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America has always had a love of political outsiders: the plucky underdogs who promise to disrupt the corrupt political establishment and finally make it listen to the people. This idea speaks to some of the most enduring stories that America, a country born in revolution against illegitimate authority, tells about itself. Representatives of the two major parties also try to harness the power of this story, presenting themselves as outsiders and mavericks even as they hew closely to their party’s mainstream. Donald Trump, for instance, presented himself as a crusading outsider who was going to transform politics - before making his signal legislative achievement a tax cut designed by Washington lobbyists.
At other times in American history, this cult of the outsider has found expression in the formation of third parties. Proponents of third parties typically have a number of criticisms of the two major parties, including that they’re effectively the same; that they are more interested in serving special interest groups and donors than the people themselves; and that they are ignoring or minimizing the issues that Americans really care about. Proponents claim that third parties can motivate a large swathe of voters who feel left out of the two-party system and sweep into power.
The latest iteration of this argument comes from the group No Labels, a “centrist” organization which is planning to select a “unity ticket” of prominent politicians to run under a third-party label in 2024. They claim that neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump has much appeal to the public at large, and that this creates the opportunity for a third party candidate to win and inaugurate a new era of cooperation and good feeling in American politics.
Their critics, on the other hand, say that what they’re most likely to do is throw the election to Trump by siphoning just enough votes away from Biden. A look at the history of third parties suggests they’re right.
What third party success looks like
To put it mildly, third parties have not had a good track record of electoral success throughout American history. Since the emergence of the Republican Party in the 1850s, no third party candidate has ever come close to winning a presidential election. Even those that have racked up impressive percentages of the popular vote have seen their attempts fatally wounded by America’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which gives all the Electoral College votes in a state to the winning candidate regardless of their margin of victory. The best Electoral College performance by a third party candidate came from Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, but his 27.4% share of the popular vote only translated to 88 in the Electoral College. That wasn’t bad given that Roosevelt was shot during his campaign, but it was well shy of Woodrow Wilson’s 435. More recently, Ross Perot won 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992 but absolutely no votes in the Electoral College whatsoever.
This doesn’t mean, however, that third parties haven’t being influential - many have seen their ideas gobbled up and popularized by one of the two main parties. One of the best examples of this was the Populists, a short-lived party in the 1890s who capitalized on rural economic distress to build a solid base of support in the West and South. In 1896 they backed the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, who embraced many of their ideas. After Bryan was defeated the Populists vanished almost as quickly as they had arisen, but many of their policy goals were achieved in the subsequent decade - perhaps most importantly the 17th amendment, which ensures that senators are elected by the people rather than chosen behind closed doors by special interest groups, as they had been for most of American history.
There are other more recent examples. George Wallace campaigned against civil rights in 1968 and won five Southern states, which influenced the Republican Party’s emerging “Southern strategy” of using racist dog-whistles and coded language to appeal to Southern racists. In 1992, Ross Perot ran a classic outsider campaign, claiming that only a businessman like himself could steer the nation’s economy. He promised to balance the federal budget and protect American jobs by defeating the NAFTA trade agreement, which was then under negotiation. Although he lost the election, Perot’s campaign highlighted the fact that many voters thought these were important issues, which in turn pushed the major parties to seek a balanced budget in the 1990s. His opposition to trade deals also helped pave the way for the eventual rise of Trump, who took this idea mainstream.
In order for third parties to succeed in this way, they typically need to represent either a coherent set of ideas or a particular part of the country. Wallace’s campaign in 1968, just like Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat campaign in 1948, was just such a regional phenomenon - it could win the votes of Southern racists who were opposed to racial progress, but had no chance of appealing to voters in the North and West. But this regional strength told the other two parties that if they wanted to succeed in the South, it might be a good idea to co-opt some of Wallace’s points. Perot, on the other hand, didn’t really have any particular regional base, but he very clearly demonstrated the importance of particular economic issues to voters across the nation. Again, the other parties took notice.
What does No Labels stand for?
What No Labels is doing is something different.1
No Labels leans heavily into the typical myth of the virtuous people kicking some sense into corrupt and divided politicians, declaring itself to be a “national movement of commonsense Americans pushing our leaders together”. Their basic pitch is that American politics has become polarized into two extremes, but that what most Americans want is the politics of the center - less partisan invective, less focus on divisive culture war issues, and more problem-solving.
