No Labels . . . No Candidate

No Labels, the political non-movement aimed at running a presidential ticket to appeal to centrist voters (because nominating Hillary Clinton to appeal to centrists worked out so well for the Democrats), gave up the ghost and announced it would not field a ticket for 2024.  

No Labels had made a sincere effort at finding a presidential candidate who could win enough states to reach the minimum majority of 270 electoral votes and offer a more palatable platform than what the Democrats and the Republicans have espoused, but it was not only sincere, it was stupid.  Those of us who would have rather stuck our fingers in an automatic garbage disposal than vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in 2016 and looked toward building a new party to replace one of the existing major parties could have told the No Labels nobodies that long ago.  Third-party movements meant to create a new major party to replace one of the existing ones are doomed to fail because the major parties rig the system to prevent it from happening.  And when there is a window for a minor party to displace a major party, as there was in early 2017 when the Democrats were declining and falling faster the the Roman Empire in the late fifth century, the potential organizers of such a party miss the opportunity.

To be fair, former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman (above), a leader of the No Labels movement who died last month, did make it clear that No Labels would sit out the 2024 presidential election if they determined that a No Labels ticket would tilt the election to Trump and there was no clear path for a No Labels victory in November.  So shouldn't I give credit to the leadership of No Labels for gauging the situation and making the right call?  No, I shouldn't.  The folks at No Labels made this decision not out of seeing the error of their ways but because they couldn't find anyone dumb enough to accept their nomination for the Presidency.  One centrist politician after another - and Chris Christie, who's a centrist like I'm a jet pilot - turned down No Labels' offer of the group's presidential and vice presidential nominations.  And let's be honest here: If Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who has talked openly about running for President, had been offered the nomination, he would have accepted it.  Also, to be quite blunt, Lieberman's death took the wind out of No Labels' sails. 

So now that that's out of the way, we should now turn to the next task at hand - denying Robert Kennedy, Jr. ballot access in swing states.