Whether they intend to be or not, third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024.
No Labels has pledged to spend $70m to support a third-party candidate in 2024 who could easily draw enough votes from President Biden to tip the presidential election to Trump.
No Labels has already qualified as a presidential party that can run candidates on the ballot in 10 states, including in both Arizona and Florida.
It claims to be a centrist organization seeking a new bipartisanship, but it will not reveal its donors, one of whom is reportedly the conservative mega-donor Harlan Crow. Politico reports that No Labels has brought on a major Trump donor as an adviser in the pivotal battleground state of Florida.
If you believe that No Labels exists in order to encourage bipartisanship, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
No Labels will only help elect Trump.
So will every other third party claiming to be in the “center” or on the “left” – including the Green party, which is already on the ballot in the two key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin and whose most likely candidate for president is Cornel West.
And the People’s party, especially if Robert F Kennedy Jr becomes its nominee.
The reason they’re all front groups for Donald Trump is that the upcoming 2024 election is likely to be nail-bitingly close even as a two-way race between Trump and Biden.
The good news is that Trump loyalists don’t represent a majority of the electorate – which is why Trump has lost the popular vote in both his presidential runs and did not top 47% in either.
So, as long as the anti-Trump vote is unified behind Biden, Trump cannot win, as Biden demonstrated in 2020.
But if a third-party candidate takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House.
Consider the five states most likely to decide the 2024 election in the electoral college – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In 2016, Trump narrowly won each of them, giving him the presidency. In 2020, these five states narrowly tipped in the other direction, giving Biden the presidency.
Biden’s razor-thin margins in these five states in 2020 came from a massive anti-Trump vote.
In all of these states, at least 1 in 3 Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump.
In Wisconsin (where the Green party has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot), 38% of Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump.
In Arizona (where No Labels has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot), 45% of Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump.
Biden has no margin for error. Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would make him vulnerable.
Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10m cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – less than half of 1% – were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.
If candidates from No Labels, the Green party and the People’s party peel off just 15% of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, and Trump’s base stays with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.
These third parties are urging people to “vote your conscience”, “give the people a real choice” and “not settle for the lesser of two evils”.
If the upcoming election were an ordinary one – pitting a conservative Republican against a liberal Democrat – I’d say the more the merrier. If people want to vote for a third-party candidate, fine.
But the upcoming election isn’t an ordinary one. We’ve already witnessed what Trump has tried to do to remain in power. If he’s re-elected, 2024 could mark America’s last democratic election.
The reality is that any anti-Trump votes these third parties pull away from Biden will only help ensure a Trump victory.
The risk to the future of American democracy is enormous. If No Labels were a legitimate third party rather than a Trump front, it would withdraw from all ballots for the 2024 election, and try again in 2028. If Cornel West and the Green party had positive intentions, they would do the same.
The rest of us must spread the word about what’s at stake.
If Trump wins the Republican nomination for president, as seems highly likely despite (or because of) his coming trials, all Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind Joe Biden – to ensure that Trump, in the words of then representative Liz Cheney, “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office”.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
