By Dan Murphy
Political advisor and media commentator Mark McKinnon broke news in his column in the recent issue of Vanity Fair magazine, when he wrote in his story, If Trump and Biden are the Nominees in 2024, Look Out for a Third-Party Candidate, that the reform minded group No Labels is raising funds and preparing ballot initiatives for a third party candidate if the rematch that more than half of America doesn’t want happens in two years.
McKinnon is a political realist if ever there was one, so there is no romance about an independent walzing into The White House anytime soon coming from him. But McKinnon does see the political reality in a recent NoLables tweet, Republicans and Democrats will lead you to believe you have to choose one or the other, but independents (43%) outnumber Republicans (30%) and Democrats (24%) for the highest percentage since Gallup started tracking affiliation.
McKinnon calls a third party victory for President, “highly improbable. But it’s not impossible. The circumstances have to be just right and the candidate has to be credible.”
And two of the circumstances required are named Joe Biden and Donald Trump. One scenario, McKinnon writes is that early next year, “America wakes up to realize that voters in the primaries have nominated two men—ages 81 and 77, respectively—to face off in the general election… And more than half of all voters polled insisted they would not want either man to run.
But it may be too late early next year to raise the funds and get an independent on the ballot in all 50 states. “that means signature gathering now. And spending money now. Lots of it.”
“No Labels… is doing the heavy lifting: raising money and creating third-party ballot access—just in case we wake up next spring to a couple of clunkers.” And “No Labels contends that it has no interest in supporting any “spoiler” candidate, but be ready if as McKinnon writes, its an Emergency and the “break glass in case of emergency” scenario comes in.
No Labels is calling their effort Our insurance policy for the 2024 election, and would include a unity ticket of a democrat and a republican joining as a Presidential and vice-Presidential ticket.
