I’m not going to sit here and impugn either the morals or the motives of the attempted fledgling 3rd party group No Labels. After all, they’re by far not the first group to try to provide an alternative to the existing two party system. But after what I’ve read of their plans, and an interview Joy Reid just conducted with No Labels national co-founder Benjamin Chavis, former head of the NAACP, if No Labels intentionally or unintentionally hypocritical, or they’re as crazy as the old cat lady around the corner.
First things first. As Chavis said, there las long been sentiment in the American public for a viable 3rd party to provide a choice from the two party system. Problem with that? It is at its base undemocratic. Benjamin Franklin called our system of government a constitutional Republic, and the Founding Fathers specifically set up a two party system to avoid the endless gridlock of England’s Parliamentary system of government. Our system is not designed for a viable 3rd party.
And the two main parties like that system just fine. Throughout our history the two have occasionally reconstituted, or changed names, but there has always been two major parties. And the system is rigged to make it almost impossible to create a national 3rd party, especially with 50 states, all with different rules and regulations.
Now let’s talk turkey. In his interview with Reid, as well as in their rollout announcement, No Labels calls themselves a centrist bipartisan organization. OK, whatever gets you through the night. But they go on to claim credit for literally creating The Problem Solvers Caucus as well as bringing together centrist Senators in both parties in order to pass major Biden legislation like the Infrastructure law.
Wait. Fun is fun, but let’s step back a moment. The Problem Solvers caucus has been around for several cycles now, and by the last count I saw, they’re no larger than the Freedom caucus. Why would the Problem Solvers caucus be taking advice from an outside group founded in 2010? And the same thing goes for a small group of centrist Senators in 2022?
The reason that this is so important is that No Labels, along with Chavis today is basing their whole existence on the success of Biden’s infrastructure law. Their logic is that since they brought these centrist groups together to pass the law, and now that Biden is running for reelection on the law that they brokered, think how much more really special sh*t their own candidates could accomplish if elected? Umm. To my recollection it was Biden, Harris, Schumer, and Pelosi who were burning up the phone lines and tweaking details to get the infrastructure bill across the finish line, not No Labels.
Next kvetch. Chavis said, correctly, that the group has endorsed no candidate for President. Hypocritical to the ult when you look at other No Labels statements. They have already stated that if Donald Trump is not the nominee, then they’ll step down. They’re slickly mum about what happens if a Trump clone like DeSantis gets the nomination. They also have said that if Biden is miles ahead in the polling, they’ll drop out. Which is stupid, since if Biden is miles ahead, who cares if they’re there? Pardon my cynicism, but this sounds about as fair and impartial as a WWE referee in a cage match.
But I saved the best for last. What you are about to hear is either the height of cynical hypocrisy, or the ultimate in narcissistic stupidity. Their whole basic hypothesis and justification for pissing in the punchbowl is that their polling shows that a wide s let’s have a quick lesson from chapter two of Politics for Dummies. Whitch of the electorate doesn’t want a 2024 rematch of 2020 with Biden vs Trump. Which they say means that everybody in the middle wants them instead.
*Sigh* OK, let’s read from chapter two of Politics for Dummies. Of course nobody in their right mind wants a 2020 rematch of Biden v Trump. You ain’t alone, pretty much every reputable poll shows that the idea is poison to the electorate. But No Labels is missing the main point, so here it is.
Even if you ass clowns jump into the race, it is still going to be a 2020 rematch between Biden and Trump. Even if you ballot mice jump into the fray, hold a convention in some Holiday Inn in April, anoint a Manchin-Hogan ticket, and start making moo-moo noises about getting space on the debate stages, it’s still going to be a Biden-Trump rematch of 2020. Because. YOU’RE. MARGINAL. AND. IRRELEVANT. The only thing your entry into the race can do is to possibly flip the result of 2020 into the result of 2016. And from everything you’ve said and written to this point, I can’t believe that is your goal.
From everything I can see, this whole No Labels movement is nothing more than a cheap con, and a chance for some out of power politicians to lick their nuts in public. Their nonsensical screed states that their goal is to raise some $70 million for their push to get on the national ballot. But this monthly ladies bridge club has been active since 2010! How much do they have on hand in filthy lucre right mow? And they’re as shady as Trump. For now, they’re not listing themselves as a political party, instead calling themselves a non profit organization so they can avoid disclosing funding to the FEC. That alone tells me all I need to know.
Keep beating the drum Joe. This country’s population has squandered their time on stupid entertainment which has atrophied their goddamn brains. It will be the Democrats versus planetary doom after the stupid fascists are done. FACT.
I don’t usually watch Reid’s show but I did tonight and am glad I did because she pressed him quite a bit. As you say, he claimed if the race isn’t close they won’t bother fielding a candidate. Reid kept after him pointing out anyone the GOP might nominate, especially DeSantis would be exactly the kind of candidate that’s both too extreme and actually at with his own and apparently No Labels as a whole on virtually every major issue. She got him to say if things were close = they wouldn’t field a candidate! In essence he agreed it would be bad for No Labels supported ideals and goals for them to risk playing spoiler and putting Trump back in the WH. Or someone as bad but without all the outrageous distractions.
Which made me think… If you aren’t going to run a candidate if it’s NOT close and aren’t going to run a candidate if it IS close then why the F**k is your group trying to be part of the scene at all? I think you nailed it in that it’s a grifting and self nut-licking type of thing.
