'No Labels' Party Will Reelect Trump

With opposition party front-runners Trump and Biden currently polling in a toss-up, each with about one-third third of likely voters, nearly a third would like to have another option.

“No Labels,” a fledgling organization that purports to be nonpartisan supporting an independent “unity ticket” with a recently released “Common Sense” policy agenda, proposes to serve as a change agent to help make that happen.

Whereas No Labels seems to be gaining some momentum and media attention, few likely view it as a competitive winning ’24 platform.

Nevertheless, it could decisively sway the net advantage of one major party over the other, most particularly in close swing states, with Democrats the most legitimately worried.

No Labels founder, former Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman, said on ABC’s “This Week” that “We’re not in this to be spoilers. ... If the polling next year shows, after the two parties have chosen their nominees, that in fact we will help elect one or another candidate, we’re not going to get involved.”

Read this to mean that they won’t support either party headed by current top candidates.

On its face, this posture ostensibly doesn’t offer much likelihood of relevance. According to Real Clear Politics, Trump strongly leads the GOP field with a majority ranging from 52% (Harvard-Harris) to 55% (Morning Consult).

And whereas an April AP poll of Democratic voters found that fewer than half (47%) wanted Biden to run again in 2024, 81% of them said they would vote for him again if he were to become their party’s nominee.

A June Prime Group nationwide survey of voters weighted to match 2020 turnouts found that about two-thirds of the support for a purportedly independent bipartisan ticket would come from voters who would otherwise support Biden.

Their reasoning is that 36% of Democrats self-identify as “moderate,” compared with only 22% of Republicans who tend also to exhibit strong unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump.

The Prime Group goes on to predict that adding a No Labels slate party would expand Trump’s prospects in six important swing states: expand his narrow winning margins in Arizona and Georgia; move Michigan and Pennsylvania from toss-ups to the Trump column; transform an otherwise projected Biden Wisconsin victory to a loss; and make Nevada a jump ball.

Results of the seventh swing state, North Carolina, wouldn’t change — a Trump win either way.

Summing it all up, the Prime Group concludes that after then adding all near-certain nonswing state electoral voters to those of swing states, a No Labels candidacy would increase Trump’s total from 262 to 306, awarding him an outright win.

Political pollster Karl Rove — assuredly not a Trump supporter — provides some additional background that corroborates Prime Group’s logic and conclusions.

Rove points out that despite promised college debt forgiveness, turnout of younger voters ages 18 to 29 comprising 17% of the electorate in 2020 who broke 60% for Biden and 36% for Trump was down in the 2022 midterms helping Republicans flip the house.

Black midterm voter turnout was also down in 2022 compared with 2018, simultaneous with their Biden approval which dropped 10 points between January 2021 and March 2023.

A May 12 Washington Post/Ipsos Poll found only 17% of Blacks would be enthusiastic if Biden is re-elected, while 49% said his policies had made “no difference” for them and 14% said they were “hurt” by them.

Rove concludes that if 1.1% of Black Biden voters stayed home or voted No Labels in 2024, it would wipe out his 2020 Georgia victory margin of less than 12,000 votes.

If 6.3% of his young Arizona supporters do the same, it would erase his comparably tiny victory margin there as well.

Meanwhile, Hispanics and Asian-American voters have also been trending conservative, although not necessarily supporting Trump. A No Labels candidate might cut both party ways.

But who might those top No Label candidates be?

Senator Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, has friends and foes on both sides of the partisan isle.

Sen. Manchin angered members of his own party by voting to narrowly kill Democrat-sponsored legislation to repeal the filibuster rule which would have ceded authority to pack the Supreme Court and add Washington D.C. as a reliably Democratic-voting state.

He also lost confidence of Republicans — including West Virginians — for supporting the Biden administration’s $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act boondoggle which has buried the nation deeper in debt.

Adding to his problems, Manchin is currently trailing former West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice in his bid seeking state reelection.

That pretty much leaves current Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who, according to a new poll of 1,500 respondents by The Economist and YouGov, has a 19 point higher favorability rating than any other candidates — including either Trump or Biden.

This is consistent with Newsweek survey results that show Kennedy supported by 31% of eligible voters who backed Biden in 2020, with just 20% opposed.

Overall, however, Kennedy faces strongest headwinds from elites within his party for speaking out against mandated COVID-19 inoculation, suppression of safety risk information, and a growing government role in media censorship of all politically unfavorable views.

This contempt for Kennedy and his censorship views was on ironic display as fellow Democrats blasted his testimony before a House Judiciary select committee on “weaponization” of the federal government specifically addressing censorship, tech companies and free speech.

In the end, the rather vague No Labels party policy deserves an effective campaign slogan.

I’ll suggest “Make America Great Again.”