In reality, No Labels is torn between advocating a particular set of policies and a particular political style. In their PR, they lean heavily into questions of style and process, arguing that politicians of good faith and common sense all ought to get into a room together, take off their partisan hats, and do… something. But when it comes to specific policy proposals, they offer a mixture of small-bore stuff (“expand access to online college courses” and “more telemedicine”) and radical ideas which are the typical fodder of the businessman “centrism” of someone like Ross Perot (balance the budget, less regulation, reduce government debt). These ideas are not actually centrist and non-partisan at all, but associated with the right - “problem-solving” turns out to mean solving the problems faced by corporations and rich people, not the average voter (No Labels doesn’t reveal where its money comes from, but its donors are known to include prominent Republicans and business leaders).
Another clue that something is off about No Labels is the way that they have a tendency to present Republicans and Democrats as somehow equally extreme and equally threatening to American democracy. Again, this is a standard rhetorical device not of the “center” but of right-wingers who are skeptical of Trump. Trump really does present a clear and present danger to American democracy, and so the obvious thing to do to counter him is to vote for the Democrats. But if you can’t bring yourself to do that - if you want to peddle the idea that most of the right-wing agenda, minus Trump, is sound - then you need to pretend that the Democrats are terrible as well. That’s what No Labels is doing.
The final problem with No Labels is that their desire to remain “non-partisan” means that they simply avoid commenting on the most important issues of the day. One of the most important moral and political dividing lines in American politics today is the stance of the two major parties on abortion. But there’s no real way to be in the “center” of that debate without hugely alienating one side or another, so No Labels just doesn’t even try. And the issues that really animate most voters fall into the same category as abortion - they can’t be solved with proposals like “more telehealth” or cutting regulation. No Labels claims that the politically-engaged public actually wants less controversy about important issues like abortion, immigration or Ukraine, but there’s very little evidence that this is actually true.2
No Labels is ultimately not offering something more than the two major parties, but in a way something less. Its proposition is that if you strip conservatism of Trumpism and right-wing culture crusades then you can rebrand the remainder as plain old common sense and sweep to victory. But there’s a reason that the Republican Party runs on the culture wars rather than balancing the federal budget, and that reason is that people like to vote for the former and they don’t like to vote for the latter. Not only does No Labels completely miss the moral stakes in American politics today; it’s also an ideological dead end.
But it could still throw the election to Trump!
This doesn’t mean that No Labels won’t be consequential if it runs a candidate in the next election. It won’t succeed at advancing its own ideas, but what it could do is throw the election to Donald Trump.
One of the most important facts about American politics today is that Donald Trump commands a fanatical following among a sizeable portion of the electorate, and that the only way to beat him is to find a way to forge an anti-Trump coalition out of the remainder. This isn’t easy, because potential members of this anti-Trump coalition range from progressives to right-wing Never Trumpers. There’s a sizeable number of right-wingers whose conscience won’t allow them to vote for Trump and who don’t align with the Democrats on most policy issues, but who nevertheless have been instrumental to Democratic victories in 2020 and 2022. Giving them an alternative, right-wing force to vote for while also keeping their consciences clear is a great way to siphon votes from Biden and bring back Trump.
In fact, the way this would go down seems so obvious that it’s hard to believe it isn’t intentional. Given the fact that No Labels stands no chance of actually winning the election and isn’t aiming to bring attention to a novel policy agenda, the people behind it must be either (a) delusional or (b) actually trying to do something else. It’s also possible that the people involved in running the effort are (a) while the rich donors funding it are (b). This is an interesting intellectual question, but practically it isn’t of much significance. What’s important is that No Labels be recognized as a sinister and unhelpful force in American politics and that it be opposed at every turn.
No Labels actually claims it’s not creating a third party candidacy at all because it will recruit politicians from both the Democrats and the GOP for a “unity ticket”. In effect, though, this will be a third party.
I should note, in fairness, that No Labels has promised to release an updated set of policy proposals this summer, and maybe they’re going to do better than before. I’ll post about it when it happens.
I am all for a third party ticket being run and pursued in the 2024 Presidential election whether it be a Unity Party candidate as your article suggested or someone runs as an independent candidate . My reasons for being perfectly ok with it is simple . If it will serve the purpose of making it unlikely that Biden will be elected to a second term I am 💯on board with a third party candidate. Cutting to the chase I might also add that I voted for Trump the last two elections and will be again for a third time . MAGA 2024 🇺🇸