No Labels Will Decide Whether to Jump Into the 2024 Election Next Week https://t.co/z38WbZooiV
— Emily Mills (@sf_mills) February 29, 2024
Ed Kilgore, at NYMag, is extremely skeptical:
… “No Labels has said for months that our movement plans to regroup shortly after Super Tuesday to evaluate whether we should offer our ballot line to a Unity presidential ticket — and that remains the plan,” the official said. “On March 8, we will gather our 800 delegates from all 50 states — who would ultimately approve a final Unity ticket — to discuss and vote on whether they want us to continue moving forward.”…
I know a candidate that No Labels can get behind. A seasoned politician who knows all the tricks to get things done in Washington, restore our alliances, reduce crime and rebuild our manufacturing base for a greener future. The only man to ever defeat Trump at the ballot box. https://t.co/ndwkzNc9pC
— zeddy (@Zeddary) February 23, 2024
Tara Palmeri, journamalistic botfly, at Puck:
So it’s finally put up or shut up time for No Labels—the disorganized dark money group that counts Nelson Peltz, Steve Schwarzman, and Harlan Crow as donors—to execute its quixotic plan to assemble a unity-ticket to challenge the increasingly inevitable disappointment of a Trump–Biden rematch. Over the last two years, the third-party group has raised tens of millions on the assumption that No Labels and its opportunistic C.E.O., Nancy Jacobson, could recruit a viable candidate—Larry Hogan, say, with Joe Manchin as V.P. Sure, No Labels has been able to get their name on the ballot in 16 states. Unfortunately, they just haven’t been able to find that dream ticket, which will prevent them from ballot access in many others.
So on March 8, just three days after Nikki Haley is set to be demoralized in 16 states on Super Tuesday, No Labels is handing over the power to their 800 delegates to make a choice about whether to move forward, and with whom. Their ideal candidate, of course, has been Haley, herself…
In fact, No Labels emissaries have been trying to persuade Haley through back channels, but she’s emphatically resisted. Joe Lieberman, who sits on the board, has told donors that the organization has three strong options, including a Republican governor, but he won’t share names. So far, No Labels has also flirted with total non-starters like Chris Christie and Hogan and Manchin, until they got turned down. (Hogan is now running for Senate in Maryland.) It’s hard to see anyone leaving their party to run as a spoiler, and No Labels had made it clear they need a Republican on the top of the ticket so as not to hand the election to Trump.
Supporters of No Labels are starting to wonder if this whole romantic endeavor could truly and spectacularly backfire on a group almost everyone in Washington has been suspicious about. And often for good reason. To wit: Lieberman and Jacobson are barely in communication—their friction is merely one example of the organization’s dysfunction. (A No Labels spokesperson denies this, saying the two were on a call together this afternoon.)…
No Labels' spoiler bid has suddenly entered full meltdown mode. No serious candidates are interested. The group's public justifications are increasingly ludicrous. Time to pull the plug.
We have lots of new reporting and info in this piece. 1/
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) February 23, 2024
… Manchin’s evolution illustrates why No Labels’ effort to mount a third-party bid is suddenly in serious trouble. The group, which hopes to run a “unity ticket” consisting of one Republican and one Democrat, had been eyeing Larry Hogan, the former GOP governor of Maryland, along with Manchin, perhaps with Hogan at the top of the ticket. Manchin’s decision, along with Hogan’s recent announcement that he’ll run for Senate, dashes that dream for good.
Yet No Labels faces a problem that runs deeper than the lack of high-profile candidates willing to take the third-party plunge: The group’s core argument has proven impossible to sustain, and everyone paying even cursory attention to its activities knows it.
For months, as No Labels has sought to secure a line on ballots in as many states as possible—the group claims 16 as of now—its officials have sworn vehemently that they have no intention of mounting a candidacy that only functions as a spoiler or helps Trump. Joe Lieberman, the group’s founding chairman, often says as much. The true intention, it says, is to answer the public’s alleged call for an alternative to the two parties with a “unity ticket” that will birth a new coalition of public-spirited voters who value bipartisan compromise over petty partisanship and dysfunction.
But no matter how hard No Labels strains to project such pious intentions, the all-but-certain impact of such a plan has proven impossible to disguise. It is borderline impossible for such a bid to win outright in enough states to assemble a majority of 270 Electoral College votes—Ross Perot and Ralph Nader won none; the last third-party candidate to win any electoral votes was George Wallace, 56 years ago.
So the only real impact of a No Labels bid will likely be to pull in center-right voters who might be disillusioned by Trump and otherwise would have grudgingly gone to Biden, helping the former president…
Close watchers of No Labels still worry it may yet find a candidate—someone like former Utah GOP Governor Jon Huntsman, or Pat McCrory, the former North Carolina Republican governor who co-chairs the group, or some business guy looking for an ego trip. But it’s hard to see how the group’s well-heeled donors would be content with anything short of a big, gratifying name at the top of the ticket.
