Could Gary Johnson Actually Serve a Useful Purpose?

Normally I view dealing with fringe candidates in a pretty standard way: ignore them because talking about them only gives them legitimacy and the attention they so desperately crave. I continue to feel this way about Jill Stein but in 2016 Gary Johnson might be useful in a different way.

Nationally and in most states third party candidates appear to be pulling more voters from Hillary than Trump (her leads are stronger head to head than they are in the four way matchup).

In a close race, this could matter. Some of the Clinton surrogates (including POTUS and FLOTUS) have begun to pretty explicitly say that a vote for a third party candidate is aiding Trump. I’m not sure that’s the right approach.

Perhaps giving Johnson the attention he craves is EXACTLY what we need to do. Why?

Because Johnson is a right wing conservative. He actually could be a viable alternative to Republicans uneasy about Trump and he’s completely out of sync with anyone who believes what Bernie believed and is not yet sold on Clinton.

So what kind of attention do we give Johson? The ratfucking kind.

Ratfucking, for the uninitiated, is attempting to influence another party’s electoral outcomes, usually in a primary. Claire McCaskill wanted to face Todd Akin in her 2012 Senate race, so she ran ads during the Republican primary attacking Akin for being too conservative.

The result was that a lot of conservatives voted for Akin in the primary, and McCaskill went on to soundly defeat him even as Obama got clobbered in the state.

We saw it in our own Democratic primaries when a Republican group ran a similar type of ad boosting Sanders in Iowa:

When you run an ad during the primaries claiming another party’s candidate is bad for supporting all the things primary voters care about the intention is pretty obvious.

And now we’ve got an opportunity to do something similar. Obviously we’re not in a primary right now but some of the dynamics remain the same.

Highlight some of Johnson’s most conservative stances, using language that appeals to the Republican lizard-brain. Talk about how he is just too conservative.

This makes him a safer landing place for disaffected Trump supporters and hopefully educates liberals who see him as an acceptable alternative to what he’s really about.

This could be a one two punch that drives voters away from Trump while bringing Democratic voters back into the fold.

This is probably not something Clinton herself should ever mention. The campaign should not run ads about Johnson, obviously. Certain surrogates, though (most notably Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) could effectively lay out this message. A PAC somewhere might decide to purchase some YouTube pre-roll or Hulu ads to this effect.

Unfortunately, Johnson himself is not helpful when it comes to making himself a serious alternative to Trump because he’s kind of an idiot. Hopefully he can get some discipline together to make a serious play for conservatives uncomfortable with Trump. There might be ways to help him do just that.