Last weekend I watched the speeches of Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Donald J Trump at the Libertarian Party National Convention so you would not have to.
Kennedy correctly pointed out the many assaults on the constitution made by both Trump and Biden. He received a mixed but somewhat positive reception from the delegates. Trump was roundly booed. Particularly when he asked for Libertarians to nominate him or vote for him. His supporters chant of "We want Trump!" was drowned out by a chant of "End the Fed!!" Unaccustomed to giving his anti-Biden stump speech to a hostile crowd, he made his shortest speech ever. Thankfully.
I also watched the interminable seven ballots it took to nominate Chase Oliver as the Libertarian Presidential candidate. The right wing Mises caucus favorite, Michael Rectenwald led in early balloting with Oliver second and Mike Ter Matt third. Rectenwald's chances were probably not helped when he admitted to eating "edibles" and walked out of a press conference because he thought the questions were "boring". According to Semafor"s Dave Weigel, Rectenwald was "unusually off in his public remarks last night." Oliver offered Ter Matt his endorsement for VP in return for Ter Matt's support for Oliver for President. So on the seventh ballot Oliver eked out 49.53% of the delegates' votes to Rectenwald's 44.73%. A few singleton miscellaneous write-ins and none-of-the-above ballots prevented the required 50% majority. That forced the seventh ballot between Oliver and NOTA which Oliver won but with only 60.6% of the vote. Interestingly, if NOTA would have won, the LP would have fielded no 2024 candidate. Probably what the Trump-liking Mises Caucus wanted. Later, Oliver's choice for VP, Mike Ter Matt was nominated after two ballots.
So the always fractious LP survives to live another day. Oliver could be described as a left-libertarian. His libertarian origin story includes confronting riot police at an anti-war protest. He is the candidate who won 2% of the Senate vote in Georgia forcing the race to a run-off which was won by the Democrat. He is perhaps the hardest working LP candidate ever. He's the only LP candidate in history who campaigned in all 50 states to secure the nomination. And he's gay. One of his many challenges will be getting cooperation from the still-Mises Caucus controlled Libertarian National Committee. And, of course, the perennial LP challenge of getting media attention, particularly when there is another better known third party candidate in the race.
The presumptive nominees of both the Republican and Democratic Parties are both evil. For multiple reasons which I don't have time to go into here. Not to mention senile. Oliver is good. And, at age 38, young and decidedly not senile. He's also underselling his predictions of success, saying that getting 2% of the vote is a reasonable goal. My guess is that he will do much better than that. This is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week.