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Dark Money-Backed 'No Labels' Drops Third-Party Presidential Bid
One observer quipped that No Labels was calling it quits "to spend more time with their lobbyists."
Apr 04, 2024
Less than a month after No Labels announced it would nominate a "unity ticket" for the 2024 presidential election, the group said Thursday that it is abandoning its longshot third-party White House bid.
"No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House," the group said in a statement. "No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down."
As Common Dreams reported last month, No Labels—whose own leader has admitted is "not in it to win it" but rather to "give people a choice"—has poured millions of dollars in dark money contributions into a quixotic run that critics like MoveOn executive director Rahna Epting warned could "swing the election to Donald Trump," the twice-impeached former Republican president and presumptive GOP nominee, 91 federal and state criminal charges notwithstanding.
No Labels had floated former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a failed 2024 GOP presidential contender, as possible "unity ticket" candidates. However, the group ultimately found no takers.
Top No Labels donors include billionaire and multimillionaire Trump supporters like Nelson Peltz, private equity executive Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, and former 20th Century Fox CEO James Murdoch. Louis Bacon, the billionaire CEO of hedge fund Moore Capital Management, donated $1 million each to No Labels and the Republican Party after giving the maximum allowable contribution to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, formerly one of the conservative Democrats in Congress and now an Independent.
Even with all that financial backing, No Labels' path to the ballot has been dubious. MoveOn has urged states to investigate the group for allegedly misleading voters through deceptive canvassing methods that result in their disenfranchisement.
The U.S. two-party system has been criticized for monopolizing political power at the expense of democracy and voter choice by actively working to thwart all viable third-party and independent candidates. However, political pragmatists note what they say is the folly of running unwinnable races.
"Third-party candidates are the fools gold of this election," MoveOn said on social media, adding that neither No Labels nor conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy "have ballot access in all 50 states and mathematically cannot win."
"They can only play spoiler," the group added.
However, while Democrats and Republicans often automatically gain ballot access, the two parties are largely behind state laws that create often insurmountable barriers for third-party and independent challengers.
Other progressives also welcomed the news of No Labels' withdrawal—but with a warning. Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, quipped on social media that No Labels was quitting "to spend more time with their lobbyists."
"Billionaires pump millions into No Labels, and in return, their politicians push policies that transfer wealth from the working-class back to billionaires," she added. "Just because they aren't running a presidential candidate doesn't mean they aren't still a serious threat to democracy."
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It's Almost 2024. Where’s the Party of the Working Class?
Is it possible to build a political party that truly speaks to the needs of working people in an era of runaway inequality and incessant mass layoffs?
Dec 27, 2023
A quarter century ago, the late labor leader Tony Mazzocchi issued a dire warning. Unless a labor party was created, working people would abandon the Democrats and flock towards authoritarians who would promise job protections and economic stability. Mazzocchi found enormous resonance among workers when he declared, “The bosses have two parties. We need one of our own.”
That rings even more true today for many working-class people. But is it possible to build a political party that truly speaks to the needs of working people in an era of runaway inequality and incessant mass layoffs?
Because neither Mazzocchi nor other labor leaders wanted to create a spoiler party that would siphon off Democratic votes and elect Republicans, the idea never found a way to gain significant traction. But the opportunity to create a new party would be more likely if one of the two major parties imploded, which might be happening right now to the Republican Party as it wallows in the fantasy world of Trump’s election lies and conspiracies.
Liz Cheney, the former number-three ranking Republican leader in the House of Representatives and the daughter of George W. Bush’s vice president Dick Cheney, has impeccable conservative bona fides. But she no longer has a home in a party dominated by Trump acolytes. After voting to impeach President Trump and having co-chaired the January 6th congressional investigation, she lost her Wyoming seat in the House to a MAGA Republican.
Having worked all my adult life in support of labor, it saddens me even to speculate about a battle for the allegiance of the working class between the corporate Democrats and the right-wing Republicans.
