Like his third-party forefathers, Gary Johnson gets irate when you call him a spoiler. “We’re giving people a chance to vote for something, as opposed to the lesser of two evils,” the Libertarian presidential nominee shouted last week at a Bloomberg Politics reporter who asked about his invisible path to victory.
In truth, there are only two reasonable outcomes for Johnson's long-shot campaign, neither of which ends with him in the White House. In one scenario, he is no more than a nuisance for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, an afterthought to either major party's march to victory. In the other, Johnson’s campaign alters the contours of the presidential race, drawing votes that would have otherwise gone to Trump or Clinton.