“If they nominate anyone less than a top-tier candidate, it will ensure that the group’s effort is even more of a fool’s errand,” said Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator of Alabama, who’s also active against No Labels.
Here’s the bottom line: No candidate can continue humoring the group’s central claim—that the ticket can accomplish anything beyond making a second Trump term more likely—while also retaining anything remotely resembling an aura of seriousness.
No Labels officials and donors like to think of themselves as patriots and devoted servants of the public good who wouldn’t dream of foisting a disastrous second Trump term on the country they love. If so, they should accept that the whole foundation of their third-party-bid project is irredeemably flawed, and come to terms with the obvious: It’s time to pull the plug.
"We're in it to win it!" No Labels' chief strategist proclaims.
Prompting the group's founder to interject, “But I just want to clarify, this organization is not in it to win it.”
One of many amazing moments in this @JohnGHendy look at the group: https://t.co/jTP1aUw9it
— Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) February 27, 2024
A rambling & confused story by a conservative who refuses to believe what’s obvious — No Labels has been a profitable grift, but it’s reaching the inevitable endpoint:
… Even if the forthcoming White House bid ends up as nothing but a sideshow, it is still garnering attention: Polls indicate that a No Labels ballot line may well draw more votes away from Biden than Trump. It could be the deciding variable that secures Trump’s return to power.
Why is No labels doing this? Some of the group’s opponents allege that No Labels is nothing more than a money-raising grift. Others have suggested that No Labels is a shadowy Republican dark-money group, and that the “unity ticket” is a stalking-horse bid to help Trump. Yet another theory is that No Labels is full of idealists who, whether they realize it or not, are playing Russian roulette with American democracy, as one critic recently put it to me. Jacobson and the organization vehemently deny all of the above accusations.
I’ve spent the past several weeks talking with No Labels’ leaders, staffers, consultants, and opponents, trying to understand the organization’s endgame. I came away confused, and convinced that the people behind No Labels are confused, too. They’ve correctly diagnosed serious problems in the American political system, but their proposed solution could help lead to its undoing.
Nancy Jacobson, a longtime Democratic fundraiser who is married to the longtime Democratic pollster Mark Penn, founded No Labels 15 years ago. Back then, her goal was to build the voice of the “commonsense majority” and bring compromise to Capitol Hill during what was then seen as an era of division and dysfunction. (It looks bucolic compared with the present day.) The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, an earnest, relatively uncontroversial coalition of Democrats and Republicans, eventually emerged in the House of Representatives as the result of No Labels’ work.
So many political observers view Jacobson as a Beltway operator that her colleague and friend of 30 years, Holly Page, who sits on No Labels’ board of advisers, came to our interview prepared to dispute that characterization before I even mentioned it. Page informed me that Jacobson is not, in fact “a conventional creature of Washington,” and instead likened her to a Silicon Valley disrupter who’s willing to “try things” and “challenge conventional norms.”…
Back in November, the organization’s leaders scuttled plans for an April 2024 in-person convention in Dallas. My request for details about a rumored replacement “virtual convention” went unanswered, perhaps under the logic that they can’t plan a convention if they don’t have candidates. So the conversations are happening quietly.
More generally, the group is cagey about its internal operations, and won’t even share the names of its donors. (Harlan Crow, the Texas real-estate tycoon who has financially supported conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is one.)…
Rick Wilson, one of the founders of the “never Trump” Lincoln Project, is a vocal No Labels critic. He believes the formerly centrist group has evolved into yet another cadre of Trump enablers, and that its ballot-access plan is far from benevolent.
“While No Labels has every right in the world to try to put somebody on the ballot, we have an equally sacred right under the First Amendment to object to it,” Wilson told me. “I feel like No Labels is doing something dangerous and definitely stupid,” he added. “Probably extremely dangerous. Likely to cause the return of Donald Trump. And in those things, I’m going to speak out.”…
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, if Rick Wilson shook my hand, I would count my fingers afterwards. But the man certainly knows enough about less-than-honest politics to recognize a ratf*cking squad, which is what No Labels has ‘devolved’ into.
War for Ukraine Day 737: Russia Began Their March Bombardement as the 1st Turned to the 2nd in Ukraine
teezyskeezy
If we gave Bill Clinton a time machine, I bet the first thing he’d do is go back and tell himself to not pardon Mark Penn.
Odie Hugh Manatee
No labels? I have one for them:
Get Fucked.
Ratfuckers… nothing but.
teezyskeezy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: They make me extremely angry but I bet they have little effect on the election. Just another Mark Penn grift. They still piss me off.