Cheney is currently considering a third-party presidential run which, in effect, would create a second Republican Party. Because she sees Trump as a clear and present danger to democracy, she wants to defeat him by denying him ‘moderate’ Republican votes. (These days the definition of a ‘moderate’ seems to be anyone who accepts that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.)
She is aware that her presidential run could launch a rival Republican party, but said, “I don’t know if our party can be saved. We may need to build a new party.” And so, it is conceivable we could soon have three major parties—the Democrats, the Trump Republicans, and the Cheney Republicans.
Which of these is the party of the working class?
Not the Cheney Republicans. Her party would draw the corporate never-Trumpers who also are fiscal conservatives, seeking to balance the federal budget and trim social welfare programs. These corporate Republicans would have little use for labor unions and labor law protections. They would stand in opposition to raising the minimum wage and would oppose facilitating union organizing. They would also likely advocate for an increase in the Social Security retirement age, which harms many in the working class who tend to die younger than higher-income people. As a result, it’s highly doubtful that Cheney and her backers would be able to attract much working-class support or that of any labor unions.
The Democrats might be feeling cocky from a Republican Party implosion. That should make it much easier for Democrats to retain working-class support. Then again, there is the risk that the Democrats might move even closer to Wall Street as the Cheney party becomes a serious competitor for the backing of wealthy financiers who are socially liberal and alienated by MAGA. Unlike the Democrats, Cheney wouldn’t have to straddle between supporting policies that enrich the well-to-do while also claiming to support the working-class.
Starting with Bill Clinton, the competition for Wall Street cash pulled the Democrats further away from the working class, who the Dems thought had no place else to go. It could happen again.
Moving even closer to Wall Street could compound the difficulties that the Democrats already have. Not only are white working-class voters moving away from the Democrats, but so are Black and Hispanic voters. Biden’s support among non-white voters has fallen from the 70 percent he received in 2020 against Trump, to 53 percent today. And the decline has been dramatic among non-white voters with no college education and whose incomes are less than $50,000 per year. Many of those voters are unlikely to rush toward the Trump or Cheney Republicans, but they might instead sit out the election, which would be enormously harmful to the Democrats.
This creates an opportunity for the Trump Republicans to draw working-class voters by focusing on job security. But the Republicans seem fixated on culture wars and therefore run the risk of alienating working-class people of all shades and ethnicities who have become more liberal since 2010 on key social issues, including immigration. The research done for my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, strongly suggests that the number one working-class issue is job security, not critical race theory, not gendered bathrooms, or Mickey Mouse. Taking on corporate power has resonance, and for good reason. These workers have suffered through nearly 30 million mass layoffs since 1996.
Right-wing Republicans have made a handful of selective anti-corporate gestures. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Oh.) is going after Silicon Valley corporations over privacy issues and wants to break them up. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is pushing legislation to help shareholders change corporate woke policies. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) even introduced a bill to get corporate money out of politics. Also, there are Republican attacks against corporations over diversity policies. There are attacks against corporate climate change-oriented investment policies, and even attacks against Disney for opposing legislation that would be harmful to the LGBTQ+ communities in Florida. But if you have had the stomach to listen to the Republican presidential debates you have heard the candidates competing to flash their anti-labor credentials, too.
It’s unlikely that the current flock of Trump Republicans will accelerate working-class support. But that could change in a hurry if they dared to attack corporate mass layoffs, the way Trump did by successfully pressuring the Carrier Corporation to refrain from moving a facility from Indiana to Mexico in 2017.
A much better outcome for the working class and the country would be for the Democratic Party to attack wasteful mass layoffs caused by stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts. When GM recently announced a $10 billion stock buyback designed to please Wall Street, the Democrats were silent. They missed an opportunity to hold the company to account for enriching Wall Street instead of investing more in clean car research and development. Rather than compete with Tesla, the top officers and Wall Street hedge funds pocketed the money. Stock buybacks before 1982 were considered stock price manipulation. The Democrats should call for their elimination.
