Dems Fight RFK Jr.

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote.

 Elena Schneider at Politico:

The coalition of Democratic groups that pressured No Labels out of the 2024 contest is now turning its sights on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Billboards funded by the Democratic National Committee have begun popping up outside Kennedy’s events. Trackers paid for by American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, are following him with cameras. And another super PAC, founded exclusively to take on third-party threats, is message-testing ads on Kennedy in coordination with Future Forward, the flagship pro-Biden super PAC.

It’s a widespread effort among Democratic donors and strategists to neutralize Kennedy’s third-party threat to President Joe Biden’s reelection.

And Biden’s allies are now considering going even further, with a coalition of major Democratic groups privately discussing running a negative ad campaign against Kennedy.

Talks are preliminary, and the size and scope of the campaign — and even if it will go forward — remain unclear. But should it get the green light, the effort would likely be spearheaded by Future Forward; Clear Choice, another super PAC founded to stop third-party candidates; and American Bridge, another Democratic super PAC, according to two people involved in the effort who are not authorized to talk about it publicly.

If they cannot keep him off the ballot, they might try to drive antivax Trump voters into the RFK camp.

 

Joe Biden should run some ads about how he and Donald Trump don't agree on much, but they do agree that the COVID-19 vaccine Trump shepherded to completion and Biden successfully distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans was a modern miracle that saved lives. https://t.co/aUof7YrgN2

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 30, 2024

No Labels, No Luck

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

Ken Thomas and Kristina Peterson at WSJ:

No Labels, the centrist group which has sought to field a third-party presidential bid, is abandoning efforts to create a “unity ticket” aiming to win the White House, the organization announced Thursday.
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Thursday’s announcement represented an implosion of the group’s ambitious plans to unleash a budget of $70 million toward ballot access and then establish a ticket that could serve as an alternative to President Biden and former President Donald Trump in November’s election.

But even as the group cited polling showing public dissatisfaction with Biden and Trump and broad support for a generic third-party candidate, No Labels couldn’t convince any prominent leaders to mount a challenge that aimed to become the first substantial third-party effort since independent Ross Perot’s showing of nearly 19% in the 1992 election.

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Their final attempts to convince Christie to run for president coincided with the death of their 82-year-old founding chairman, former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who suffered a fall and died March 27. Organizers said Lieberman’s death was a major blow to the group’s attempt to field a candidate, and the late senator had been heavily involved in recruiting efforts.

Biden's GOP Outreach Failure

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Jonathan Martin at Politico writes that Biden has not reached out to Chris Christie.

It’s political malpractice. And Christie isn’t the only anti-Trump Republican or independent waiting for their phone to ring.

Prominent former GOP officeholders, from George W. Bush to Mike Pence to Paul Ryan, also haven’t been contacted.

The same goes for former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who, like Christie, flirted with a No Labels run. Asked in January if Biden ever contacted him, perhaps about an ambassadorship, Hogan said no. As if to drive home the point, Hogan, whose wife is Korean American, happened to mention that he has a nickname in South Korea that translates to “son-in-law.” About two months later, Hogan announced his candidacy, as a Republican, for the Senate.

I reached out to every current Republican lawmaker who has refused to commit to Trump in the general election. Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) Mitt Romney (Utah), Todd Young (Indiana), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) all said the same: they’ve not heard from Biden.

“It is surprising,” Collins told me. “It’s especially surprising because President Biden does understand the Senate, he has personal relationships with some of us.”

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The point, though, isn’t for Biden to turn all these figures into his campaign surrogates. Perhaps some will do that, former Rep. Liz Cheney being the most likely prospect to embrace that sort of Stop Trump mission. But the more realistic goal, certainly with GOP senators, is to soften their criticism of him and make them feel more comfortable denouncing Trump.

Would figures such as Romney or Collins still be uneasy with Biden’s immigration policy if the president had them and their spouses to Camp David or a private White House dinner? Of course. Yet would the senators be somewhat more restrained in their public judgment of Biden? Well, it’s a people business.

No Labels Whiff?

