Hello, we are No Labels. We are a quadrennial scam dedicated to the proposition that the United States needs cooperative bipartisan system in which the two parties are the Republican Party and the Light Republican Party. We are also dedicated to the proposition that the Era Of Big Government Is Over, as declared by President Bill Clinton, who represents the outer limits of American progressivism in the modern era. Please send money.
From Politico:
But the group said it would likely exit the race entirely if Donald Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination — even as more conservative candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis run to Trump’s right. CEO Nancy Jacobson, who was in Chicago in early June to talk to donors, and another senior member of the group spoke about their plans at length during an interview with POLITICO. No Labels has been flirting openly with recruiting a moderate superstar like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to lead its ticket. Such a gambit could dramatically scramble the presidential race, and Democrats fear it could siphon votes from their side. “No Labels isn’t going to be in the business of making subjective judgments between the various leaders of both parties. What we are going to do is look pretty relentlessly at the data,” said Ryan Clancy, chief strategist for No Labels, during the Zoom interview.
In other words, these giddy "centrists" would consider throwing up — in every sense of the phrase — a candidate only if the former president* is the nominee. But, of course, that wouldn't in any way be considered to be a spoiler campaign as regards the incumbent.
On the idea that No Labels could play spoiler and ultimately help Trump, Jacobson pushed back. She called Jill Stein a “fringe” candidate who “of course” pulled Democrats with her Green Party bid in 2016. “What we’re proposing here is more of an independent-moderate, like Ross Perot [who] takes from both” parties, said Jacobson, referring to the billionaire who ran an independent campaign in 1992. No Labels hasn’t formally identified who it would like to recruit to head its ticket, but Jacobson says whoever it is will be a candidate who mirrors Perot.
Yes, I think a plausible alternative to the current Democratic president, and a chance that one of the current crop of GOP hopefuls would become president, is a campaign run 30 years ago by a crazy rich guy from Texas. Ross Perot was not a "moderate." Joe Manchin is not a "moderate." And No Labels is a make-work grift for people who are nostalgic for the golden progressive era of welfare reform, a deregulated derivatives market, and many more death penalty offenses. Och, thim was the days.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
