Could Amash do better? That brings us to the second consideration, namely that Amash will play spoiler, a claim already being made in connection to both presumptive major party nominees. At never-Trump conservative site The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller use vote data from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2016 to argue Amash could deliver the election to Trump. Meanwhile, at Spectator USA, Daniel McCarthy claims Amash will function as a Joe Biden surrogate “because he can be trusted to bash Trump more than Biden.”

I find The Bulwark’s case more convincing than the Spectator’s (some initial polling sees Amash narrowing Biden’s Michigan lead by 6 points), but even that is no certain thing (anti-Trump social conservatives favored Hillary Clinton over Johnson last time by a surprisingly large margin). My own suspicion is having Trump in the race creates a unique polarization and partisanship that wouldn’t be duplicated in a Trump-free cycle like 2024. Here in Minnesota, I’m getting ads warning the United States of America literally will not survive as a country if Trump is re-elected. If that’s the tenor of this election, the electorate may prove stubbornly spoiler-resistant — which is to say, stubbornly disinterested in getting the Libertarian nominee to the 5 or 15 percent goals, let alone outright victory.