HumboldtBlue
The 5 worst British defeats of the Victorian era?
teezyskeezy
@HumboldtBlue: You got it!*
*sorry, affirmations of payment made ironically and falsely only.**
**like opposite day…ie, no munny.
teezyskeezy
@HumboldtBlue: Oh you edited your post too much, not fair.
Geminid
@teezyskeezy: I think you may have Mark Penn mixed up with Marc Rich. Clinton pardoned Marc Rich on his last day in office.
I don’t think Mark Penn has ever been indicted, much less convicted of a crime. Although if crappy campaign management was a felony, Penn would have pulled a few years for the way he mishandled Hilary Clinton’s 2008 primary campaign.
eclare
I hate that Doug Jones is no longer in the Senate. I know it was a matter of time, but still. And he was replaced by Potatotown.
teezyskeezy
@Geminid: Yes. You are right. Given how tight they used to be…it’s a pretty big betrayal on Penn’s part still, and that’s how I got there. I really thought for 20 years now Penn was Marc Rich. I guess thank you is in order
PS — and now properly informing myself on Marc Rich…oh my, he was a sleeze. Clinton should not have pardoned him! Still a mistake on Clinton’s part.
Citizen Alan
The very thought of a unity ticket fills me with rage. I do not want to unify with anyone in the republican party. I simply want to defeat them utterly. There is absolutely no possible point of agreement between anyone who still calls themselves a republican and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Ryan
I mean, it’s taking on the odors of James O’Keefe at Veritas. Are we sad that Crow has been swindled of millions?
VFX Lurker
Staying up late wrassling with recalcitrant computer graphics software that I’d like to learn. It’s good software, but I can get impatient.
teezyskeezy
@VFX Lurker: Didn’t the White House just tell you to let that shit alone? Kidding…I mean they actually did, but we know the kind of devs they meant that for. Some people still gotta wrangle with seg faults and stuff.
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan:
PREACH! A unity ticket has a place – up the suggester’s ass.
NotMax
Bull Noose Party.
NotMax
@Ryan
Prefer my Crows stoned.
:)
m.j.
I want to know who came up with the name, “No Labels.”
It’s just so lazy. A slightly less lazy name would be, “Yes Labels!” Of course this might attract nazis.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
As I recall, Franz von Papen tried a sort of “conservative unity ticket” in Germany in the early 1930s. The lesson I take from that is that there are some political parties that cannot be trusted as part of a “unity ticket”.
Especially parties whose idea of compromise is “you give us what we want in a week, or we beat the hell out of you and take it anyway.” (stolen from Asimov’s Foundation: “The Encyclopedists”)
AlaskaReader
Take a day and walk around
Watch the Nazis run your town
Then go home and check yourself
You think we’re singing ’bout someone else
—”Plastic People”, F. Zappa, 1966.
hat tip – M. Bouffant
brantl
No Labels? No Brains.
Baud
As abhorrent as the MAGA are, at least they have a path to power. Anyone involved in No Labels who isn’t in it for the grift is more pathetic than that.
Even if you’re thing is “bipartisan compromise,” Biden has done that! No excuses.
p.a.
As much as I despise MAGA talk of “2nd Amendment Solutions”, when I see Mark Penn’s & Joe Lieberman’s names, I think there may be… well… y’know…
Betty
My favorite description yet of No Labels supporters: idealists. Oh, for pity’s sake!!
Princess
I have a friend who worked for Mark Penn who says he’s even more awful than you think. I still side-eye Hillary for employing him. Pretty certain his incompetence cost her the primary.
Tony Jay
It’s pretty clear (to me, at least) that the whole No Labels flustercuck is one of those “no weapon made for good cannot be turned around and used for evil” examples, in which the Brotherhood of Evil Oligarchs took a pretty understandable milquetoast theory (Bipartisan compromise around the centre-ground is the only feasible path to long-term stability in a democracy) that likely appeals to a chunk of ‘non-partisan normie’ voters and turned it into a multi-faceted pro-GOP ratfucking operation with attractive side-grift opportunities.
It’s not the only hustle they’re running. To misquote a line “Hell, it’s not like this is even their whole night”. But along with their other campaigns to buy up the Judiciary, radicalise state governments and grind Washington politics down into a pantomime of clickbait mudthrowing, it moves the needle in the direction they want it to go and sucks up energy that could be more productively used actually keeping fascists out of power.
Lovely to see it shunt-flumping to a juddery halt way short of the finish line, hope it hasn’t done too much damage in the meantime.
