Group Backed by Joe Lieberman Seeks Third Party for ’24

When former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman ran for vice president in 2000 on the Democrat ticket, he lost Florida by 537 votes; Green Party nominee Ralph Nader won more than 97,000 votes in Florida.

Nevertheless, the Democrat turned independent attended a meeting last week to support the centrist group No Labels and its efforts to get on the 2024 ballot in all 50 states. The group reportedly describes its campaign as an “insurance policy” against the nomination of “unacceptable” candidates by the two major political parties.

Lieberman declined to give a definite answer when asked by The Washington Post if President Joe Biden qualifies as unacceptable.

“No decision has been made on any of that,” Lieberman said. “But we’re putting ourselves in a position. It might be that we will take our common-sense, moderate, independent platform to him and the Republican candidate and see which one of them is willing to commit to it. And that could lead to, in my opinion, a No Labels endorsement.”

The $70 million No Labels ballot effort has alarm bells pealing on both sides of the aisle, sparking a lawsuit from the Democratic Party in Arizona to block it and sending Republican strategists scrambling to research the group’s potential impacts.

Fissures have also developed within the organization. Brookings Institution policy scholar William Galston, who helped found No Labels, said this week that he would distance himself from the group over its planning for a 2024 challenger to Biden and Trump.

“I am proud of No Labels’ record of bipartisan legislation, and I know its leaders want what is best for the country,” he said in a statement. “But I cannot support the organization’s preparation for a possible independent presidential candidacy.

“There is no equivalence between President Biden and a former president who threatens the survival of our constitutional order. And most important, in today’s closely divided politics, any division of the anti-Trump vote would open the door to his reelection.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, are both supporters of the group’s effort and have not ruled out participating in a possible No Labels presidential ticket.

“If enough Americans believe there is an option and the option is a threat to the extreme left and extreme right, it will be the greatest contribution to democracy, I believe,” Manchin told the Post. “I don’t rule myself in, and I don’t rule myself out.”

“I think it is really important to have that option,” Hogan said. “Because we have never been at the point we are today in America. The vast majority of people in America are not happy with the direction of the country, and they don’t want to see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as president.”