After huffing and puffing about how we needed to have a new party that had no ideology, the group No Labels has shut down because they could not find any high profile (or even medium profile) people willing to agree to be their presidential nominee.
The group’s decision not to field a ticket will likely be celebrated by Democrats, who had long warned that No Labels’ effort would have helped boost Donald Trump and harm President Joe Biden.
The group, in its statement, said it will “remain engaged over the next year during what is likely to be the most divisive presidential election of our lifetimes. We will promote dialogue around major policy challenges and call out both sides when they speak and act in bad faith.”
Yeah, well good luck with that. Nobody is likely to pay any attention to the pontifications of people who thought of themselves as more important than ideas.
The whole enterprise was ridiculous. Any political party has to stand for some thing, just like any group of people need to have some common goal that unites them if they are to get together. The idea that people who do not stand for anything would get together around some leader who also does not stand for anything other than being proud of not standing for anything, and that a party platform would somehow emerge from such a group, was an idea of extreme silliness. It has now deservedly been consigned to the dustbin of history.
The person who was the national director of the group says that he will now vote for Joe Biden over serial sex abuser Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It really says something about the No Labels crowd when their sole leader and guiding light, and their sole driving force, was…Joe Lieberman?! That’s a whole new level of pathetic — as is their inability to find even one big-money fascist to suck up to.
I should write something caustic but the era from Reagan to Trump has made me feel exhausted.
So many egos, so little talent. All of them candidates for Ark B.*
*Douglas Adams readers know what I mean.
[birger, Douglas Adams readers know that after the departure of the B Ark states that the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone. Cautionary tale]
Good riddance to No Labels
And no riddance to good labels.
No Label’s chance was 2016 when the candidates for both major parties were unpopular. If they had organized and found somebody to run a centrist unity party then it had a remote chance. The way the American system works the idea of a middle of the road party doesn’t make much sense and it wouldn’t be stable. 2020 and 2024 there is just too much “anybody but Trump” sentiment to get a middle of the road group going. The independents may not like him but nobody not already dedicated to Trump or the Republican party is hating on Biden strongly.
Sure, since the last one, a record that will stand… until the next one.
There was a great comic over at Daily Kos two months ago by Mike Luckovich. It showed a neighborhood divided between Biden supporters and Trump supporters with lawn signs for Biden (“Biden”, “Biden/Harris”, “Joe”) and lawn signs for Trump (“Trump”, “RFK, Jr., “Cornell West”). The title is Hidden Preference.
IME it has been relatively straightforward to take the existing Democratic Party and push it to the left of centrist politics.
MN elected a fully Democratic legislature and Governor, who have managed to pass legislation that feeds all school children a free breakfast and lunch, make community college free, and enshrine full reproductive rights including abortion in our constitution.
It took four years of work getting more progressive people elected, but it was much easier than trying to start a new political party from scratch.
Raging Bee @ # 1: … their inability to find even one big-money fascist to suck up to.
Actually, they found several:
Pierce R. Butler @ 9
We should come up with a scam that promises to deliver power to a pro-oligarchy group. That way we could steal from big-money fascists in an ethical way.
It is better the money goes to mansions for us than to people who erode democracy. The motto would be ‘drinking Don Porignon for democracy’.
No Label’s chance was 2016 when the candidates for both major parties were unpopular. If they had organized and found somebody to run a centrist unity party then it had a remote chance.
Of doing…what, exactly?
@11 Raging Bee: Of getting somebody elected president. More likely as a goal (though still unlikely to work) would be using the press coverage to organize as a real national party and get some officials elected at lower levels. With a highly divided Congress they wouldn’t need too many to force their voice to be heard. This doesn’t seem to have been No Labels goal at any point though, they always acted like they could snatch the presidency and then govern by negotiating with both sides. Which was never likely to work and would always be terminally unstable given the US system.