Harry Reid is definitely running for re-election. It's official, he wants to remain a United States Senator. Polls show him behind pretty much everybody's crazy aunt. Pundits speculate that his chances increase dramatically if a Teabag type independent joins the race. The theory is that extreme conservatives will divide the vote between said conservative and some traditional Republican, and Senator Reid will slip in. Polls show him getting a not quite plurality when the vote is split. Maybe he could win.

That won't happen. The far right are extremists. They back goofy policies more from anger
than from reason. The sort of government most seem to want is less traditional conservatism than the image of the old confederacy. Their slogans are often self-parodies. Keep government out of Medicare? The policies they crave are idiotic, So it is quite natural to assume they are idiots. That sort of assumption is how elections are lost.

Electoral history teaches us that voters know how to game elections. We can look to famous three way elections of the past. Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948. He got some votes. But his votes came from states where votes would not be divided. The electoral college makes Presidential elections into more than 50 separate elections, one for each state plus territories. Voters in each state will cast their votes in a way that get them the candidate that will be closest to their ideal, among those with a reasonable chance of election. Thurmond won with two sorts of voters: those who thought he had a chance of winning in their state, and those who genuinely did not care who won, if it was not the racist they wanted. Twenty years later, George Wallace got the same results.

In 1980, John Anderson was the choice of many Democrats who still voted for Jimmy Carter. The logic my father found compelling was my suggestion that, although Carter was incompetent, Reagan was possessed by demons. My dad could live with incompetence. A minion of Satan was out of the question. In 1992, voters for Ross Perot genuinely came to hate President George H. W. Bush. They didn't mind either major candidate winning, since the other would lose. So wasting their vote became an option.

Teabaggers will benefit Democrats in the long term, because they remain part of the shrinking Republican base, driving candidates to the absurd right. In the near term, this effect may be overwhelmed by the economy. In Harry Reid's case, a third party candidate will help him only if one of two things occurs. If a substantial number of far right voters genuinely don't care whether Reid or a conservative Republican wins, they will vote for the extremist. Or, if extreme voters come to believe their guy has a reasonable chance of winning, votes could be divided.

Either way, Harry Reid would have to thread a very tiny needle while riding a very large camel. He is more likely to win by persuading voters that he is the best candidate. If the economy improves in time, he may have a chance. If not, he's back to manipulating threads.