Except that everyone involved so far is a charlatan. Mark Penn is a liar and a grifter. So are all the others behind it.
I’m withholding judgment until they both have a candidate and prove that they can make a dent on the public consciousness, especially on those who aren’t closely politically engaged.
As a Gay Black Man*, I support this idea.
*On Twitter.
Not even remotely true. My current political stance is based on more than four decades as a voter and observer. I’m not saying I’d never change my mind or completely rule out a shift, but it sure as hell wouldn’t take me “zero time” to make that call. And something truly seismic would have to happen for me to make the decision even over a matter of weeks.
Meanwhile, if I’m a swing state voter, I have to weigh that decision against the likelihood of my switch helping elect Trump again.
For that it’s worth, the Lincoln Project is tweeting against the No Labels Party, saying it will elect Trump.
The problem is, how to know that they actually are sane?
I’ve been saying for years now that I welcome a new party formed by the saner bits of what used to be the Republican party. I’ve also been saying that anyone joining that party has to be willing to accept losing elections to Democrats for a decade or more, in order to prove to the electorate that they really are sane, and understand why and how the current GOP has gone so far off the rails.
The current GOP needs to die, and their current supporters need to fall into one of three camps:
- They literally die off as well
- They give up on politics entirely and stop voting, or
- They truly have a change of heart, and support this new, more reasonable party.
But that third option requires them to do the work. Spend a decade as the “Loyal Opposition”, as they say in Britain, support some reasonable legislation, push back on some unreasonable legislation, and show voters that you’re actually willing to govern, and not just posture for culture wars and destroy stuff, and maybe a few democrats will start considering voting for them. This is the price they have to pay for letting the crazies run wild.
Every four years it’s the same old story- is this the election where a third party matters? And every four years the answer is a resounding NO. I get those that think we need to have more parties and maybe someday long after we’re dead it could happen but it cannot possibly happen now. If a fascist wasn’t going to be the Republican nominee I wouldn’t care if a third party made a good showing but this coming election is the most important in history. DJT MUST be defeated, else democracy dies.
I would only amend your statement to read, “REPUBLICANS MUST be defeated, else democracy dies.”
As I previously mentioned, to Power Republicans, 2024 is the Final Election. Any Republican who assumes the presidency will be sufficient for their purposes. It’s not hyperbolic to say so. They’ve been working toward this goal for decades, and now they have all the levers in place to make it happen.
No Labels is only one aspect of their efforts to tilt the election in their favor.
If it doesn’t grow large enough then yes. If it does then no. There’s about 12 months to aggregate, count heads, and optionally abort and then you’d still have several months to vote with the Democratic or Republican party as usual.
If a Gallup survey says that “most Americans want the partisan sniping to end and for Congress to work across the aisle”, then the head count should be large enough to invalidate the Republican and Democratic votes. If you’re assuming that somehow it wouldn’t be, then that’s just you being myopic. You know there’s the numbers, it’s just a matter of letting that truth wash over you and accepting it.
You’re living in a total fantasy world if you think this party will do more than just a few percent here and there. I spend lots of time on this P&E forum and I wasn’t aware of it until someone mentioned it here.
Normal people have no idea about it at all. And voters say they want congress people to reach across the aisle in general, but not in the details.
Sane Republican politicians, if there are any left, could fall on their swords and push hard for the No Labels as an alternative for conservative voters, back Chris Christie (or whoever) as the NL nominee, campaign against Trump, and if they still don’t poll well enough to guarantee a Republican loss, throw everything behind Biden. The Republican Party is just too broken for real conservatives living in this reality to want to support.
On this planet, NL is being pushed by Republicans to pull non-Trump voters away from Biden, and is hoping to be a Biden-defeating spoiler.
We already have a party for sanity and bipartisanship.
If you want viable third parties, then you don’t get that by voting for third parties. You get that by pushing for a change in the electoral system to IRV or approval voting or something else capable of supporting third parties.
I do think that there’s a chance that No Labels ends up helping Biden, and not because they pull votes away from Trump (at least not more than they pull away from Biden). The possibility of a spoiler may drive some Democrats who’ve grown increasingly complacent about the possibility of Trump’s return to the White House to get out and vote. That’s at least part of why Democrats are waving the red flag so frantically.
Any third party that aims directly at the White House is not a real party interested in policy and governance. If it’s a real party that wants to supplant one of the other parties then it starts with local offices, builds its organization and its platform, and works its way up. If it’s not doing that then it’s not legitimate. It may call itself a party but it has unspoken aims because it sure as hell isn’t trying to win an election. It’s that simple.
Except that No Labels is a con run by grifters.
I question this. How many moderates are left in the Republican base? There may be a few people who claim to be moderates as they consistently vote for right wing Republicans but all the real moderates left for the Democrats years ago.
I feel the No Labels Party won’t split any right wingers away from the Republicans. But it might split some voters away from the Democrats.
Joe Manchin! Flash to spare!
Yeah, that’s pretty funny, huh?
Except Dems are the party of which 15-20% of their number already support the nutjob RFK Jr. based solely – and this is granting the most charitable interpretation possible – on name recognition. (It’s worse if that number support RFK Jr. and they actually know what a squirrel he is.)
No Labels doesn’t have to pull many votes. Just enough in the right states. And Manchin has been coy about being their candidate. Suppose it’s someone like RFK Jr.? He’s a (Steve Bannon-supported) Democrat, right?
If you “take a leap of faith” that you can fly like Superman, you’ll end up as street pizza.
Given that the various institutional features of the American electoral system that drive it into two-party mode are barely less flexible than the laws of physics, that’s the best analogy that comes to mind.
This just won’t happen. This is a third party that is running only a candidate for president. They are having trouble even getting on the ballot. They have zero chance of winning. And anyone remotely politically savvy in the US system knows this.
Republicans and Democrats have full on institutional power in the US. They exist in all levels of government. Someone building a new party would need to match that. The amount of money the major parties have access to is insane, and you need money to get your message out and win elections.
No, third parties are more about messaging. Their goal is to influence the parties that do have a chance at winning. They can only pull votes from the party that is most aligned with them.
And, in this case, that is clearly the Democrats. Both are running on being anti-MAGA. They’re running on a return to normalcy. And, yes, they’re running on bipartisanship.
The anti-MAGA faction in the US is larger than the MAGA faction. But we do not want to split the votes. That’s like what happened in the Republican primary in 2016. The anti-Trumps were split between multiple candidates, so none of them won.
And we’re dealing with politicians. Very few are idealists, and the ones that are will have been clearly idealists their entire career. And no such politician is involved in this.
Besides, even if somehow a third party candidate did win the presidential election, they would have next to no power. Congress would still be Republicans and Democrats. Ironically it could create bipartisanship, but bipartisanship against the new party.
Both have a common interest in not being the party that dies in favor of the new one. Both want to retain what power they currently have.
Since No Labels doesn’t yet exist, hasn’t picked a candidate or a set of policies, is on the ballot in no states, and doesn’t have an obvious upside or downside, it’s a perfect boogeyman to project all our fears on.
Is it fortunate or unfortunate that I have such huge fears about 2024 that this ghost of one hasn’t yet deepened the pile?