That's literally saying you'll be a spoiler, only jumping in when it's close means you'll be a spoiler! I am going crazy with the lies here https://t.co/slxYYnQwNC
— vocational politics appreciation account (@Convolutedname) June 15, 2023
Just the one principle, really: GIVE US YOUR MONEY!…
“Trust us, give us the money now, but next year if it’s hopeless we’ll give it back” https://t.co/7d8PDtYFPk
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) June 15, 2023
"we won't run a third party candidate if Biden is winning comfortably but we will if it's close" is the precise approach you would take if you wanted to be a spoiler, but only if it doesn't require much effort.
Sounds *exactly* like No Labels. pic.twitter.com/MZ9E0rdHdl
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) June 15, 2023
Alternative (but not all that contradictory) theory: they’re being funded by people who want a Republican to defeat Trump for the nomination, but are stupid enough to think a third party candidate could beat both Trump & Biden
Lot of rich people are stupid about politics https://t.co/OSIPnFtIR1
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) June 15, 2023
I know a lot of you don’t trust Rick Wilson — frankly, if he shook my hand, I’d count my fingers afterwards — but he knows these people on a professional basis:
2/ Nancy is one of DC’s most powerful, influential, and connected players. A Swamp Empress. Richer than God.
She and Mark Penn are angry, though. Very, very angry. At whom, you ask?
Well, Democrats.
They were exiled from Clinton world. Obamas, same.
3/ They’ve been on a jihad ever since. Mark has dozens of Fox hits defending and praising Trump.
Their major donors are the EXACT same billionaires funding Ron DeSantis. (Yeah, Nancy hides her donors, but girl, your org leaks because your staff hates you.)
4/ They formed No Labels as a long con, a way to break the Democrats, get rich doing it (and again, they are VERY rich), and punish their imagined enemies.
They branded it as “centrist problem solvers” but their plan to run a 3rd party candidate this year was anything but.
5/ They’re working to put a conservative Dem (Joe Manchin is their number one pony, but Sinema is also in the running if Joe falls off) on the ballot in key states to drain off votes from Biden.
Their math, maps, and polling are utter fantasy, an ever-changing target.
7/ When challenged how they'd get a candidate to 270, they argued their 3rd party goon could win in…Delaware. And Florida. And Washington State. And Utah. And um…well, you tell me if this is a serious map in your mind: pic.twitter.com/oucz8pyoll
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 15, 2023
8/ It’s all a fraud. They describe Joe Biden and Donald Trump as “equally unacceptable”…an assertion I’ll leave you to assess. The plan all along was to burn down Biden, and they’re getting on the ballot in key states to do just that.
9/ We know the why but what about the how? Getting on the ballot is hard, and NL is fraudulently representing its petitions in many states and changing voter registrations. They’re in trouble in Maine and AZ already, with more to come.
10/ But they’ll be on enough close states to drag off a % of conservative Dems and elect Trump or — and here’s the big reveal — they’ll drop out and not run a candidate if the Republican nominee is — wait for it — Ron DeSantis…
13/ We’re on final now, so bear with me. Why would they say that? The answer is “Dallas” and the answer is “Manhattan.”
Nancy has raised something like $70 million dollars (as noted prior) from the EXACT SAME billionaires backing DeSantis.
14/ This donor set (including Sugar Daddy Harlan Crow) cares about 3 things; lower taxes at the Mt. Everest end of the income scale, carried-interest deductions, and oil-and-gas subsidies/write-offs.
They’ll get them from Trump, but DeSantis has marginally better aesthetics.
15/ If they have to spend the $$$ to destroy Biden, they will…and @nolabelsorg
is designed to be the vehicle for an ocean of dark GOP money dressed up as moderate do-gooderism.They’re perfectly fine with Trump if it happens, and if it’s DeSantis they think it’s in the bag…
It'd be one thing if any of the many disaster scenarios people have anticipated under Biden's leadership had come to pass, but he just keeps on trucking. The only real angle left is "he's too old," but that's not enough on its own to sustain an insurgency effort
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) June 15, 2023
kindness
No Labels isn’t fooling politically minded people but it’s premise is catnip to the MSM. It’s the MSM which will do No Labels work for them with the voters who pay no attention to politics till the week before the elections.
smith
@kindness: And the MSM, at least the people who own them, have pretty much the same goals as Crow does, so it’s a win-win!
Baud
I want a No Labels/People’s Party Unity ticket.
Raoul Paste
@kindness: Yep, the institutional corruption in America manifests as the free airtime No Labels will get, letting them hammer their message endlessly
Ken
So if you pay them enough money, they won’t run in 2024. Weren’t people proposing that back in mid-2016 — the Republicans should just pay Trump to drop out of the race?
bbleh
They’re definitely a threat to Biden — not because they care about the election nearly as much as they care about the muneeez — but I wonder how much of a threat they might also be to Trump. There are a lot of Republicans who are turned off by Trump and might look favorably on an alternative that (1) isn’t a Dem and (2) makes nice soothing pro-plutocracy noises. And conversely, I don’t know how many of the Dems who would look favorably on an alternative to Biden are right-leaning as opposed to strongly left and would vote for a (fake) “centrist” rather than a more doctrinaire candidate.
The main battle likely will be over the low-information “leaners,” who either won’t vote or will vote based on whatever just came across the screen, and there’s a lot of them. They’re the ones Dems gotta work to reach and lock in early. Get them on board, and a few defections to some “centrist” talking outta both sides of his/her mouth probably won’t matter.
