A weekly accounting of the rogues and scoundrels of America
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The No Labels launch in 2010 Spencer Platt/Getty
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For as long as they have existed, No Labels have wanted one thing: to matter. But these self-styled centrist "problem solvers," who’ve yet to advance anything resembling a political solution, have always faced substantial obstacles, mainly that they’re a venal gaggle of cosseted Beltway elites with no real constituency in the broader public. That they’ve been allowed to persist with their cotton-headed paeans to bipartisanship is a testament to structural problems with our political system (which is awash in money and enables too many people who care about nothing but maintaining power to come to Washington) and the commentariat (which is packed to the brim with thunderously credulous dolts). But after more than a decade cashing checks from the biggest fools in the donor class (and some of the biggest assholes as well), No Labels’ demise finally appears imminent. The only question is whether the group will hand the White House to Donald Trump—which it seems to want—before going kaput. A month ago, after prevaricating for the better part of a year, No Labels announced that they were moving "forward with the process of forming a presidential ticket to run in the 2024 election," which everyone thought they had already been doing all this time. And yet, it made headlines. Give these terminally inside-the-Beltway toffs some credit: You can’t become a Washington lifer without mastering the art of making news out of nothing at all. If you can successfully pass activity off as achievement in
This Town, more often than not the gravy train will keep on running.
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But behind the scenes, matters were considerably more grim. In leaked audio that TNR’s Greg Sargent obtained, it became clear that the organization had "no idea whether it will be able to move forward" with its electoral ambitions. "No serious candidates appear interested," Sargent reported at the time, "and there’s no sign that this is changing." A
month on, matters don’t seem to be improving. In mid-March, Geoff Duncan became the latest in a long list of candidates—including GOP primary also-ran Nikki Haley, West Virginia filibuster fanboy Joe Manchin, and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan—to decline to be the organization’s sacrificial lamb, ending any or
all opportunities to finally answer the question: "Who is Geoff Duncan?" (He is apparently the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, but I invite you to double-check.) Meanwhile, the group has been considerably hampered by the recent death of founding chairman Joe Lieberman, whose stalwart defense of the organization was fully in keeping with the former Connecticut senator’s quarter-century-long conniption fit. As the Associated Press reported, Lieberman’s passing "not only marks an irreplaceable loss for No Labels, it injects a new level of uncertainty into the organization’s 2024 ambitions." According to the
AP, Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, and Brian Kemp had also turned down the chance to be the organization’s presidential candidate. So many people have rejected this group’s advances that I honestly have a hard time keeping track. (Did you turn down the chance to be the No Labels presidential candidate? Let me know!) In an effort to prove that there is no way of taking No Labels seriously, Politico’s Alexander Burns offers the tongue-in-cheek advice that the organization should enlist some entertainer or outside-the-Beltway "provocateur" to be its standard-bearer instead of the "bloodless and gray" career dweebs it’s approached. As former Jesse Ventura strategist Bill Hillsman told Burns, No Labels’ efforts were "misconstrued from the beginning," and "few voters" would be inclined to see "a unity ticket forged from within the political establishment as an answer for their grievances with the system." I can’t stress enough that an organization led by Lieberman and Beltway
donor doyenne Nancy Jacobson is physiologically incapable of imagining an outsider in its ranks. Perhaps that’s why a former Bush administration official recommended in a Hill op-ed that the group go ahead and put Lieberman on the ticket, even though he’s dead. (Come to think of it, a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency would be preferable to a second Trump term.) At any rate, I have a better idea: No Labels should fold. This organization has a sad and decrepit legacy of timidity and corruption, and as Meredith Shiner reported in 2014, it isn’t even sincere in its core beliefs: Internal documents
revealed that its leadership was "banking on more political dysfunction in an attempt to find ‘opportunity’ and relevance for itself." And let’s face it: The day the organization handed Trump its "problem solver" endorsement during the 2016 presidential primaries should have marked the end of taking it seriously. Alas, these lowlifes were allowed to live to fight another day. This could all end in one of two ways. No Labels could fail to field this "unity ticket," and the people who’ve hitherto been fleeced to keep this racket running can wise up and pull the plug. Or they can get their nightmare candidates on the ballot, hand the election to Trump, and go down in a blaze of infamy and public opprobrium. Either way, it’s a searing indictment of the United States that people with such bad ideas can ascend to such great heights that they could have a hand in our democracy’s demise. We can only hope that their last hurrah will not be curtains for the rest of us, and that these most recent ambitions fall to ruin like the rest of
No Labels’ grand designs.
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—Jason Linkins, deputy editor
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