Prior to the last presidential election, the U.S. had a president who was against foreign entanglements, Libertarian Party Platform plank 3.3.  This president had also had, for example, supported and signed a criminal justice reform act (plank 1.7), reduced government regulation (plank 2.8), made major steps toward peaceful relationships in the Middle East (plank 3.3), and encouraged private domestic energy production (plank 2.3).  I could certainly go on, but the point that President Trump was fairly libertarian in many of his actual policies seems made to me. 

Now, was President Trump an ideal Libertarian?  Of course not.  He was and is not a free trader, and he signed laws that ran up additional government debt.  Still, President Trump was a known quantity and fairly libertarian in 2020.  Yet the Libertarian Party nominated its own unknown candidate for president.  Its nominee, like President Trump, was likely not as pure a follower of every single plank in the Libertarian Party Platform as some true believers in the party would have liked.

What the Libertarian Party accomplished in 2020 was giving us government vaccine mandates, growing foreign entanglements in a regional European war, huge government deficits, and growing inflation.  How did the Libertarian party accomplish this?  In three states — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — the Libertarian vote total was 4.9, 5.3, and 1.9, respectively, times the Democrat margin in those states.  (One is welcome to argue and maybe would be right that the Democrats would have "found" more votes in those states had Libertarian voters cast their votes for President Trump, but for the sake of this discussion, I am ignoring that.)

Had President Trump won those three states, he would have won 37 more electoral votes for a total of 269.  Barring faithless electors, the Electoral College would have ended up tied at 269 electoral votes for each candidate, and the election would have gone to the House of Representatives.  In this case each state delegation has 1 vote for a total of 50 votes.  At the time, the GOP had a majority in 27 state delegations, the Democrats had a majority in 20 state delegations, and 3 state delegations were evenly split.  Barring a collective decision to destroy their own party by a number of Republicans in Congress, President Trump would have been re-elected.

So, Libertarians — particularly Libertarians in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — two-plus years into the Biden administration, are you happy?  Are you satisfied with your 2020 presidential vote, or do you have regrets?  Is the unrestricted immigration (Libertarian Party Platform plank 3.4) worth giving up personal liberty (plank 1.1) and voting in vaccine mandates?  Is immigration worth more government interference in the market?  Is immigration worth more racial division?  Is immigration worth a larger, more oppressive government?  Is immigration worth a government seeking to and pressuring private businesses to shut down free speech?  Is there anything you are getting as a Libertarian from the Biden administration other than unrestricted immigration?  I could not find a Libertarian Party Platform plank that said "no mean tweets."

James L. Swofford is a professor of economics in the Department of Economics, Finance, and Real Estate at the University of South Alabama.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.