The paper reported Thursday that No Labels had given up because “no candidate” with a “credible path to winning the White House” had “failed to emerge.” The candidate’s failure to “emerge” was not due to a lack of effort on No Labels’ part. Many prominent people have asked to run, including Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-Virginia), former Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, and former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. I refused.
Mr. Christie was the clearest in explaining why he is not running. “If there’s no path to victory, and in some way, shape, or form my candidacy helps Donald Trump become president again, that’s not the path forward,” he said in late March. “While there was a conceptual desire for a third option in the next election, there was no realistic path to victory,” Christie said.
Perhaps no one has played a bigger role in stopping no-label tickets than Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president of communications for the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way. I spoke with Bennett in his email about unlabeling and why it’s so important to stop it. This conversation has been edited.
Was No Label based on the false premise that voters needed other options?
They weren’t just saying it would be a place to store protest votes, like Jill Stein did. They said they were going to win, that they were going to defy history, polls and political physics and actually win in the third party. As we’ve pointed out many times by analyzing polls, electoral maps, and more, that’s ridiculous. The question of whether voters want another option is quite different from the question of whether they will actually choose a third party in November.
So why was it a threat to Biden and therefore an aid to Trump and anti-democratic forces?
Trump cannot win more than about 47% of the vote, so he cannot win without third-party support, as he did in 2016. Trump lost in 2020 because there was no third party. In this cycle, a third party will help Trump in the same way. His ceiling is low, but his support base is solid. His voters won’t turn away from him.
Biden’s ceiling is higher. Many people who aren’t excited about him will choose him in a binary race with Trump. But his argument is softer: a small group of voters, whom pollsters call “double haters,” may choose a third party if available.
What did Third Way do to get the word out?
Everything we did was to serve one goal: to convince reliable candidates to decline a no-label recommendation. We first sounded the alarm about this threat after it was published in September 2022. We have assembled a coalition that ranges from the far left to the centre-right. We have published dozens of analyzes of their plans and claims. We persuaded many of their allies to oppose the 2024 plan.
And as each candidate went public, we continually conducted personal persuasion campaigns convincing people in their personal and professional circles to decline. It started with Manchin and Larry Hogan, who first emerged as No Label candidates. But as names came up, we continued this work along with about 20 other people. The effort used mainstream media, social media, and even paid digital advertising, but it was never widely targeted to voters. Rather, our message was always directed at the political class and those around the candidates.
What would you say to No Labels supporters about voting for Biden?
Remember that elections are a choice between calm, rational moderates and highly malicious, unstable, and would-be dictators. Moreover, Biden’s personality and policy choices align very closely with the arguments espoused by No Labels. But whatever your views on Biden, this is not a referendum on his first term. Even if you’re disappointed or worried about his age, if you value responsible centrist governance, you should vote for him. Not voting, or throwing away your vote for another party (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stein, etc.), is the same as voting for Trump. Pressure Biden to move to the center all you want, but don’t be complicit in putting our democracy at risk by putting a lunatic back in power.
No Labels declined, but Kennedy remained. He’s only been on the ballot in six states so far (Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah) and, as Bennett told me, “some kind of bizarre attack from the fringes.” However, there is a possibility of a draw. Otherwise, there remain some voters who might join the Biden coalition. Even a few hundred or even a few thousand votes can have a decisive impact.
There are three lessons to be learned from the no-label debacle. First, third parties with run-of-the-mill policies have virtually no chance of drawing voters away from the two major parties. Second, it is intellectually dishonest and politically disingenuous to claim that the choices of both parties are unacceptable when pluralistic democracy, the rule of law, and objective truth are under attack. It’s also a waste. For those who claim to represent the center of the political spectrum, it’s clear that center-left Democratic Biden is by far the best choice. (Sure enough, Joe Cunningham, national director of No Labels, announced that he would vote for Biden this time.) Finally, from the experience of other democracies under siege, we know that how to defeat an authoritarian strongman , we see that anti-authoritarian forces must unite despite some policy differences (e.g. Brazil, Poland).
Without the unlabeled ticket, Biden and the Democrats are likely to win in November. That’s no small thing.
