No Labels is a supposedly centrist political group that launched in the 2010s. They want to run a moderate, bipartisan ticket in 2024 and that has Democrats in a panic. Democrats believe a third-party option from a liberal candidate would hand the 2024 election to former President Trump. However, No labels believe that the time is ripe for a third-party candidate, especially when they perceive that Biden and Trump could be beaten by a more modest liberal candidate.
NBC News reports:
The stark numbers driving Democratic panic about a third-party 2024 bid
Among all the reasons Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 but Hillary Clinton didn’t four years earlier, one looms especially large for the coming presidential election: the share of the third-party vote.
In 2016, 6% of all voters cast ballots for third-party and write-in candidates, with Libertarian Gary Johnson getting more than 3% of the national vote and Green Party nominee Jill Stein capturing more than 1%.
But in 2020, that proportion fell to 2%.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELThe difference effectively changed the threshold the major candidates needed to reach to win key battleground states — from 47% and 48% in 2016 to 49% and 50% in 2020.
That, Democrats say, made it easier for Trump to win in ’16 but not in ’20. And the numbers illustrate why Democratic groups — eyeing a possible, if not likely, rematch between Biden and Trump — want to keep the third-party vote share as small as possible, including moving to keep the well-financed third-party group No Labels off the ballot in battleground states.
“No Labels is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — reelecting Donald Trump," says @RepSpanberger. @ProbSolveCaucus Dems irate over @NoLabelsOrg attack on @RepSchneider. @dlippman writes https://t.co/x7AaIkhVGb
— Jim Kessler (@ThirdWayKessler) May 26, 2023
“No Labels is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — reelecting Donald Trump as President.”
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)https://t.co/n8miCcStgL via @politico— Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi) May 26, 2023
No Labels, a self-styled centrist organization, is looking into running a third-party presidential candidate next year. It’s either a case of delusion, an ego trip or something worse.
No Labels says it’s raising $70 million to get on all 50 state ballots. It has a blue-ribbon panel of supporters and advisers. What it doesn’t have is any serious chance of electing what it considers a moderate independent as president of the United States.
The organization was launched more than decade ago by a Democratic fundraiser with the aim of forging bipartisan, centrist policies. It has achieved success on Capitol Hill.
But running a presidential candidate is a much different, and far greater, challenge. Democrats charge, credibly, that any candidacy would take more votes from President Biden than from the Republican nominee.
No Labels rejects this. It released a 26,000-voter survey showing that 64 percent of voters want options other than Democrats and Republicans, and that 59 percent said they’d be open to voting for a moderate independent presidential ticket if the alternative were a rerun of Trump v. Biden.
“In a contest with Biden and Trump, there is no way a No Labels candidate could win,” Whit Ayres, a leading Republican pollster, told me. “That candidate couldn’t win any states; they’d get zero electoral votes.”
Fred Yang, a leading Democratic poll taker, is only a bit less skeptical. “With the dissatisfaction of both Republicans and Democrats, it looks like an opening,” he noted, “But it’s a real leap to say that once there is an actual candidate and a platform that would be sustainable.”
