History shows that independent candidacies tend to hurt the incumbent party. Wallace hurt Humphrey, although he was “supposed” to hurt Nixon. Anderson damaged Carter. Perot may have damaged Bush, but Bush shot himself in the foot. (Some studies say he damaged Clinton as much as Bush, or almost as much.)
There seems to be a paranoia among Republibots that any independent automatically hurts the Republicans. the historical record does not bear that out.
You can’t just look at the historical trends relative to the incumbent party. You end up with correlation, but not necessarily causation.
A third party run hurts the candidate that the third party draws votes from. Nader hurt Gore not because Gore happened to be the incumbent, but because he drew in voters that were never going to vote for Bush but we’re wiiling, in a two candidate race, to hold their noses and vote for Gore.
Webb is running as a centrist. The Democrats have, since 2000 and Nader, shown an ability to really lock down and hold their voters together. And to maximize turnout within the left half of their own party.
So logically Webb draws centrists who would vote for the Republican.
What’s needed is to get Sanders to run third party. He’d draw exclusively from the Dem nominee’s bucket.
it’s not paranoia when the person who would be independent is basically right wing. The other word you used I don’t know what it means but I noticed that people on this board like to insult Republicans which is like eating their own. I don’t get it