"I am the Reform Party!"

No Labels: The New Coke of Political Reform

Back to politics for this one.

It sounded like a good idea, a new third party Presidential run to reform the depressing cage match of American politics. Reform minded large donors and exhausted sensible politician have flocked right to it. Meet No Labels.

The problem is while this caper may not have a label, it has a dangerous list of ingredients. But first a disclaimer politeness and respect demands; I know and like many of the people involved in No Labels. The ones I know are Patriots one and all. Don’t fall for the Twitter howls that the whole thing is a nefarious Bond villain-sized plot to hand the election — and our Democracy — over to Donald Trump. There is no malice behind it. (Other than, perhaps, a few too inventive by half professional fund-raisers sensing a potential gold mine.)

The problem is No Labels is just a really bad idea and in effect, it would help Trump.

Now let me say that I don’t think Trump will be the GOP nominee. Been saying it for two years and while it is contrarian opinion, it is what I believe. And if it is the opposite for the herd call of the Beltway cable punditocracy, all the better. If I’m right and Trump isn’t the nominee, my guess is the whole No Labels thing will melt away.

But if I am wrong and the Orange Menace is nominated, No Labels could be truly helpful to him.

To recap, for those who have shunned political noise and missed all this, No Labels exists to run a third party reform minded Presidential candidate. Think bi-partisan Super Hero. A Savior. The Way Out.

This is an admirable instinct. It just falls apart in the crucible of modern practical politics. It has many flaws. I’ll start with the biggest.

No Labels, more than anything else, threatens to give voters who will never vote for Trump, but also strongly dislike Joe Biden a place to go waste their vote. That is very useful to Trump. It is the perfect permission structure for voters to escape the chore of voting for Biden; “I’m against Trump, but I’d rather vote to Save Democracy than vote for too old/too liberal/too whatever Joe Biden. Instead, I’ll be a reform hero. Now, where do I get my medal?”

It is a myth in politics that your voters must be happy. A nose-holding, suburban college-educated Republican scowling while voting for Biden is every bit as valuable to Biden as a delighted base Democratic voter skipping happily to the polls, or these days to the mailbox. A political ballot is never an essay question, it is a hard binary choice. The lesser of two evils in voters’ minds in the winner on Election Day.

That’s harsh, I know. But politics, as Mr Dooley once said, “ain’t beanbag.” And if Trump is the GOP nominee, the stakes are far too high to mess around.

The other third party problem is policy. No Labels faces the same problem as other reform parties; its supporters are there because they agree on just only one thing; the present system sucks. Lock them in a room and make ‘em talk hard choices on issues for a few hours and you’ll need a phalanx of squad cars to break the riot up. Pro-life, pro-choice? Lower taxes and laissez faire economics, or higher taxes and more wealth redistribution? Second amendment or gun control? Free markets or tariff-based protectionist? Instead of dealing with all that tricky stuff, No Labels is for good things in general. Hard to write legislation or craft a federal budget that way.

Finally there is that troublesome hiccup of the electoral college. (The one Alexander Hamilton creation that not surprisingly didn’t make it into the musical.) The EC is not built for a plurality result. And if there was one, the whole thing would wind up decided in the House where the two ever-waring American political parties would, for once, agree on something; screw these outside troublemakers. Even for that to happen, the No Labels Miracle Candidate would have to get on nearly every state ballot; a process designed by the current party franchise to be near impossible.

The whole thing reminds me a great scene in one of my favorite political movies: Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty. I won’t summarize the here, watch it tonight

instead. This masterpiece is set inside big city machine politics in the 1940’s.

In the scene an alarmed rookie city councilman storms into the grand office of the grafting political boss who made him. He sees the Boss, played by the brilliant Akim Tamaroff, with his feet on his desk reading the paper, which shouts the headline “Reform Party Picks Up Steam.”

Boss, the city councilman exclaims, “this reform party is catching on!”

Tamiroff lowers his newspaper and stares at the the councilman for a long, eye-rolling beat. Then the voice of political experience speaks up: “You idiot, I AM the reform party.”

Politics will always be politics and for now at least, the politics of the No Labels effort is very bad medicine. A serious third party Presidential candidacy is an interesting and potentially worthy idea. But not now. Not with the present danger.