(All that said, I got no idea about the state-by-state. But I could see Manchin as a No Labels candidate putting up a serious fight for WV’s electoral votes, and maybe KY or even OH as well.)
Baud
@Ken:
I also won’t run for 💵.
Ken
@Baud: I would expect nothing less of you.
Steve in the ATL
@Ken: is it actually possible to have any lower expectations of Baud?
NotMax
The whole “shower us with money for a candidate to be named later – maybe” shtick is so obviously a scam.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: Did you see my niece’s daughter when you were in Battle Creek? She just got hired by Kellogg and rented an apartment there. :-) She wasn’t sure if they were going to put her in Detroit or Battle Creek.
Battle Creek was the preferred location. :-)
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: dude, I would choose Detroit 101 times out of 100 over Battle Creek. BC is classic rust belt. It’s like the out of wedlock child of Toledo and Flint.
Ask Subaru Diane—she knows!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Yes.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Short thread.
That kinda makes sense. And is kinda scary because too many of the GQP apparently cannot see that (since they haven’t seen it in the last 7+ years, I guess that isn’t surprising).
I’ve felt for a long time that TIFG was the embodiment of what the GQP claimed to stand for (“rich”, “successful”, “not afraid to say what he thinks”, etc.), so of course they were going to nominate and support him. They couldn’t see that he was a stupid, dangerous, anti-American, nutcase, fascist, narcissistic, baby that only cares about himself. And they can’t figure out how to quit him and still maintain power.
Convicting TIFG won’t be enough. We have to keep the monsters out of elected office.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought you’d been banned. WaterGirl, WTF?!
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott:
Trump is basically confessing to elements of the crime in public.
I’m not a, you know, “competent” lawyer, but it seems this would be a bad thing for your client to do.
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: I guess it depends on what your goals are.
If your goal is to thumb your nose at the “system” and keep your cult engaged by “telling it like it is” and so forth, then being a “brave truth teller” and going against legal advice might make sense.
I still kinda expect him to start crying when he’s convicted and sentenced, and there aren’t millions outside demanding that he be freed. Because his bluster will have finally failed, and he’ll realize that he’s a washed-up old looooser.
But we’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jackie
@Steve in the ATL: TIFG should check if Ken Starr is licensed to practice law in FL. I don’t see any other attorneys volunteering to sign up to defend him pro bono!
Kay
God, Mark Penn isn’t retired yet? He has done nothing but grift for what, 25 years now? His career as a grifter and spoiler was much longer than his career in actual politics. Rue the day they hired him, huh?
Elizabelle
@Jackie: Ken Starr is no longer of this world. He died last September.
Most of us. Are fine with that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: I am a blue check member.
catclub
@bbleh:
Hey that sounds great, those are solid Trump/GOP states. if manchin takes EV’s from Trump that is a total win.
OTOH PA, MI, WI are where it would hurt Biden.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: merde!
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Funny, you don’t look blueish.
;)
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Green balloon member.
Jackie
@Elizabelle: Ahhh, too bad for TIFG then. He may never find another attorney! Lol
Geminid
@bbleh: I am very skeptical about Manchin running for President on the No Labels ballot line. He’d spend months campaigning just to lose. He’d get attention, but he gets plenty already. He doesn’t have a cause or ideology to promote, or a political movement to create. He voted twice to convict Trump, and I don’t see why he would turn around and help put the guy back in office.
Manchin likes being a Senator, and his race is winnable. If he’s going to spend most of a year campaigning, I think he’ll try to keep his job for another 6 years.
I could see Sinema doing it. Polls consistently show her running last in a 3-way Senate race, and I don’t see how she changes that. Arizonans seem to have made up their minds about Sinema.
So a national campaign might appeal to her. The decision timeline would be awkward. She’ll need to get her Senate campaign going by year’s end, and the No Labels “Convention” isn’t until April. But if Sinema passes on a reelection campaign, she’d be a “good catch” for a party launching its first presidential campaign ever.
I don’t think she’d pull in very many Democrats though. She might appeal to Independents, but she’d take their votes from both major candidates so that would probably be a wash.
Jackie
@Geminid: How about a Manchin/Sinema ticket? Although the egos would clash over who would be #1 or #2 on the ticket🤪
I say this in jest. No Labels needs to die.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: I couldn’t afford that.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Touché. Point taken. I’m on the Thurston plan myself—not the best choice I ever made.
lowtechcyclist
The part about Penn and Jacobson being exiled from ClintonWorld amused me. So that’s the source of their anger at Dems?
Mark Penn was a major player in Clinton’s 2008 campaign (a personnel choice that didn’t reflect well on her even then), and is arguably the biggest reason internal to her campaign that she lost to Obama.
Basically, he didn’t bother to learn and understand that year’s delegate math, and didn’t see the need to compete in a number of small caucus states that followed Super Tuesday. Hillary had been ahead coming out of Super Tuesday, but Obama mopped up in those states, and took a lead in delegates that was never all that big, but one that he never relinquished.
So he screwed up big time, the Clintons understandably didn’t want anything to do with him after that, so he is pissed at them, and at the Dems in general. Of course.
Christ, what an asshole.
Another Scott
Relatedly, … driftglass – The Importance of Being On TeeVee:
Screechy, but in a good way, because he has receipts. Worth a click.
Cheers,
Scott.