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

Daniel Lippman and Shia Kapos at Politico:

“No Labels just missed one heck of an opportunity to potentially be viable, and now I don’t know that they can be viable,” said Jim Teague, the CEO of a Texas oil and gas company and a No Labels donor. “I don’t know who they can possibly get to run that would generate excitement that Joe Manchin would have generated,” he said, adding that it’s “pretty doubtful” he will donate to the organization in the future.

No Labels officials say they are continuing to move forward with plans to launch a presidential run and are looking at “sometime after Super Tuesday to determine if we offer our line and who would be on it,” spokesperson Maryanne Martini said.

The sense that there is a lack of clarity around the group’s 2024 plans — including the absence of a slate of candidates — has caused anxiety among at least the half dozen donors who spoke with POLITICO.

The group last held a meeting with supporters on February 23. But, according to Martini, they focused on a successful lawsuit against hostile domain squatting on NoLabels.com — not the presidential race or updates on the candidate selection process.

Third Party Update

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

 Peter Hamby at Puck writes on the CA Libertarian convention and the prospect that RFK Jr. could win the party's presidential nod:

That prospect crashed into reality the following day, when convention organizers ran a presidential straw poll. Out of 95 votes cast, [Lars] Mapstead won. [Michael] Rectenwald came in second. Kennedy came in dead last in the straw poll, earning only a single vote.

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Of course, Kennedy was merely testing the waters in Costa Mesa. He isn’t officially seeking the Libertarian nod. But given the resistance to his candidacy from the convention-goers, his path to get on ballots everywhere has essentially reset to where it was before the weekend. Kennedy’s team is confronting a patchwork of ballot-access laws that are different in every state.

Some states require tens of thousands of validated signatures, which is a heavy lift for even the most well-funded candidates from the two major parties. Kennedy, at least, has money to count on. Thanks to his family name, Los Angeles connections, and small-dollar online support, Kennedy is raising a respectable amount of money for a gadfly candidate. He ended the fourth fundraising quarter last year with $5.4 million in the bank. But the Kennedy campaign continues to burn through cash, spending heavily to collect ballot access signatures. A super PAC backing his campaign is also working to secure ballot access for Kennedy, but that effort is likewise facing a legal challenge from the Democratic National Committee over claims of improper coordination.

Tara Palmieri at Puck:

So it’s finally put up or shut up time for No Labels—the disorganized dark money group that counts Nelson Peltz, Steve Schwarzman, and Harlan Crow as donors—to execute its quixotic plan to assemble a unity-ticket to challenge the increasingly inevitable disappointment of a Trump–Biden rematch. Over the last two years, the third-party group has raised tens of millions on the assumption that No Labels and its opportunistic C.E.O., Nancy Jacobson, could recruit a viable candidate—Larry Hogan, say, with Joe Manchin as V.P. Sure, No Labels has been able to get their name on the ballot in 16 states. Unfortunately, they just haven’t been able to find that dream ticket, which will prevent them from ballot access in many others.

So on March 8, just three days after Nikki Haley is set to be demoralized in 16 states on Super Tuesday, No Labels is handing over the power to their 800 delegates to make a choice about whether to move forward, and with whom. Their ideal candidate, of course, has been Haley, herself.

In fact, No Labels emissaries have been trying to persuade Haley through back channels, but she’s emphatically resisted. Joe Lieberman, who sits on the board, has told donors that the organization has three strong options, including a Republican governor, but he won’t share names. So far, No Labels has also flirted with total non-starters like Chris Christie and Hogan and Manchin, until they got turned down. (Hogan is now running for Senate in Maryland.) It’s hard to see anyone leaving their party to run as a spoiler, and No Labels had made it clear they need a Republican on the top of the ticket so as not to hand the election to Trump.

 

Third-Party Stumbles

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Larry Hogan gave up a brief No Labels flirtation to run for the Senate. It is dawning on people that a No Labels candidate would serve to elect Trump. At TNR, Greg Sargent reports:

Around six months ago, when speculation raged that Senator Joe Manchin might join a third-party presidential ticket on behalf of the centrist group No Labels, he privately consulted with Richard Gephardt, the former congressman who has taken up the cause of stopping No Labels in its tracks.

