So last night we got the third Republican debate and it wasn't even worth taking notes for. I kept thinking to myself that it was the most pointless exercise in politics around, really. To be fair, with fewer candidates on the stage, they each got plenty of screen time to talk, there were only one or two dustups where people talked over each other (when Vivek Ramaswamy tried to bully Nikki Haley, to no avail), and the subjects they discussed were indeed substantive ones. It was a real presidential debate, in other words -- nowhere near as much of a circus sideshow as the previous two.

But the most notable aspect of it was the sheer meaninglessness of it all. Donald Trump was not on the stage, and he is consistently polling in the high 50s among Republican voters. This means at this point he's got an absolute lock on the Republican nomination, with roughly two months to go before the first caucus or primary is held. Unless one of the candidates from last night catches fire in a big way, it's hard to argue anything other than that it is all but inevitable that Trump will win the nomination. And nothing anybody did last night seemed like it was nearly enough to catch any kind of fire with the GOP base voters.

So instead of a microanalysis of sheer meaninglessness, I decided to write today about the rest of the field, which grew in two significant ways today. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced he would not be running for re-election (which just about guarantees a pickup for the Republicans in the Senate). And Jill Stein announced she would be the Green Party's presidential nominee this time around.

Manchin is not exactly being coy about his plans, either. He is making his bid for the presidential nomination from the "No Labels" effort -- which has tens of millions of dollars behind it and is already getting itself on state ballots in multiple states. Manchin wasted no time in making this pivot, as evidenced by his statement of retirement:

I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.

No Labels is a spoiler movement, plain and simple. It is being financed by a whole bunch of dark money, and they haven't even announced how they'll be picking their ticket of running mates. Everything is left vague, other than that they'd like to run one Republican and one Democrat together as a ticket. No word on which one would be at the top of the ticket, but there are already some contenders for the big prize. Manchin thinks he can best all of these, and he could very well be right about that. No Labels is intending to put on some sort of dog-and-pony show to nominate their ticket, but in the end it'll probably come down to whichever candidate impresses the big money guys behind the effort the most. And Manchin is already impressive to such people.

Is there a great movement of centrism in the middle of American politics that is just yearning for the chance to vote for Joe Manchin as president? My guess would be that there is not, but then what do I know? Maybe there is a hunger for a corporatist coal baron out there. Anything is possible, these days, I suppose.

Stepping back from Manchin's outsized opinion of his own nationwide popularity, though, this means that the 2024 election might be notable for how many names will be on the ballot. If Joe Biden and Donald Trump get their respective parties' nominations (as is expected), it will not be a head-to-head contest between the two. We've already got Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Cornel West running as independent candidates, and now we'll also have Jill Stein and Joe Manchin (or whatever other candidate No Labels pulls out of their hat) as well. That means in a lot of states, voters will have at least six names to choose from (probably seven, since the Libertarians will also assumably run someone this time around).

Will the 2024 presidential election wind up more like 1992 or 2000? That's the real question here. In 1992, H. Ross Perot won a whopping 19 percent of the popular vote. Bill Clinton won the presidency in a weakened state, because (according to his opponents and a lot of credulous voices in the media) "he didn't have a mandate," due to not topping 50 percent in the popular vote. But that was with just one big third-party name on the ballot. In 2000, of course, the presence of Ralph Nader may well have lost the presidency for Al Gore, as Nader got enough marginal votes to deny Gore the state of Florida.

This time around, we will have spoilers a-plenty. It's impossible to tell at this point what any of it all means. Who will be "stealing" votes from whom? Will R.F.K. Jr. siphon more votes away from Trump than Biden? Nobody knows. Will Stein and West drain critical votes from Biden? It's certainly possible. And I'm not even going to venture a guess what Manchin's presence in the race will do (at least not until I see some credible polling on the question).

Third parties and independents are marginal candidates, at best. Or at least they have been, historically. No third party candidate has ever come close to winning, from the formation of the Republican Party in Abraham Lincoln's time until now. Two won a significant amount of Electoral College votes: Teddy Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" effort in 1912 won 88 Electoral College votes, but Woodrow Wilson creamed them with 435. In 1948, the "Dixiecrats" won 39 Electoral College votes in the South, while Harry Truman won 303. Perot, even though he won roughly one out of every five votes cast, didn't win a single state or Electoral College vote.

Will that hold true in 2024? Well... yes, it probably will. Does anyone think Joe Manchin could ever beat Trump even in his home state of West Virginia? I for one do not, and that's the friendliest state he's got. And I certainly can't see R.F.K. Jr. or West or Stein winning a single state either. So none of these people is going to win the race.

But they could certainly change the outcome of individual states. Most presidential elections these days are won at the margins. In a handful of battleground states the results are within a single percentage point, with often only a few tens of thousands of votes determining the victor. And I could indeed see Manchin and the rest of the spoilers pulling in enough votes to change who actually emerges as the victor in places like Arizona or Georgia or all the rest of the ones Biden barely won last time around.

All of them won't be on the ballot in every state. It takes an enormous amount of money and effort to get a new party (or independent candidate) on all 50 state ballots. No Labels certainly has the money to spend on the effort, and as noted they're already on the ballot in 12 states -- which is pretty good for not having a candidate (or a platform, for that matter) in mind yet. My guess is that R.F.K. Jr.'s polling numbers are going to collapse (once people realize he's not his dad, or hear him speak on just about any subject). But the No Labels numbers could rise in his place.

Personally, I think No Labels would be a pack of fools to run Joe Manchin, as Democrats already hate him with a white-hot passion. I think they'd do much better to name someone like Larry Hogan (the very popular Republican ex-governor of Maryland) who actually does have some cross-party appeal. But then, as I said, what do I know?

The one thing that is becoming more and more apparent is that the presidential pollsters have to shift gears. This is not going to be merely a head-to-head race anymore. Other names will be on states' ballots -- and quite a lot of them, in some cases. Even if they all just eat into the margins of the two major party candidates, it could have enough of an effect to flip battleground states. Polling accurately these days is already difficult enough (as evidenced by the past few presidential cycles), and it's about to get a lot more complex. That seems the only thing that is certain, after hearing today's news.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant