Why You Need to Pay Attention to What’s Happening in New Hampshire Today
The No Labels extended universe – also known as the third party effort to elect Trump – is meeting in New Hampshire today. You need to know about it, and you need to know what’s going on.
Today, we wrote an op-ed with Union member Jo Jordon in the Union Leader, laying out the stakes. Here’s what we said. Please share as widely as you can.
You recall that a storyteller must answer six questions when weaving their tale: Who? What? When? Where? Why? And of course, how?
This evening in Manchester, No Labels, a new, billionaire-backed political party, will tell you that it’s time for a third-party candidate to run for president of the United States. They’ll tell you that it’s just an ‘insurance policy’ against Joe Biden v. Donald Trump, part two.
That’s all they’re going to tell you. Don’t believe them.
Who are the people that make up No Labels? They’ll tell you they’re a “movement” of “commonsense” Americans. In truth, the group is little more than Nancy Jacobson (longtime, now ex-communicated Democratic Party grandee), a few washed up political insiders, and some Republican staffers.
But we cannot forget No Labels’ donors.
Who are they? We don’t know. When asked, the reply is, democracy needs anonymity. Does it? Is that what’s holding democracy back — the lack of dark money groups and plutocrat billionaires attempting to shape events to their own benefit?
They will fix democracy?
What are they planning to do? No Labels wants to run a third-party candidate for president. Claiming that Americans are ready for more choices, this ill-equipped and disorganized but well-funded group is claiming their unicorn-like mystery candidate can be both competitive against the Republican and Democratic nominees, and they can achieve 270 electoral votes and upset the entire American political system. They cannot.
When does No Labels plan to launch this quixotic mission? In 2028, when we (hopefully) have entered a new political epoch in American politics, with democracy secured? No. They want to split the vote next year. You see, No Labels sees Joe Biden and Donald Trump as equivalent — that they’re both equally bad for the American people.
They are not. Joe Biden is a normal president, doing normal things as a normal Democrat. Donald Trump is an authoritarian, would-be tin pot dictator who’s already attempted to overthrow the government once.
Why does No Labels want to do this?
As noted above, they claim that neither political party represents the people. This is false. No Labels is nothing less than an unofficial (as of yet) wing of the Donald Trump for President campaign. Their own polling demonstrates that an unnamed independent candidate a) cannot win and b) pulls more votes from Biden than Trump.
In our first-past-the-post system, whoever gets the most votes in a state wins its Electoral Votes. Another poll, recently conducted by a bi-partisan group of pro-democracy activists, proves this as well.
Penn, Jacobson and their team want relevance. Their donors (including the likes of arch-conservative Harlan Crow) want anyone but Biden.
Where will they pull this off? This is the magic question. Not only must No Labels achieve ballot access in enough states to equal 270 electoral votes. They then must find enough states to win the presidency.
This is an impossibility. No Labels’ own maps show them winning the well-known swing states of Oregon, Texas, Florida, and Delaware. Yes, Delaware, Joe Biden’s home. We have worked on independent presidential bids. The math does not work for a run-of-the-mill politician, which is the only kind No Labels will be able to recruit.
Finally, how? How will No Labels do this? They cannot tell you. They won’t tell you. Why? Because to them, winning doesn’t matter. But for argument’s sake, let’s say they try. They believe their vanilla ice cream policy proposals will bring voters to the polls. How will they choose their candidate? They can’t (or won’t) tell you that, either. On a call with her donors, Jacobson said they hadn’t yet figured out how to choose Senator Joe Manchin as their presidential nominee. It doesn’t matter, of course, because this whole boondoggle is a one-way mission: To reelect Donald Trump and wreck American democracy.
The story No Labels wants to tell you now is that they are the group to reorder American politics. They want to tell you that they’ve figured out how to choose a candidate who can appeal to 40% of American voters. They want to tell you they can reorder an electoral map that changes only slightly every four years. What they won’t tell you, and what matters most, is their efforts, even in failure, will help Donald Trump return to the White House. Why would anyone risk that?
-Rick & Reed