Fox News mentions three possible third party candidates in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election:
Asked if three moderates — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland — would be considered for the potential ticket, Lieberman said they “are very active members of No Labels” and “would be naturals to consider” as he pointed toward their “strong records of bipartisanship and getting things done for the country and for their constituents.”
Fox News
Third party candidates matter. I tend to think Ross Perot almost certainly hurt George Bush in 1992, an outcome I liked, and made a decisive difference against Al Gore (and Lieberman!) in 2000, an outcome I hated. It would be much better to have a runoff or instant runoff system which would allow us to elect a President who actually gets a majority of the votes, but that is not the system we have for the foreseeable future.
Just a quick reminder that Bernie Sanders took the moral high ground in 2000 and chose not to run as an independent, or “pull a Nader” as one could say. That would have almost certainly have hurt Biden.
What would a “moderate” (by U.S. standards, “well-right-of-center” by international standards) candidate mean in 2024? It’s hard to say. Biden is firmly center-right, and I somewhat doubt a self-described moderate candidate would be much to his right, if at all. But that is the reality. The perception is that the Republican party has successfully tarred him as a “liberal” as they have successfully done to every center-right candidate since Clinton at least. So a “moderate” candidate might take voters away from Biden who self-identify as centrists. The “moderate” candidate would almost certainly take votes away from Trump, especially if they managed to attract the religious conservative vote. So after thinking it through, I think Trump could actually come in third in a contest involving a third-party candidate, and there could be a pretty close contest between Biden and the third party. Which would leave the Republican Party wondering how it got left on the outside of the “establishment” looking in. The Democrats could be even more dismissive of the actual center-left which favors better benefits for working people in line with other industrialized countries. Long live the Pro-Business, Pro-War (which is a business after all) Consensus!