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 likely would not 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.

Goodbye Joe, Hello Rick

Faux Democrat Joseph Lieberman, the senior senator from the state of Connecticut, has announced that he will not seek a fifth term. The "Independent Democrat," as he is registered in the Senate, cited his inability to fit comfortably with either party because of his unorthodox political views.

More likely, it's because he's afraid of losing. The Democrats don't want him, the Republicans don't trust him, and his credibility disappeared with his 2004 presidential run. More recently, Lieberman has continued to insist that Saddam Hussein was working on a program of "weapons of mass destruction" when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, even though George Walker Bush has long since admitted that no such program existed. It's also to Lieberman we owe the credit for killing a public medical insurance option and even the idea of a Medicare buy-in for people 55 to 65, preserving the right of private health insurers (many of whom are in Connecticut) to avoid competition designed to bring down costs.

Lieberman is already irrelevant, having ceded his moral authority over these issues and having campaigned for John McCain in 2008 after having been Albert Gore's vice presidential running mate eight years earlier. All eyes are now focused on the new U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Having survived a tough campaign, we now wait to see how Senator Blumenthal will parlay his experience in taking on corporate interests as his state's attorney general for twenty years into helping and serving the people who sent him to Washington. As for Lieberman's seat, the horrible Linda McMahon is already rumored to be ready to run for it. But I doubt there's enough WWE-bred savvy to fix the result on this contest.

Linda McMahon is not the only contemptible Republican vying for a comeback. The spectacularly insufferable Rick Santorum, a former two-term senator from Pennsylvania, is either mulling over a run for his old Senate seat (he was voted out of office in 2006 in favor of Democrat Robert Casey, Jr.) or for, God forbid, the Presidency. The staunchly anti-abortion Santorum - who values the right to life so much that he and his wife brought their prematurely born son home after he had died for two hours and slept with the remains for a night - accused President Obama of being a discredit to his race for supporting abortion rights. Santorum said Obama, who as a black man and as a constitutional professor knows that black slaves were considered three-fifths of a person when the Constitution was written, has no right to deny the right of the unborn to be considered a person.

Santorum, an Italian-American, is a discredit to his own people. Since Italian-Americans have always been put down in politics, television and Woody Allen movies as being undereducated goombahs, I would argue that Santorum doesn't have the right to be stupid.

Oh yeah, I didn't want to bring it up, but Santorum opposes abortions even in cases of endangerment to the life of the mother and he opposes single-payer health care, suggesting that any baby girl with the right to life has little right to anything else once she grows up.

The Senator From Aetna

Joe Lieberman recently said that no one really believes health care reform will pass as the bills in Congress are currently written. Of course no one believes it; Lieberman, the senator from Aetna, has the power to stop it all by himself! He can filibuster it all by himself, and President Obama is inexplicably content to let the process work itself out.

The overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats, who are the majority overall, supports a health care reform plan with a strong public insurance option, as does the President. Yet even if Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu were to suddenly support this bill (don't hold your breath!), Lieberman can still stop it on his own with a filibuster that 58 Democrats and an independent can't stop.

The federal government is a system of checks and balances. The health insurance establishment gives Lieberman a check, and Lieberman adds it to his campaign fund account balance.

A Too Independent Democrat

It's official - Joe Lieberman is a twerp.

The Connecticut senator, once a Democrat with an actually very liberal social record and also a level-headed guy, has gone to the dark side. He opposes the government-run public health insurance option, claiming to represent the interests of Connecticut but actually representing the health insurance industry of Connecticut. Not only does he threaten to block it with a filibuster - a tactic he's always been against using before - he now plans to campaign for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections. Lieberman, who calls himself an "independent Democrat" (he was elected to his current term as an independent after losing the Senate primary to a more liberal challenger who, unlike Lieberman, opposed the Iraq War), is proving to be neither. He is so tied to the defense policies and corporate leanings of the Republican party, it makes no sense for him to call himself a Democrat of any kind.

President Obama should do to Lieberman what he did to Hillary - get rid of him. He should just go ahead and give the former McCain supporter a diplomatic post, just to get him out of the Senate. The governor of Connecticut, who would appoint a replacement, is a Republican. I don 't care. If Connecticut is going to be represented by a Republican in the Senate, let the state get someone who isn't afraid to call himself or herself a Republican. In fact, Connecticut Republicans tend to be more liberal than the party's national figures, and such a senator would likely be more flexible than Lieberman. Or even Olympia Snowe.

Lieberman was elected to the Senate in 1988 by upsetting a Republican who was in fact more liberal than he was - Lowell Weicker - by insisting Weicker, a three-term senator, had been in office to long and grown out of touch.

Lieberman is currently serving his fourth term.