Some are scared that ‘No Labels’ will get Trump reelected

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Early this month, roughly 40 Washington power players packed into an office and Zoom screens at the center-left think tank Third Way’s headquarters above Connecticut Avenue to address a mortal threat to democracy, or at least the Democratic Party’s grip on power. Gathered together were Third Way’s leaders, top advisers to the two most recent Democratic presidents like Ron Klain and Jim Messina, former Democratic senators like Doug Jones and Claire McCaskill, and Twitter-famous ex-Republicans in the Lincoln Project crowd. The fear was not Donald Trump, exactly, or his legal troubles, or even a leftie nuisance like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rather, they were gathered to figure out what to do with a group of centrists called No Labels who had spent the last few months semi-openly plotting a third-party ticket in the presidential election. No Labels, they agreed, must be stopped at all costs.

Just a few years ago, Third Way considered No Labels one of its primary ideological allies in urging Democrats to seek consensus with Republicans and defend against progressive insurgencies. Now, however, Third Way’s leaders — especially the press-friendly strategists Jon Cowan, Matt Bennett, and Jim Kessler — have emerged as the vanguard of the effort to topple their old friends’ plans. Both groups were founded in part by ex–Bill Clintonites, but suspicion among loyal Democrats had been rising about No Labels for years, ever since the organization endorsed a conservative congressman over a moderate Democratic incumbent senator in 2014. Since then, whispers had been circulating about the true motivations of Nancy Jacobson, No Labels’ leader, and the level of involvement of her husband, Mark Penn, the ex-Bill and Hillary Clinton consigliere turned Trump defender. After all, in 2016 the group fêted Trump as a “problem solver”.

But the problem now was much bigger and far more urgent. No Labels is planning a $70 million effort to get a place on the ballot in all 50 states, and to those inside the Third Way office it was obvious that this would hand the White House to Trump by stripping Joe Biden’s moderate voters away from him. What wasn’t yet clear though was what exactly they should do about it. The conversation, said one attendee of the secret meeting, was less about crafting a specific plan and “more like, ‘This is really bad. And this is so dumb that it’s either calculated or naive.”

Calculated? Certainly, many contend, pointing to what little is known about No Labels’ donations, such as upward of $130,000, according to the New Republic, from Harlan Crow, the MAGA-inflected Texas billionaire and Clarence Thomas benefactor. (A 2018 report revealed No Labels had wooed Peter Thiel and a Koch, too, along with some Democratic tycoons.) Naïve? Duh, argue the strategists who saw pure ego-driven stubbornness in an effort to convince voters Trump and Biden were equally unacceptable — and that a bipartisan third-party ticket could actually win the White House for the first time in history.

Either way, as a very senior Democrat who’s been monitoring No Labels closely for months told me recently, “At some point, politics is figuring out what’s in your control, and then doing whatever you can. What’s within our control is the delegitimization of them.” In practice, that means explaining to potential donors that giving to No Labels is akin to “f*****g around and lighting millions of dollars on fire for washed-up, ’90s-era consultants.” At the meeting, attendees at least agreed that they could try convincing No Labels’ potential candidates that they would lose and be remembered as spoilers who re-elected Trump.

The attendees left galvanized but without an immediate, specific plan to do any of that. But the meeting itself made clear this is not just a small-ball intramural squabble between besuited gray-hairs with a penchant for vaguely named vehicles of influence peddling. No Labels has already secured access to the ballot in important battleground states like Arizona and Colorado — even as the group’s leaders insist they haven’t yet decided to field a ticket, don’t want to be a spoiler, and instead want to be an “insurance policy” if Trump looks likely to be the Republican nominee by next spring. They have also recently been extra-supportive of Joe Manchin, a Democrat who has caused Biden no shortage of governing headaches, just as he flirts openly with a third-party presidential run.

The infighting has already spilled over onto Capitol Hill, to messy effect. Late last month, Illinois congressman Brad Schneider was quoted in the New York Times warning that such a third-party candidate would reelect Trump. A moderate Democrat, he soon found that No Labels was bombarding his constituents with messages that he had “attacked the notion that you should have more choices in the 2024 presidential election.”

They say we don’t like the choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and they seem to draw an equivalency between those two that quite simply doesn’t exist,” Schneider said. “I’ve talked to some No Labels people, supporters who’ve tried to persuade me of the value of their idea and I say, ‘What’s your issue with Joe Biden?,’ and they have no policy issues of substance. They say, ‘Well, he’s 80 years old.’ [But] he’s a vibrant, healthy 80, and the alternative they’re pushing is a vibrant, healthy 75, and there’s not much of a difference in my eyes,” he told me, referring to Manchin before painstakingly unspooling a long list of Biden’s bipartisan achievements.