Of course, it’s not just the US that has this kind of fuckery bouncing around. A few years ago we had Change UK, a bastard melange of Blairbon careerists outraged that the Labour membership had pushed them out of power and Tory wets sickened by Flobalob’s rise to the Teflon Throne, all funded by billionaire donors and fluffed relentlessly by the corporate media, it was only ever a vehicle for injecting anti-Left poison into the mainstream. The voters gave it a resounding “Who you? Get fucked” at the ballot box, but the damage was done. The ex-Labour members are, of course, currently either ennobled peers (thanks to Flobby), raking it in as corporate ‘non-executive directors of centrism’, or are being welcomed back into newnewlabour with trumpets and alarums for all their hard work in making sure ‘decent people’ were put off from voting Labour in 2019.
No Labels = No Change = $$$$$$$$
Ian R
Today I learned (to my dismay) that Lieberman still exists. So happy that I didn’t move to CT until long after that piece of shit was out of office.
Chris T.
@m.j.:
It’s a silly name.
They put up a big billboard near my freeway exit, back when I lived in Utah (so, 2009 or 2010 perhaps?). There was no other information and I thought maybe it was an ad for a new clothing line.
Juju
@teezyskeezy: I don’t think Clinton pardoned Mark Penn. The man is a sleazy grifter, but as far as I know, he never did anything considered to be criminal. I think you have him confused with someone else, I just can’t figure out who. Maybe someone else has figured it out and I haven’t read that reply yet.
Juju
@Geminid: Thanks. That’s who he must mean. It’s too early for me to figure out.
artem1s
Everything I read about
No LabelsNo Brown or Vagina Havers gives me the feeling they chose the name so they wouldn’t have to say the quiet part out loud (and blow a golden opportunity to grift off the Never Trumps).Matt McIrvin
@artem1s: Soon after they appeared, I remember some conservative snarking about the phrase “no labels” in a comment thread that had nothing to do with them, as if No Labels were an example of a crazy liberal activist group. I guess they managed to confuse him.
Ken
I was going to say that first they need to get on the ballot, but then further on
So now I’m wondering what voters in those states will see on their ballots. “No candidate (No Labels)”, perhaps.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: It honestly hasn’t done much damage. The “Problem Solvers Caucus” is the one lasting outcome of it and, honestly, I don’t really mind them; their ideology is not mine, but they seem to be a caucus of good-faith centrists with a broad good-government platform.
The presidential-candidate initiative goes over like a lead balloon every time and seems to have no effect at all–the third-party activity that gets votes comes from pseudo-leftists and libertarians, not these people. Normies tend to vote for normal parties, though they whine about it.
lowtechcyclist
Dying if not dead thread, but what the hey.
The only reason some ‘Unity Ticket’ of the center would make sense is if each party had some really good ideas about how to make America a better country that the other party was opposed to.
Now, Mr. Penn and Ms. Jacobson, tell me all about those great ideas the Rethugs have.
This sort of thing may have made some sense in the 1970s and 1980s, and maybe as late as Ross Perot’s 1992 run. Since then? LOL. The GOP has been a waste case ever since the Gingrich-Limbaugh red wave of 1994.
cmorenc
@teezyskeezy: If Bill Clinton had a time machine, he would ponder whether he should have paid to have lewinsky’s dress dry-cleaned vs avoiding the seamy encounter with an intern in the first place. Decisions, decisions…
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: The Problem Solvers Caucus actually did good work helping Speaker Pelosi get the Infrastructure bill passed in November of 2021. They haven’t had a lot of impact otherwise, except maybe on some minor bills. They haven’t been a real problem for Democratic leadership either.
Some Democrats like to anathematize any and all professions of “Bipartisanship,” but a lot of Problem Solvers Caucus members represent purple congressional districts where bipartisanship is not such a dirty word.
Geminid
Speaking of reaching a decision point, Senator Sinema has yet to announce whether she will seek reelection. The deadline for obtaining the requisite signatures and filing for office comes up in April, I think.
Sinema consistently polls in third place in a potential matchup with Gallego and Lake, while Gallego consistently polls first in two- and three-way matchups.
teezyskeezy
@Juju: As indicated. It was an honest mistake, admitted, no doubling down.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Your fingers to God’s ears.
If all it does is drain a bit of oligarch cash into the coffers of Politics Inc gobshites like the Penn Family… yeah, fine, whatever. People like that always end up with coin before they end up at the end of a rope.
Juju
@teezyskeezy: I indicated that I thought you were confused. I wasn’t pointing my finger and making fun of you. I’m sorry if you took it that way. That was not my intention.
Kent
The utter and complete fraud of this is the bald-faced lie that a “Unity Ticket” is something that even exists or is possible.
We do not elect co-presidents who share power.
We elect a president who has 100% of the power granted to the executive branch, and a Vice President who has ZERO executive branch powers and only has one constitutional power, the power to break ties in the Senate.
The fact that all of their musings are about a GOP President combined with a Dem Vice President is the tell that they are nothing but a GOP front.
I know this is a dead thread but I had to get that out there.
Kent
He is probably thinking of Marc Rich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich