Very smart people can have very dumb ideas. Sir Isaac Newton, arguably "the smartest man who ever lived,"[1] wasted much of his considerable brainpower on the study of alchemy and biblical chronology. Today, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein follows in this tradition with his "Unity 2020" plan to field a pair of center-left and center-right candidates for President and Vice President in this year's election.
As President Trump and his Republican cohorts embolden racists, wreck our environment, make life harder for our LGBT friends, exacerbate wealth inequality, gut the civil service, and horribly mismanage a deadly global pandemic, Professor Weinstein commends you to vote not for Joe Biden, Trump's only credible opponent, but for the “dark horse duo” of already-rejected presidential candidate Andrew Yang and retired Admiral William McRaven, who, according to Weinstein, would "rule" as a sort of team of Roman co-emperors. (A coin toss would decide the mere formality of which of them would run for President and which for Vice President, says Weinstein.)
Bret Weinstein is a smart man, and he anticipates many criticisms of his plan. For instance, he notes correctly that the "lesser of two evils" canard only perpetuates the two-party system. Another oft-heard refrain, that "now is not the time" for a third party, that "the stakes are too high," is deployed every election in defense of the ghastly partisan dichotomy. But what Weinstein is proposing is not a third party—it's a bipartisan unity ticket, which does nothing to fundamentally challenge the two-party system. He calls his plan "innovative," when in reality it is no different from the "No Labels" movement that has supported the likes of political opportunist Mike Bloomberg and maddeningly centrist Joe Lieberman in years past.
Despite fielding two centrist candidates, Weinstein claims that his is "not a centrist proposal." Of course it is. Weinstein is right that compromise is necessary in democracy, but the cult of compromise has gotten us nowhere in this century. Blame, as usual, falls mostly on Republicans, who have eviscerated the organs of compromise in Congress, and who took a scorched-earth approach for the entirety of the Obama-Biden administration. Democrats, including Biden, who sought asymmetric compromise with Republicans, achieved no lasting accomplishments in that time. Just look at Biden’s push for gun control after the Sandy Hook massacre, which went nowhere. Even the Affordable Care Act is now being systematically dismantled by Trump.
I don't agree with winning by any means necessary. If I did, I'd be a Republican. But Weinstein's fetishized approach of calculated centrist half-measures isn't what we need in this moment of desperation for so many Americans. Parties should marshal the people in a spirited, but fair and reasoned fight for principled positions, Bismarck's "art of the possible" be damned. You only find out what is truly possible by vigorously pushing the boundaries of possibility.
A moment ago, I singled out Joe Biden for blame. Weinstein takes a dim view of Biden's ability to rise to this occasion in American politics, as do I. He also points out that Biden supporters are unenthused, and both Biden and Trump are viewed more unfavorably than favorably in opinion polls. He's right. But only an excessively-theoretical mindset could delude a man like Weinstein—who is an evolutionary theorist, after all—into seriously thinking that the Unity 2020 ticket has any chance in hell of winning. Biden simply is the only viable means of harm reduction in this election, and, with Weinstein acknowledging that "the republic is in danger"[2] from Trump, it is the height of irresponsibility for him to undermine Biden's chances.
Weinstein anticipates this objection, too. He claims that the Unity 2020 ticket won't act as a "spoiler" for Trump because it allegedly draws supporters in equal measure from the left and the right. I'm unconvinced. For one thing, both Yang and McRaven are outspoken critics of Trump—Yang already ran for president as a Democrat, and McRaven is a political question mark who has gained notoriety for his criticisms of the President. Neither are likely to win over any voter who's still Republican-leaning at this point. Weinstein is correct, moreover, that 2020 is a battle for the center, and yet he proposes to hollow out the center, drawing moderates and disgruntled Republicans away from Biden, leaving only the extremes of both parties to determine the result of the election. And, as he himself noted, Trump’s base has the edge in enthusiasm over Biden, who has struggled to win over a large contingent of skeptical leftists.
Fortunately for Biden and the country, Weinstein's project is a fool's errand. The Unity 2020 ticket currently enjoys the support of a small tribe of Joe Rogan podcast listeners, a few devotees of the Yang Gang (of which I am formerly a member), and the flamboyant troupe that calls itself the "intellectual dark web," Weinstein among them. This is not exactly the "unprecedented groundswell of the American people"[3] that the Unity 2020 website admits is necessary to get Yang and McRaven on the ballot anywhere.
Weinstein is smart enough, however, to anticipate the failure of his own project; the Unity 2020 plan, you see, contains a "fail-safe"—that is, "if, at a carefully chosen point prior to the general election, the unity ticket has no viable path to the White House, the candidacy will be suspended."[3] That time is now.
[1] https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/01/the_smartest_person_to_have_ever_lived.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptrrDfDGzqs [3] https://www.articlesofunity.com/faq