Schneider’s colleagues have largely backed him. “If No Labels runs a Joe Manchin against Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I think it will be a historic disaster,” Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips told me. New Jersey congressman Josh Gottheimer added: “This is not an effort I’m personally involved with or supportive of.” They are far from lefties. Phillips has said he didn’t think Biden should run for reelection and Gottheimer is a leader of the Problem Solvers caucus itself.

Third Way has been ringing alarm bells ever since David Brooks, a high priest of Washington centrism, approvingly revealed No Labels’ plan in a September 2022 column. Earlier this year, Third Way handed a memo using polls to argue the No Labels plan would “make it far more likely — if not certain — that Donald Trump returns to the White House” to [i]Politico[i]’s Playbook, thereby ensuring the chattering classes could no longer ignore it.

Third Way also considered a more direct early attack, debating this spring whether to try and dissuade possible No Labels candidates from pursuing the idea early on. Ultimately, they decided against it, for fear of a backfire. “What the world has discovered is [Manchin] keeps his own counsel — you’re not going to just go in and convince him,” Third Way’s Bennett, who is another Clinton White House alum, told me. Still, Third Way has been building a list of possible No Labels candidates to watch just in case, including independent Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, former Texas congressman Will Hurd, and billionaire Mark Cuban.

Third Way and its allies have said they’ve found that it’s No Labels’ own communications that have proven most effective in discrediting them, especially to the donors who remain curious. For one thing, there’s the June admission by Jacobson and No Labels strategist Ryan Clancy that they likely wouldn’t go ahead with the plan if someone other than Trump wins the Republican primary, suggesting that the effort isn’t about ideology at all, but the former president specifically.

The size of the third-party vote remains a major x-factor in next year’s presidential race, and No Labels is taking a step forward on Monday in advancing a third-party bid.

The group is holding a town hall event at St. Anselm College Monday evening in New Hampshire to tout its “Common Sense” policy platform, which was released over the weekend.

According to the New York Times, the platform includes “poll-tested proposals, some bland and others that would require major shifts for both parties.” Some of the highlights include offering a path to citizenship for so-called DREAMers, undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children; implementing universal background checks on gun purchases; and supporting renewable energy but allowing domestic fossil fuel production to continue.

The platform hedges on the issue of abortion, stating that it is “too important and complicated an issue to say it’s common sense to pass a law — nationally or in the states — that draws a clear line at a certain stage of pregnancy,” that section concludes,” per the Times.

And while No Labels is hosting the Monday event to highlight its new platform, the focus will also be on the headliners: former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Manchin has not ruled out joining the No Labels presidential ticket as he also weighs running for re-election to the Senate next year. And he could have a Republican counterpart. Former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan told the New York Times that he would consider joining a ticket as well if former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are the two major parties’ nominees.

“If it gets to the point where three-quarters of the people in America don’t like the choices, we might have to do something to put the country first,” Hogan said. “I’ve always said I put the country before party, so it’s something I wouldn’t reject out of hand.”

The third-party No Labels group will stay out of the 2024 U.S. presidential race if polling shows its candidate would play a "spoiler" role by helping to elect either the Democratic or Republican nominee, co-chairman Joe Lieberman said on Sunday.

The group will on Monday release what it calls a "common sense" agenda of policies meant to help unite the country behind a cooperative moderate alternative to the partisanship that characterizes contemporary U.S. politics.

We're not in this to be spoilers," Lieberman told ABC's "This Week" program. He spoke a day before the group was due to release its agenda in New Hampshire, an early primary state.

"If the polling next year shows, after the two parties have chosen their nominees, that in fact we will help elect one or another candidate, we're not going to get involved," he said.

Others involved in No Labels include businessman John Hope Bryant, civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis Jr., Republican former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, and Republican former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.

Former Democratic Senator Doug Jones said a third-party No Labels candidate could not secure the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. But he said a No Labels candidate could help Trump regain the White House he lost to Biden in 2020.

"It looks like they will be a spoiler in favor of Donald Trump and that will be the biggest threat to democracy that we have seen since Jan. 6," Jones told the ABC program, referring to a 2021 assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie rejected the group's approach outright on Sunday.
"I think it's a fool's errand," the former New Jersey governor told ABC, predicting that the 2024 election can be won only by a major party nominee.

Lieberman insisted that the group offered a much needed alternative. Lieberman, then-Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore's running mate in 2000, later quit the party to win a final term in the Senate as an independent,
"The problem is not the third choice that No Labels is offering the American people. The problem is the American people are not buying what the two parties are selling anymore," Lieberman said