I understand why the cranks do it. They are cranks, and cranks run for President. It’s what they do.
I also understand why far right and far left candidates run. It’s to pull the party in a certain direction.
What I don’t understand is mainstream officeholders who aren’t all that different from the frontrunners but no one cares about them. Candidates like Chris Dodd in 2008, Ruben Askew in 1988, Alexander Haig in 1988, Tommy Thompson in 2012. Did they just figure their resumes would win them support? Were they counting on the frontrunners to be too scandal-prone? Did they figure that they might as well give it a go, nothing to lose?
Some are doing it for the publicity. Others are hoping to use momentum gained for a future successful run. Still others think that they can leverage their successes into being part of a future administration. And then there are the true believers, who actually think they can win despite the political forecasts/realities.
And sometimes they do…see Obama, Barack Hussian and Trump, Donald John.
Some politicians probably enjoy it, and they really have nothing to lose. They raise money and spend it and spend some time traveling and in front of cameras.
I’m sure in some circles “former Presidential Candidate” adds quite an air of gravitas to someone.
I’ve wondered the same thing about Australian elections though - our ballot papers, especially for Commonwealth elections, are literally full of people who are quite clearly wasting everyone’s time and money (theirs included). I’ve never worked out why they do it.
There’s also a lot of money to be made in doing it. Money donated to a PAC is used to buy a bunch of the candidates books as promotional material. Boom, payday.
This is most of it, but add on that some people run because they have a specific agenda, sometimes even just a single issue that they want to promote. The press behaves differently when someone is running for President, than they do when the same person is just standing at a podium somewhere, ranting.
I forget who it was now, but at least one very famous person ran for president within the last twenty years, and OPENLY said that all they wanted was for one issue to become a part of the election’s list of top concerns.
For these kinds of candidates, the reality that they can’t win doesn’t matter, because they aren’t in it to win; they are in it to have a louder voice during the campaign, to force the OTHER potentially successful candidates to address their concerns.
Yeah, some guys are extraordinary and can jump right in at the front of the line (see: Barack Obama), but lots of folks have to start at the bottom and work their way up.
Look, in 1992 there appeared to be a LOT of outstanding candidates for the Democratic nomination. Just off the top of my head, there was…
Mario Cuomo
Sam Nunn
Lloyd Bentsen
Al Gore
Dick Gephardt
Lee Iacocca
Chuck Robb
Bill Bradley
Paul Simon
Maybe others I’m not thinking of. Regardless, not a bad list of possible candidates, right? EVERY one of them chickened out. That’s because right after the Gulf War, George HW Bush had astronomical approval ratings and he looked unbeatable. ALl the Democrats’ top contenders said, “Forget it, I’ll run against Quayle in 1996.”
There was one little known Southern governor who had the cojones to take a chance. And it paid off!
It’s always risky to run for President, and MOST candidates are going to fail. But if you have ANY Presidential ambitions, better to run now than later, better to try too soon than too late.
Also networks are not allowed to refuse political ads because they are wrong or ought to require warnings for being visually disturbing. There was a candidate in Florida (?, I may be mis-remembering) who was quite up-front about the fact he was running for a senate seat only because he was anti-abortion and his ads featured images of bloody fetuses you don’t normally see on television.
This question strikes me as sort of like asking “Why run a marathon if you have no chance of winning?” Sure, some of the people that have no chance might really believe they have a chance, but I think there’s plenty of other reasons, many of which are listed here.
As someone who often votes third party, for president and local races, I don’t hold any illusions that these candidates will win and, other than them saying as much because they pretty much have to, I don’t think many of them think they have a realistic shot either. I think they’re sometimes motivated by something as simple as thinking the major candidates or the major parties and their platforms just suck.
Take 2016 for example, there were huge swaths of people who were unhappy with both major candidates. Sure, many of those people ended up just holding their noses and voting for whoever they perceived as less offensive between the Clinton and Trump , but many put their votes elsewhere or at least considered it, which put candidates like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in positions where their message could be better heard. Again, even as someone who regularly votes third party, and so actively seeks out this stuff, I noticed FAR more mainstream attention, particularly on these two. So, for better or worse, their messages about what should be done differently and what’s wrong with the candidates and parties and system as they stood reached a wider audience. The only other time I recall a third party candidate getting that kind of attention was Perot, but I was too young to vote.
Or another less known election, in the Virginia Gubernatorial election, it was a similar situation, in that both the Democratic and Republican candidates were highly unpopular and the Libertarian candidate did unexpectedly well as a result, no where close to winning, but it helped to draw attention to the him and Libertarian party.
But even that aside, I think it’s often a calculated career move. Maybe they know they’ll never win the nomination, but they want to test the water for a future run in a few cycles to how they do nationally or even just get their name out there. Or maybe they’re trying to get taken seriously enough to get an appointment or write a book or become a political analyst or lobbyist after they leave their current position.
Some do it because they’re political animals at the core. Ex-Gov. Harold Stassen, who was actually a reasonable and likeable sort of fellow, ran for President every four years essentially as a retirement hobby.
I think a lot of the career political animals such as Dodd or Askew are really running for VP, even though they’ll deny it. Being VP can lead to becoming presidentC and if not, a nice job afterwards and endless money on the speaking circuit.
Admittedly Al Haig 1988 made no sense, Dole and Bush both had strong military and foreign policy credentials and weren’t going to pick a nutty general as VP
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