Gephardt showed Manchin private polling that he’d bankrolled himself, illustrating that such a bid could only help Donald Trump beat President Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Gephardt reminded Manchin that even third-party bids that win real public support have routinely failed to garner many, or even any, Electoral College votes.

In short, Gephardt pointed out, a third-party bid could never succeed on its own; it would mostly take votes away from Biden. Manchin absorbed the argument, the person says, and then expressed an acute worry: Above all, Manchin said emphatically, he did not want to become the person who handed the presidency to Trump.

That argument finally seemed to prevail with Manchin last week, when he announced that he will not be part of any third-party ticket after all. Manchin declared that he didn’t want to be a “spoiler,” having apparently realized that by far the most likely consequence of such a bid would be a second term for Trump, as he began to fear six months ago.

RFK Jr. has staffed his campaign with people who lack relevant experience.  It is going poorly. Diana Falzone at Mediaite:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is in disarray amid an exodus of campaign workers who say disorganization, lavish spending, amateurish leadership, and a severe disconnect between the campaign and the candidate’s values have led the long-shot bid for the presidency astray.

Fourteen members of Kennedy24 have resigned since the start of the year, including 12 field staff and two main staff, according to multiple sources who spoke with Mediaite on the condition of anonymity. One source close to the campaign pinned the turmoil on two leaders: Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, campaign manager and Kennedy’s daughter-in-law, and Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist who serves as the campaign’s communications director.

The source described Fox Kennedy and Bigtree as “self-serving” operatives who were “making decisions based on their own personal advancement opportunities, and not acting in the best interest of the candidate.”

 

Challengers Faces Challenges

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.  The logistics of running a presidential campaign -- especially ballot access -- can be daunting for third-party candidates and longshot primary challengers.

David Drucker at The Dispatch:

Earlier this year, No Labels made waves when it signaled it would seek to nominate an independent presidential candidate in 2024 who could face off against President Joe Biden and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. But the nonpartisan organization has pumped the brakes on elements of its effort in recent months, with top officials reassessing their strategy for selecting and nominating candidates.

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Sources blame the hiccups on fresh resistance from inside No Labels to previously agreed upon steps the group was to take toward potential candidate nominations—plus disorganization and unforeseen logistical challenges. “Deadlines have slipped, discussions have continued,” an individual close to the group told The Dispatch, requesting anonymity to speak candidly. “Nobody’s done this—these are talented people but they’ve never done anything like this. I haven’t either.”

Two weeks ago, No Labels canceled its in-person nominating convention scheduled for mid-April in Dallas, opting instead for a virtual gathering.

Filip Timotija and Hanna Trudo at The Hill:

Outsider presidential candidates are vying to appear on as many ballots as possible before November, hoping to qualify in enough general election swing states to complicate the path for President Biden and former President Trump.

The battle for the ballots is underway as the race among incumbent-challenging Democrats, independents and third-party candidates has frustrated those who’d prefer to focus on Biden’s low popularity and Trump’s ascent.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent, and Democrats Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), Marianne Williamson and Cenk Uygur are strategizing over how to legally get their names in front of voters in key states before the fall.

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One Democratic strategist who worked on a presidential campaign in 2020 recalls the monumental task of getting their candidate to appear in enough places to be viable.

“It was difficult getting on the ballots of certain states,” a strategist and former campaign adviser wrote to The Hill. “We spent a lot of money canvassing states for signatures. Like A LOT.”

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“Getting on the ballots requires either a huge staff on the ground that can go knocking door to door or paying a canvassing firm a ton of money to get the signatures,” said the strategist, recalling efforts to prop up a candidate from the Democratic primary in 2020 who ultimately didn’t garner much traction. “Not to mention the fees for appearing on the ballot themselves.”

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In Florida, the Democratic Party’s executive committee placed Biden as the only Democrat running in the 2024 primary, bypassing Phillips, Williamson and Uygur.

Following the decision of the executive committee, all three Democratic candidates publicly blasted the Florida Democrats. Michael Steinberg, a former congressional candidate and Tampa Bay attorney, filed a federal lawsuit against the state party arguing that Phillips in particular should be on the ballot.