Who’s Afraid of No Labels? The Democrats, Apparently.

By Noah Rothman

Monday, April 03, 2023

Americans may be forced in 2024 to choose between reelecting one of two unpopular presidents. With that looming fiasco in mind, the political vehicles that promise to steer an independent presidential ticket into the White House are revving their engines. One of those groups, the self-described “centrist, bipartisan” political organization No Labels, has been laying $70 million worth of groundwork for a “unity ticket” in 2024.

Given Trump voters’ loose attachment to a Republican Party that rejects Donald Trump as its helmsman, it’s reasonable to expect that it would be GOP loyalists who would object most strenuously to an ideologically amorphous third-party presidential bid. The Washington Post’s reporting, however, suggests it’s Democrats who are tormented by the expectation that a No Labels ticket would chew more into their party’s share of the vote.

The Arizona Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to block No Labels from ballot access in that state on procedural grounds. Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way has argued that the plot is “going to reelect Trump,” and Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has accused No Labels of wanting “to play the role of spoiler.”

Former GOP strategist turned GOP critic Stuart Stevens called the No Labels initiative “dangerous.” Another repentant veteran of Republican electoral politics, Mark McKinnon, dismissed the prospect of a No Labels ticket, confessing his faith that the group would “do the right thing” in the end. But even the group’s flirtation with this project led Brookings Institution scholar William Galston to resign from it in protest. In so doing, he attacked the initiative for establishing an “equivalence between President Biden” and Trump that he doesn’t believe exists.

The Democratic tizzy extends beyond the Post’s pages. A three-minute campaign-style video produced by No Labels and reviewed by the New Republic’s Daniel Strauss posits the claim that both major parties had been hijacked by their respective ideological fringes. But the video does not mention either Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris — a development he believed was “telling.” What it told was stated clearly by New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait: No Labels is building a “political doomsday device.” Given Biden’s modest margin of victory in 2020, Chait added, “any third-party campaign would likely enable Republicans to win another presidential election simply by consolidating the right-wing base.”

Unspoken but undeniable in the subtext of these displays of handwringing is that Joe Biden’s record in office is not one we would associate with an unstoppable political juggernaut. If that’s the assumption under which No Labels’ critics are operating, it’s hard to argue against it.

The public’s confidence in the state of the economy is lower than it was at any point in the Trump presidency, including during the pandemic. Economists still expect the economy to lurch into a recession this year, but the consensus is now around a downturn that begins closer to the end of the year — when the presidential campaign season begins in earnest. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published in early March revealed that only 15 percent of American adults believed the country was on the “right track.” Joe Biden’s job-approval rating remains anemic, and the number of Americans disapproving of his record has spiked in recent weeks.

After perusing the No Labels–sponsored polling to which he was privy, TNR’s Strauss found that a centrist presidential ticket “would take away voters evenly from both major tickets” so long as the nominees were Biden and Trump. If, however, the two parties nominated “generic” candidates, “the No Labels ticket would take more from the Democratic ticket.” There’s no such thing as a “generic” presidential nominee, of course. The grueling primary process ensures that whoever makes it to the nomination is well defined and thoroughly polarizing. But that poll’s finding does lead to one inarguable conclusion: Joe Biden’s Democratic Party is vulnerable.