The Evidence Is In: No Labels Should Get Out.
Polls and focus groups make clear that a No Labels ticket would only serve to help re-elect Trump.
by
Sarah Longwell
SEN. JOE MANCHIN’S ANNOUNCEMENT last week that he won’t seek re-election to the Senate and will instead finish his term “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is interest in building a movement to mobilize the middle” sure makes it sound as if he’s considering an independent presidential bid, likely with the organization No Labels.
If anyone were the target audience for No Labels’s $70 million gambit to recruit and run a “unity” third-party ticket with a moderate Republican (possibly former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan) and moderate Democrat (likely Manchin), it would be me, a proud Never Trump Republican and moderate squish.
But after conducting hundreds of focus groups with voters across the political spectrum, it’s clear to me that a unity ticket in 2024 isn’t just fantastical; it’s dangerous. A centrist unity ticket appeals to exactly one demographic: swing voters who will decide the outcome of the 2024 election...
Here's a fun bit ot trivia.
Back when Ms. Longwell was a Republicans lobbyist and managing director of the American Beverage Institute which...
"...lobbies on behalf of the alcohol industry, such as by arguing that the risks of drunk driving have been exaggerated and laws that have been adopted to reduce it are ineffective or inappropriate and opposing the lowering of the blood alcohol concentration limit for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in Utah. According to Berman, 'Sarah always had a knife in her teeth'."
...I was writing posts warning about the No Labels scam.
In fact, next month will be the 13th anniversary of this post I wrote warning about the No Labels scam two days after it introduced itself back in 2010:
Dead Center
Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!
And oh my, didn't the savvy D.C. elite roll out the red carpet for them.
Back then, taking a position against against No Labels was like taking a position against the Iraq War before it went tits up, or taking a position against the poisonous Both Sides Do It lie before slow, constant pressure from readers of this blog (bless you) and listeners to The Professional Left podcast (bless you) and the rise of Donald Trump (which the Both Sides Do It lie facilitated) made it into a punchline.
Mind you, the Both Sides Do It lie remains an ongoing problem. It's clear that unless the social and professional equivalent of a bazooka in not kept firmly pressed to the head of the mainstream media every fucking day, they will automatically snap back like memory plastic to their original, craven Both Siderist shape.
So here's the bad news for Ms. Longwell.
The time to stop No Labels from becoming a dagger at the throat of our democracy was 13 years ago, back when "moderate squishes" like you were creaming themselves over the idea that a mighty Third Party oak could take root in the fictional Centrist soil between the bomb-throwing, racist, obstructionist Limbaugh/Tea Bagger/McConnell Right and the...?
Wait a minute?
Remind me again who the equally vicious, intractable, hate-mongering Left had put into office as the "Extremes on the Left" counterpoint to the bomb-throwing, racist, obstructionist Limbaugh/Tea Bagger/McConnell Right?
Oh that's right.
It was this guy.
A guy who could have been assembled in a No Labels Perfect Candidate laboratory had in not been for the fact that No Labels was nothing but bullshit from Day One.
And all of us crackpot, alarmist Liberals who live out here in the Real World and aren't drunk on D.C. Both Siderist popskull could see it.
You see, Ms. Longwell, No Labels was never anything but the physical and financial manifestation of the lie you on the Right and craven D.C. Centrist dupes (who -- spoiler! -- all now appear to be contributors at The Bulwark) kept telling yourself so you could go right on supporting the bomb-throwing, racist, obstructionist Limbaugh/Tea Bagger/McConnell Right and still sleep at night.
And now it's almost certainly too late. Those comforting Both Siderist fairy tales all of you told yourselves year after year so that you could stomach working for evil men have grown fangs and claws don't care what you think anymore.
So sure, No Labels Should Get Out, just as (I wrote in response to a similar exercise in abyss-shouting early today) the GOP should also consider filling its pockets with stones and walking into the sea, but they're not going to do that either.
Makes me wonder what it is about "The Left was right about the Right all along" that these Never Trumpers refuse to understand?
3 comments:
I guess Jill Stein is running in the green party.
She somehow met with Putin I guess and got his financial support to help Trump by sucking some votes .
Who is funding Kennedy's campaign?
The real thing is, who are the billionaires funding Trump?
I know there is money to be made from operating such a 3rd party run that will never win and they know it.
This is one of the reasons why I have been against tax cuts, tax breaks for these billionaires. Because they use that money to fund bull crap like this to undermine American voters.
No, this is not more choice. This is the delusional illusion of throwing your vote away and thinking it means something.
the golem was controlled by the word of god placed in his mouth and became a monster to ALL when it lost that paper..when the direction to the unstoppable force no longer existed. when the rabbi's looking to save themselves lost control of that terrible force.
this is the frankenstein mythos. the cautionary tale of releasing forces only dimly controlled, only dimly imagined. but the ends justify the means and if they had to do it over they'd do exactly the same because as much as they dislike the idea of destroying the american democratic experiment they are doing it all, IT ALL! in the service of a greater good.
lower taxes.
Makes me wonder what it is about "The Left was right about the Right all along" that these Never Trumpers refuse to understand?
Literally all of it, but especially the first four words. To admit that the Left was right about literally anything would, to these people, be the same as saying that we should have let the Russia win the Cold War and eat us alive and be power-mad and take our cars from out our garages. The effect it would have on what they laughingly call their brains to even contemplate contemplating the notion... as some guy in flyover country once put it, think freshly shucked oysters in a convection oven.
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