Last week, the Democratic National Committee and Kamala Harris’ campaign did something never before done by a Democratic presidential campaign: They released a 30-second TV ad attacking a third-party candidate, specifically the candidate for the Green Party. The Democratic salvo also includes billboards in swing state cities.

“Why are (Donald) Trump’s allies helping her?” the TV ad narrator asks about the Green Party candidate. Because she was “key to Trump’s 2016 victories in battleground states,” is the answer. Meanwhile, an image of the Green Party candidate’s face and gray bob changes to Trump’s. The ad ends with Trump telling his rallygoers, “I like her a lot.” Do you know why? She takes 100 percent of it.”

The ad mentions the Green Party nominee by name. I don’t – because she should be ignored, not paid attention to with an ad buy or any Washington Monthly bounce in Google algorithms.

The battered Democrats have a justification for a frontal attack on the Green nominee, who is in the battleground states in six states (but not Nevada) plus another 32 states for a total of 38, as opposed to Cornel West, who is in only 16 state ballots (although a court has ruled that his votes in Georgia will not be counted). Ralph Nader, the legendary consumer activist and 2000 Green Party presidential candidate, played a spoiler role by passing Florida to Republican candidate George W. Bush. (See my extensive analysis of the Florida figures published in Real clear politics eight years ago.)

And Democrats have proof that confronting third-party candidates works after smothering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential bid. Kennedy, once a progressive icon with a legendary name, abandoned a Democratic primary campaign last year, in the hope to get a bunch of Democratic voters. voters agreed with him, and early polls showed some were willing to follow suit. Then Democratic Party officials bombarded him so fiercely that not only did Kennedy’s support among Democrats disappear, but his newfound conservative support also risked becoming a drag on Trump’s candidacy. Unwilling to help elect Harris, Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump.

But Kennedy, building on his famous name, began his independent bid with unusually high poll numbers and excessive media attention, justifying a muscular effort to drive him out of the race.

In her third presidential run, the Green Party candidate has received little media attention and is barely polling. In the Real clear politics averages nationally and in all battleground states, she averages 1 point – a few tenths of a point give or take. And that’s likely an overestimate of her support, since third-party candidates typically do better in pre-election polls than in actual election results.

In 2020, Howie Hawkins, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, scored 0.8 percentage points in the final Real clear politics national average before it reached 0.2. Similarly, libertarian Jo Jorgensen had a polling average of 1.8 but earned only 1.2 percent of the vote. In 2016, when the current Green nominee made her second bid for the presidency, she achieved a score of 1.9 in Real clear politics, went on to win 1.1 percent of the vote, while Libertarian Gary Johnson, a relatively strong third-party candidate with unusual political bona fides as a former Republican governor of New Mexico, went from 4.7 to 3.3. If the Green candidate is at one percent today, she will probably end up at about half a percent.

I hear you scream, But! But! But! The battlegrounds are even dead! Democrats cannot afford to have even one vote go to a third party candidate!

Sure, but if a third-party candidate is between zero and one in the polls, you can’t assume many of those voters are even available for one of the major party candidates. At that moment you are mainly dealing with people who will never vote for Republicans or Democrats.

But what about 2016, when that Green person you refuse to name tipped three swing states to Trump?!

Despite what the new Democratic Party ad claims, the evidence does not support the claim that the Greens played a spoilery role in 2016.

Two political science professors, Christopher Devine of the University of Dayton and Kyle Kopko of Elizabethtown College, dug into the 2016 election numbers and concluded that if neither the Green nor the Libertarian candidate were on the ballot, approximately 56 percent of Green voters (and 60 percent of Libertarians) would not vote or find another minor party candidate. Another 8 percent of Greens would have sided with Trump. That would leave 36 percent of the Green votes – again only 1.1 percent of the total votes – for Hillary Clinton. According to Devine and Kopko, such a redistribution of the Green Party’s votes would not moved every swing state into the Democratic column except Michigan, and only if the Libertarian had remained on the ballot.

It is much more likely that Nader played a spoiler role in 2000, in part because the margin in Florida 24 years ago (officially only 537 votes) was so much smaller than the margins in the swing state in 2016 (10,704 in Michigan, 22,748 votes). in Wisconsin and 44,292 in Pennsylvania).

Of course, infinitesimal margins can always happen again — especially when the polls are this tight — and that could justify any attempt to warn disgruntled Democrats against outright defection.

But the current Green candidate is suffocating from a lack of oxygen in the media – unlike Nader, who was a household name – until the Democrats took out an ad about her! A press release from the Democratic National Committee claims that CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, Fox News, PBS, The New York Times, Washingtonpostand several swing state media outlets reported on the ad targeting the three-time third-party nominee. That’s probably the most media attention the Greens have gotten this year, and they should be happy with that.

A candidate cannot be a spoiler if voters do not know the candidate exists. The Democrats would have been better off giving the Greens the silent treatment, and that’s why I do.

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