Allow me to walk out on a limb and make an early projection: The party with the nerve to take on Wall Street and fight against each and every mass layoff is likely to become the party of working people.
Having worked all my adult life in support of labor, it saddens me even to speculate about a battle for the allegiance of the working class between the corporate Democrats and the right-wing Republicans. It just shows how far the Democrats have drifted away from the real needs of working people.
And sadly, Tony Mazzocchi’s statement may soon need amending: “The bosses have three parties: we need one of our own.”Keep ReadingShow Less
Voting for President Is Not an Exercise in Personal Expression
Whatever flaws you may see in Joe Biden, he is the only actual alternative to Trump’s reign.
Nov 26, 2023
Many Americans are unhappy about the likely 2024 choice being offered them for president—Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. But two third party alternatives surfaced recently: Jill Stein of the Green Party and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who appears to be seeking the “No Labels Party” nomination.
They join two other non-major-party candidates, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and left-wing intellectual and activist Cornell West.
These candidates appear to offer voters a broad menu of political ideologies and beliefs from which to choose—from Kennedy’s contention that Americans are enslaved by vaccination record-keeping to Manchin’s claimed centrism to West’s plans for abolishing poverty and Stein’s condemnation of corporate-dominated politics.
Voting for Nader, the candidate who appeared to have stronger liberal credentials, proved to have far-reaching consequences—but the opposite of what most Green Party voters would likely have desired.
One thing that is not on the third-party menu is an opportunity to vote for someone who could actually become president. There isn’t a ghost of a chance Jill Stein, Joe Manchin, Robert F. Kennedy, or Cornell West will be elected.
Nonetheless, their campaigns could have a powerful impact: helping elect Donald Trump. The Green Party achieved an equivalent disaster before.
In 2000, the Green Party fielded a candidate, Ralph Nader, against Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. In what turned out to be a remarkably close election, the result turned on Florida.
Nader received 97,488 votes in the state, votes that otherwise would have tilted strongly in favor of Gore: In his book, Crashing the Party, Nader acknowledges that 13% more of his voters would have gone for Gore than for Bush. These 12,700 votes would have given Gore an indisputable victory.
Instead, the vote was close enough for a right-wing Supreme Court to be in a position to halt the voting when Bush was only 537 votes ahead, bestowing Florida—and the presidency—on Bush.
How did voting for the Green Party work out?
Foreign Policy: The neocons around Bush had long targeted Iraq for overthrow. Following 9/11, they lied us into an invasion that led to 4,500 dead American soldiers, more than 165,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and a Middle East in the chaos that spawned ISIS.
Climate change: In Al Gore, we could have had a president in 2001 who really understood the climate threat. Instead, we had the pro-oil Bush presidency, initiating nearly two decades of political stagnation on the emerging climate crisis.
Democracy and Constitutional Rights: Bush got to appoint two right-wing Supreme Court justices, who joined three other Republican Justices to give us the 5-4 decision in the money-rules-all Citizens United case. The two Bush justices were also part of 5-4 majorities in cases that (1). invented a personal constitutional right to own firearms, and (2). eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, precipitating an avalanche of laws disenfranchising large numbers of minority, elderly, and youth voters.
Voting for Nader, the candidate who appeared to have stronger liberal credentials, proved to have far-reaching consequences—but the opposite of what most Green Party voters would likely have desired.
Third party candidates regularly tell us we’re entitled to express our own views in voting. But voting for president is not an exercise in personal expression and it is not like seeking your true love or dream candidate. Voting is what you do to effect the best outcome for your country among the real possibilities.
The GOP has ceased to be a normal party that respects majority rule and the rule of law, and Donald Trump has made clear his intentions of dismantling our democracy. Whatever flaws you may see in Joe Biden, he is the only actual alternative to Trump’s reign.
It’s as simple as this: If you vote for supposed “progressives” Jill Stein or Cornell West, you’re reducing the votes needed to stop Trump.
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