No contest
There’s been a great deal of anger and trepidation as the No Labels movement ramps up its operations, with a number of people suspicious (rightfully so) that the movement has been created to help re-elect Donald Trump. The fact that so many people are cynical of it, however, is one of the reasons why it’s doomed to fail – and in fact, it’ll have little to no factor in the results of the 2024 election – just like every other third party candidate has ever been in history.
Popular rhetoric that No Labels is trying to boost, is that we have two “historically unpopular” nominees – but this is actually far from accurate. If you go back to every election of the last thirty years, you’ll find that a lot of the nominees weren’t quite popular, particularly when faced with re-election to a second term, but still more popular to the average voter than their choices were in 1992 – when billionaire Ross Perot was able to buy himself ballot access in all 50 states and a spot in the presidential debates.
Despite the blame Perot got for President Bush losing a second term, there’s really no evidence that he impacted that race, even with 19% of the vote. No Labels has essentially acknowledged they’ll never get that, or that they’ll get any electoral votes at all, much less find a charismatic character willing to represent them. If you’ve noticed, No Labels is looking a lot like last year’s Forward Party – and it’s probably headed in the same direction. We’re over a year from the election, and their numbers aren’t great, which means they’re liable to get a whole lot worse when we get to the general election.
The average person knows that anyone offering themselves up as an ‘alternative’ will never get the traction they need to be viable in a nationwide race, so they’ll vote for the issues they care about instead. It’s tempting to think “independent voters” are truly independent, but the overwhelming majority either lean Democrat or Republican at the end of the day and so indie voters will break hard for one or the other on Election Day. There’s also those who don’t want to be responsible for whatever candidate wins, so they’ll claim they can vote third party with a clear conscience. The fact is, the only way you’ll make a difference in 2024 is if you vote Republican or Democrat, and this time you have a chance to vote for the most progressive administration in decades and give them the Congress they need to keep accomplishing their agenda.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making