I disagree about the founders wanting two major Parties. Most didn’t want any at all but it was inevitable from the beginning because the ORIGINAL Federalist, who were exact OPPOSITES in every way to the modern a$$holes who misappropriated their name and identify when choosing the title The Federalist Society orgainized into a poltical Party almost out of the gate. They were the ones who drove the process of scrapping the Articles of Confederation and forming a more workable government, one in which there would be a strong central federal government. Many, most notably Jefferson were opposed to a strong central government which is why the Constitutional Convention was so contentious at times. But there were enough people who saw things Jefferson’s way that from early on we had two major Parties. I do agree completely that’s proven to be quite enough.
I’m not completely opposed to the idea of a third Party, just not for Presidential politics. If there was a third Pary that concentrated on lower federal offices and even state politics it could do some good. But it’s always been attempted by building it from the top (President) down instead of from the bottom up. If a third Party were to become viable having been built over multiple cycles from the bottom up it would probably eat up the weaker of the two major Parties. More importantly, if it was built the proper way as I’ve suggested gerrymandering would lose most of it’s potency. That’s reason enough to do it.
However, as you say third Parties are about egos as in the Presidential spotlight, if only for a few months in Presidential election years. And for the most part they’ve been incredibly damaging. Contrary to the narrative Perot took a lot of voters from Clinton, almost as many as Bush and the “Bush would have won if not for Perot” is hogwash. Simply not true. But both Nader and Stein handed the Presidency and with it the SCOTUS we now have to Republicans. Worse, F**kup Republican Presidents.
One final note from that interview and the question I didn’t hear Reid ask but she damn well should have. He guest repeatedly insisted they wouldn’t run a candidate unless they had a certain path to an Electoral College victory. I don’t know what that dude is smoking but if he actually thinks there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of such a thing happening he needs a long stay in a padded room with the men in their little white coats brining him soft food (no utensils needed) as much as Trump does. So, Reid SHOULD have asked him “Can you name even a single state where you think you could win the vote and therefore their Electoral Votes? Just One? If so which one?
He’ll probably do other interviews and that needs to be asked, and an answer demanded every time. He and No Labels will become a laughingstock and fade away.
Democrats need to run on democracy and freedom – strengthening our democracy by ending gerrymandering and voter suppression, freedom to control your own body and raise your kids w/o unnecessary government intrusion. No Labels is a front for corporate America that isn’t happy with what the MAGAts have done to their beloved Chamber of Commerce republican party. We’ve all learned, from examples like Elon Musk and the guy on the submersible that imploded, that with great wealth does not come great wisdom.
“Benjamin Franklin called our system of government a constitutional Republic, and the Founding Fathers specifically set up a two party system to avoid the endless gridlock of England’s Parliamentary system of government. Our system is not designed for a viable 3rd party.”
Um, Murf? You’re wrong about the “specifically set up a two party system” bit. There’s NO evidence the Founding Fathers intended for the existence of “parties” (at least, as we know them today) as part of the national discourse. Today’s “parties” came about as an EVOLUTION of the division in philosophy over how exactly the “constitutional republic” would function: “Federalist” or “Anti-Federalist.” (The truly interesting thing about the nomenclature is that the “Federalists” managed to get their name first so their opposition became, by default, “anti-Federalists” even though the Anti-Federalists only had a couple of relatively trivial distinctions from the Federalists; we have the Anti-Federalists to thank for the Bill of Rights.) After the Constitution was ratified, the Anti-Federalists basically had no purpose but some of their “leaders” formed an “Anti-Administration” Party (not really opposing George Washington but, rather, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and his policies) which eventually became the Democratic-Republican Party (originally just the “Republican Party” then the “Jefferson Republican Party”).
So, basically, our modern “binary-party” system was simply the result of a simplistic framework of “support/oppose” rather than an intended plan. (And, of course, during the Revolution, the system was between the pro-independence “Patriots” and the pro-British “Loyalists.” No one ever seems to comment on those–if any–who chose neither option, perhaps because such a neutral course was automatically seen as “the enemy” by whichever group dominated an area.)
As to the “endless gridlock of England’s Parliamentary system,” that’s an absurd contention. There weren’t really any “parties” as such in Parliament until after the American Revolution; the “parties” were little more than various factions of the same organization. The Revolution would lead to a more distinctive “party” system but, before that, there was a lot more factionalism involved than any real policy distinctions (sort of the “we accept a 10% tax cut” versus “we accept a 20% tax cut”); the Revolution led to a level of real policy differences (“let the Colonies be independent” vs “crush the colonials’ spirit” vs “make the Colonies a dominion” type of infighting). For more than a century before the American Revolution, there was a kind of “two-party” generalization (the “Whig” vs “Tory” system) and members of Parliament tended to lean toward one category or the other but those terms were just as often applied to factions within a single party; Lord North’s American Revolution-era Prime Ministry, for instance, was derided as a “Tory” ministry even though Lord North considered himself a Whig and many of his Cabinet ministers were also Whigs (Lord North’s position would be considered more along the lines of the “anti-corporatist” sentiments heard by many in both the Democratic and Republican Parties).
Manchin is out next election. Why bother writing anything about his attempts at trying to stay/be relevant?
I’ve been aware of “No Labels for a while, and was immediately put off by its name. “No Labels” is just a way to claim to be “non-partisan” as in municipal and school board elections. And just like that, it is a way for the party and its candidates to conceal their true politics and policies until after they get elected. Colorado Springs’s 2023 mayoral election is a case in point. Certainly everyone is more than just a label. But at least a label stands for something. “No Labels” stands for nothing (and, as the saying goes, will fall for anything.)
Always beware of people who will not tell you what they stand for.