Lieberman believes Biden, instead of No Labels, will secure Trump’s re-election

Joe Lieberman, a founding co-chairman of No Labels, the group working toward putting a centrist candidate on next year’s presidential ballot, has been under fire for years from Democrats, but he is denying their claims that his work with the independent group will cost President Joe Biden’s reelection.

“Looking at the polling, it’s not No Labels that’s going to re-elect Donald Trump,” Lieberman, 81, told The Wall Street Journal. “Right now it looks like it’s Joe Biden who’s going to re-elect Donald Trump.”

Lieberman, a former Connecticut senator who served as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, is drawing complaints from Democrats who say he’s formed the organization to push back at his party, but he denies that’s what’s happening.

Now, Lieberman says he’s surprised at how “viciously” Democrats are reacting to No Labels, but conceded that “we’re doing something different, so we are a threat to the two major parties.”

He also insisted that he has no “need for revenge.”

“I’m pained by what’s happened to the American political system, and I think, honestly, it threatens our future, and I’m grateful for the opportunity that No Labels has given me to try to bring the system back to where it was before it got so damned partisan,” said Lieberman.

But Democrat consultant Joe Trippi, part of a group of progressives, Never Trump conservatives and government advocacy groups that is pushing back against the No Labels group said Lieberman is one of a bunch of people involved with No Labels who feel like the Democratic Party wronged them or he wasn’t treated with the respect he felt he deserved.

Last week, members of Trippi’s alliance were heard in a virtual meeting leaked to the online news outlet Semafor discussing digging up dirt on potential candidates for the No Labels movement and warning donors to stay away from the group. ,

Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor and Health and Human Services Secretary under former President Barack Obama, commented that Lieberman “has, for a long time, not been in agreement with the party he professes to be part of, and this is just one more piece of evidence.”

She added that No Labels “could well help to blow up the election. I find that, frankly, horrifying.”

Biden as well, has spoken out against Lieberman, with whom he served in the Senate for decades.

“It’s going to help the other guy. And he knows [that],” he told ProPublica in September. “That’s a political decision he’s making that I obviously think is a mistake.”

But No Labels, even though it has not announced a candidate yet, appears to be pushing ahead. Last week, strategists with the organization showed reporters on a Zoom call a hypothetical ticket described as a “moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican” getting a 34% plurality of the vote, coming out slightly ahead of Biden, at 33.3% and Trump at 32.7%.

Further, the group has secured ballot space in 12 states and expects to be on five more in the upcoming months. The District of Columbia and the remaining 33 states do not allow parties to be on a ballot unless there is a specific candidate.

Meanwhile, Lieberman said No Labels has just started to speak in “informal conversations” about a list of potential candidates, and that almost none of those people have said they would never run.

He would not say whose names have been discussed, but called them “the normal suspects and a few surprises.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is not seeking re-election, is among potential candidates and has not ruled out running for the group.

Lieberman said that No Labels had planned a convention, but decided to hold a virtual event to save time and money, and with it appearing that the parties could decide their presidential nominees early, No Labels may also announce a candidate sooner than expected.

Lieberman’s involvement in No Labels has been going on since 2010, well before the expected Trump-Biden rematch.

The organization was created by Nancy Jacobson, a Democratic fundraiser whose husband, Mark Penn, had worked with Hillary Clinton’s losing 2008 primary campaign.

Lieberman said the group has provided him with “an extraordinary post-elective office opportunity to try to get the country moving in the right direction again.”