By Last year, as the primaries were kicking off for 2024, the bipartisan group No Labels announced that they would be making a decision to run a candidate based on how the primaries turned out following Super Tuesday.
Unfortunately for them, with Super Tuesday now merely days away, the group still has no candidate willing to run and no articulated plan to get one.
One thing they do know, however, is that Joe Biden has been a disaster for the country, a message that has come to dominate their pitch to potential recruits.
The group’s officials now say that they have no set date and still deliberately have provided no explanation for how they will make a decision. And several prospective candidates and members who have heard the group’s pitch told CNN they have been left skeptical about the mechanics actually translating to a workable campaign.
No Labels officials – who have repeatedly said they don’t want to become a spoiler that would result in Donald Trump going back to the White House – have urged prospective candidates and others to prioritize accusing Biden of having politically toxic positions he does not actually hold. They are hoping to spread those accusations more widely next week, ahead of Biden’s annual State of the Union to Congress.
In a private presentation the group has circulated among members and prospective candidates are two claims that No Labels officials say would be damaging to Biden, even as they acknowledge the claims aren’t true: that he is for “open borders” and that he is captive to a “far left” that “wants to abandon Israel” and is “sympathetic to Hamas.”
Those claims, alongside accusing Biden of overseeing a ballooning national debt, are the best way to appeal to voters, No Labels suggests in slides from their presentation obtained by CNN.
One of the group’s top recruits, however, recently broke their hearts. CBS News reported that Nikki Haley rejected the idea of running for president on the No Labels ticket.
The former UN ambassador dismissed the idea of her running with a Democrat as unfeasible.
“All the talk about the independent No Labels, all that — I haven’t talked to anybody about that,” Haley told reporters. “I know that they have sent smoke signals, but I’m a Republican. If I were to do No Labels, that would require a Democrat vice president. I can’t do what I want to do as president with a Democrat vice president.”
She continued, “I want to shrink the size of the government and get it efficient,” Haley told reporters. “I want to make sure that we get our kids reading again by putting more of those federal funds pushing it down to the state level, from education to health care to welfare, mental health. I want to take all of that out of the scene and send it to the state. I can’t do that with a Democratic vice president.”
Another former top pick from the group, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, has warned No Labels to “seriously consider” the possibility that they only play spoiler in 2024.
“The moderate senator praised the group as “his friends,” but cautioned against them putting out a “unity ticket” unless they have ballot access to all 50 states, according to The Hill.
‘They need to take a hard look,’ Manchin said about the ballot-access group founded in 2009 during his conversation Friday at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston, Mass. ‘And is it going to basically work as a spoiler.’
‘Right now, if you can’t get on 50 states and you’re going to basically hit in some of the battleground states that could be very detrimental to what the outcome would be, yes,’ Manchin said when asked if No Labels is ‘set up’ as a ‘spoiler’ currently.
The group currently achieved ballot access in 16 states.”
The desire to offer a third option for president this year is not an unreasonable one. A majority of those polled recently said they felt “dissatisfied” with the choices for president.
The group announced it will be making a decision soon.
“No Labels has said for months that our movement plans to regroup shortly after Super Tuesday to evaluate the status of our 2024 project and that remains the plan,” Ryan Clancy, the group’s chief strategist, said in a statement. “On March 8th, we will gather our 800 delegates from all 50 states—who would ultimately approve a final Unity ticket—to discuss the path forward.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that “the meeting, which will be closed to the media, delegates would discuss ‘the path ahead for our 2024 project’ and wouldn’t be choosing candidates for a ticket, if the group does decide to have one.
The plans were earlier reported by New York Magazine’s Intelligencer.
No Labels has signaled that it would likely push for an independent ticket, composed of a Republican and a Democrat, if Biden and Trump become their party nominees. The group has cited polls showing interest among the public in additional options in the presidential election. But any independent candidate would face long odds: No independent or third-party candidate has won a single state since George Wallace in 1968.”
Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also announced an effort to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states.
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