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CHICAGO: Former Chicago Congressman Bill Lipinski, who represented one of the largest concentrations of Arab and Muslim voters in the US, argued that American voters should not take the role of third-party candidates for granted.
A conservative Democrat who represented the third and later redistricted fifth congressional district in Chicago and the suburbs, Lipinski said it is extremely difficult for a third-party candidate to win, but they can force a presidential election into unforeseen results.
In an interview on The Ray Hanania Radio Show, to be broadcast Thursday Sept. 5, Lipinski said historically third-party candidates have denied victory to several major party candidates.
At least four instances in past elections were decided by the presence of popular third-party candidates who were also running for president. They include: Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 undermining the re-election of President William Howard Taft; Ross Perot undermining the re-election of George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton in 1992; Ralph Nader undermining the election of Al Gore to George W. Bush in 2000; and Dr. Jill Stein undermining the election of Hillary Clinton to Donald J. Trump in 2016.
Given today’s polarized, emotion-driven politics, Lipinski argued that the American election system should be changed to accommodate third-party candidates.
“At times I would like to see a third party. There are other times when I think two parties. In another time in another place, two parties were sufficient. Today, I don’t believe that’s the case. Today, I would really like to see a third party because, unfortunately, the Republicans are controlled to a great extent nowadays by their extreme right wing, the Democrats, by their extreme left wing. That’s not good for the parties, I don’t think. Nor is it good for the country,” Lipinski said, noting that the moderates or centrists are “blocked out” by both parties.
Stein is currently running with the Green Party, and is attracting significant votes from Democratic minority constituencies of Arabs, Muslims and progressives who are angry with the reluctance of Democrat candidate Kamala Harris to force Israel’s government to end its “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Lipinski blamed the polarization and heightened voter emotion on former President Donald Trump, saying he shifted politics from issues to personalities.
He said that the influence of third-party candidates “can’t be taken for granted” in the election and that there is a misconception among many that the presidential election is decided by who gets the largest “popular vote.”
“This is not a democracy, it’s a republic. Now there is a slight difference between those two, but there is a difference. If no candidate receives the 270 votes necessary, electoral votes, that is, to be elected president, that it goes into the House of Representatives,” Lipinski said, noting that a third-party candidate has never won the election but could affect an election significantly.
Democracy, according to Mariam Webster dictionary, means the direct influence of the people (voters) in the selection of their government, while “Republic” means a process in which government decides what’s in the best interests of the people.
“In 2000, Al Gore would have been the president of the United States if he had won Florida, and he would’ve won Florida if the Green Party had not taken over 100,000 votes.”
American presidential elections are decided instead by the Electoral College Vote which is a system of 538 votes divided among each of the country’s 50 states plus Washington D.C., based on their voter population size. To win the presidency, a candidate must win at least 270 ECV to become president. Lipinski noted that in at least two elections, the losing candidate won the popular vote in the country, but lost the ECV. Those were in 2000 with Gore losing to Bush and in 2016 with Hillary Clinton losing to Trump.
In 2000, Bush won the election by winning the larger number of ECV, Lipinski noted. But Bush received more than 500,000 votes fewer than Gore. Bush had 50,455,156 or 47.87 percent of the total votes and Gore received 50,992,335, which was 48.38 percent. Nader, with the Green party, won 2,882,897 votes in the election causing Gore to lose Florida’s ECV to Bush.
Lipinski said he could not predict who will win the election, and acknowledged that Stein’s candidacy will have an effect, mainly on the Democratic party.
“She praises Joe (Biden) in a general way, but on specific issues. She’s starting to distance herself somewhat from him … She is much more today a centrist candidate than she has ever been before,” Lipinski said, noting Biden was more of a far left “progressive” during this election than he was in the past 40 as a “centrist Democrat” US Senator.
“What has happened with Harris. She’s been a progressive Democrat, going back to when she was the state’s attorney in San Francisco County, and then she was attorney general in California, a US senator. She was very progressive, very much a progressive Democrat. Now that she’s the Democratic nominee for president, she is slowly marching towards the center. It just goes to show you how much real consistency political people in this country have at the present time. Whatever it takes. That is their motto.”
Lipinski acknowledged there was more cooperation between the Republican and Democratic parties in the past, but we don’t see much of that today.
“Once the election is over, we need to have cooperation between the two parties “Republican and Democratic),” Lipinski said, noting Clinton and Gingrich coming together to balance the budget which was the first time since the Second World War.
Lipinski said that in the event that no candidate receives 270 ECV, the contest would go to the US House of Representatives where each of the country’s 50 states would get one vote based on which party had the most members in Congress. The Senate would decide the vice presidential contest in a different way, with each senator casting a vote.
You can listen to the entire interview with former Congressman Bill Lipinski on Thursday Sept. 5 at 5 p.m. EST and again on Monday Sept. 9 on WNZK AM 690 radio in Michigan, or by going online at https://ArabNews.com/RayRadioShow.