That they are doing this now, of all times, is just outrageous
With No Labels launching into high gear, with Joe Manchin playing ‘will-he-or-won’t-he”, it appears that we are going to be dealing with this garbage whether we like it or not.
Dan Pfeiffer had a good piece on this :
No Labels is officially launching its effort to throw the election to Donald Trump. On Sunday, the centrist group released its policy agenda, which was credulously covered by the New York Times and others. Yesterday, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and Jon Huntsman Jr., the former Republican Governor of Utah, headlined a high profile town hall in the battleground state of New Hampshire.
No Labels raised tens of millions of dollars from billionaires who support Donald Trump on the ballot all across the country. I have written before about how a No Labels candidacy could easily tip the election to Trump, but their policy agenda and yesterday’s event highlight the absolute disingenuous grift at the center of No Labels as an organization and centrism as a political strategy.
Centrism’s Core “Values”
The agenda released by Third Way makes clear that liberal, conservative, and even moderate are ideologies, but “centrist” is an identity. No Labels and other centrist organizations are not working towards a set of ideological principles or policy preferences. They simply pick the midpoint between the two parties to indicate to voters — and donors — that they are somehow better than both parties. The goal is to avoid taking a stand and to be as bland and inoffensive to the most people possible. No Labels is peddling political applesauce.
Don’t believe me? Here is how the New York Times described No Label’s policies on the issue of abortion:
A woman must have a right to control her reproductive health, but that right has to be balanced with society’s obligation to safeguard human life.
For the last five decades, particularly in the year since the Dobbs decision, no issue in American politics has been more divisive than abortion. Yet, No Labels takes No Position to avoid being polarizing.
Politics strives to win power to help people based on the principles and ideas that you believe in, but what happens when you believe in nothing? You get No Labels. A billionaire-funded effort designed to enrich the people running it and potentially help Trump return to the White House.
There is No Appetite for No Labels
The No Labels effort to get a centrist, bipartisan candidate on the ballot in 2024 is founded on the premise that a likely rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden presents a unique opportunity for a centrist candidate to ascend to the White House. Of course, none of us want to return to 2020 — one of the worst years in American history. Conversations with voters of all stripes are filled with a sense of dread about having to spend another cycle watching Trump and Biden battle it out. While enthusiasm wanes for a Biden-Trump rematch, the polling doesn’t support No Labels’ contention. For there to be a real opening for a third-party candidate, huge swaths of Democrats would need to be unhappy with Biden, and Republicans unhappy with Trump. That’s not what’s happening. Both Biden and Trump have approval ratings in the low to mid-40s depending on the poll, but they both have the support of approximately 80 percent of voters in their own party. If those levels of support remain steady (and they have been for both candidates for a number of years), there is simply no room for a third-party candidate.
A Doomed Effort
Even if there was some growing grassroots movement for a bipartisan, centrist ticket of billionaire-funded applesauce peddlers, there is still no way for them to win.
Polling conducted by No Labels shows that a hypothetical, generic centrist candidate would receive about 20 percent of the vote. That sounds like a lot compared to the small but decisive number of votes won by third-party candidates like Jill Stein in 2016 and Ralph Nader in 2020. But to understand how far a No Labels candidate is from the White House, just look at recent history. In 1992, businessman Ross Perot leveraged a tough economy, a high deficit, dissatisfaction with President George H.W. Bush, and concerns about Bill Clinton to become a real candidate in the race. Perot dominated the media, was on the ballot in all 50 states, and even participated in the presidential debates. In the end, Perot received 18.9 percent of the vote. The largest share by a third-party candidate in modern political history. However, despite getting nearly one in five voters, Perot received ZERO electoral votes.
This is the problem for No Labels — and how you know that the whole effort is designed to help Trump win. For better or worse (I’d argue for worse), the U.S. presidential election process is built on a two-party system. Electoral votes are winner-take-all. Whether a candidate gets 18 percent like Perot or 0.18 percent like Kanye West, if they get zero electoral votes they do not win a state.. Importantly, the presidency does not go to the person with the most electoral votes — they must win a majority. If a candidate does not get 270 electoral votes, the election is thrown to the House of Representatives. In that process, the House votes by state delegation. The votes of California, a large state with an overwhelming Democratic Congressional delegation, and Wyoming, a small state with a Republican one, are counted equally. Let’s say that No Labels is correct about the viability of their candidate. Under this fantastical scenario, they receive 230 electoral votes while Biden gets 180 and Trump gets 128. But the House, where Republicans control the majority of delegations, would almost certainly award the presidency to Trump. Under our current, constitutionally mandated system, it is close to impossible for someone outside of the two major parties to win the White House. This is why Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist, ran twice for Democratic Party nomination — as opposed to an independent or third party bid.
The Grift
The billionaires and political strategists behind No Labels are fully aware of the folly of their effort. They understand the polls and the Constitution. So, why are they proceeding full speed ahead with a doomed effort?
Some of the people involved are just greedy grifters seeking money and political relevance. They are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to separate naive, rich people from their money. No Labels exemplifies inherent corruption. They pay a company called HarrisX for its polling. HarrisX is owned by Mark Penn who also happens to be married to Nancy Jacobson, the founder of No Labels.
Others are explicitly using No Labels to help elect Donald Trump. It’s not a coincidence that No Labels’ biggest financial supporters also gave millions to Trump. No Labels’ own polling shows that their candidate would take more votes from Biden than Trump.
None of this is subtle. Time to call it out.