong third-party presidential candidate.

Forward was formed earlier this year in the merger of three existing groups. Its launch was announced in July by Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democrats’ 2016 presidential nomination, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R) and former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.).

Sinema, meanwhile, remains the best-known political name pushing third-party candidates.

“It’s no wonder a growing number of Americans are registering as independents,” she wrote in an Arizona Republic column announcing her switch. 

“In Arizona, that number often outpaces those registered with either national party…When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans. 

“That’s why I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington,” she added. 

Sinema is creating a dilemma for Democrats.

Will they endorse her as an independent or risk losing independent-minded voters who voted for her as a Democrat? Either way, they potentially hand votes to any Republican running for the Senate seat.

My Christmas wish is that “Double Haters,” fed up with polarized, do-nothing politics in D.C., wake up to the reality that they risk setting fire to the two-party system without building any alternative structure for change — beyond Trump’s and Sinema’s egomania.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.