Supporters of the group No Labels hold signs during a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 18.Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press
And so the seductive, tempting and dangerous song of the Sirens is again being heard in American politics.
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were winged creatures with the capacity to hypnotize and beguile. In American politics, they represent the irresistible force that appeals to the disgruntled, or the idealistic or – this year – simply the people who want neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump to be president again.
Their song: Form a third party and be done with both.
As Republican presidential candidates race around New Hampshire seeking support for the first primary of the 2024 political season – former vice-president Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina are here this week, with others on the way – a group of political figures met at St. Anselm College, the traditional host of White House hopefuls, and set forth the latest new-party effort in American politics.
No such drive has succeeded since 1860, when the (relatively) new Republican Party – it had been formed six years earlier – was the platform that elected Abraham Lincoln. This year’s effort is called No Labels, and it has nothing to do with Naomi Klein’s No Logo campaign, though the two movements – one purely American, the other with Canadian roots – share the skepticism of established brands. The objects of the skepticism in this case: the Democratic Party, which is almost two centuries old, and the Republican Party, which is nearly 170 years old.
Movements to form a third party have been coursing through the underground swales of American politics for decades. Over the years, several important political figures urged automobile executive Lee Iacocca and General Colin Powell, among others, to mount such efforts. The notion gained force in the Trump-Biden years, and this week, in Goffstown, N.H., Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, and Jon Huntsman, the former Republican governor of Utah, appeared at St. Anselm to discuss the advantages they believe a third-party campaign would present.
“The common-sense majority in America has no voice right now,” said Mr. Huntsman, a political figure with legitimate bipartisan bona fides: He was American ambassador to Beijing under Democratic president Barack Obama and ambassador to Moscow under GOP president Trump. Mr. Manchin, who has often been the swing vote in the Senate and has flirted with his own presidential campaign, said, “We’re here to make sure the American people have an option.”
Though third parties have repeatedly failed, they have still had a substantial impact on several elections, including 1912 (when former president Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party and formed the Progressive Party, known informally as the Bull Moose Party); 1992 (when Ross Perot’s candidacy took 19 per cent of the vote); and 2000 (when Ralph Nader’s Green Party won 2.9 million votes). Though it cannot be proven, the presence of third-party candidates in presidential races arguably tipped the election to, respectively, Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
That’s the worry that No Labels presents.
Dozens of former Republicans and Democrats form new third U.S. political party
Specifically, that its potential presence in the 2024 race could siphon more votes from Mr. Biden than from Mr. Trump in important battleground states, resulting in returning Mr. Trump to the White House.
“A third party of the kind these people are talking about has no chance – no matter who is their nominee – to win the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency,” Richard Gephardt, a former House of Representatives majority leader and two-time Democratic presidential candidate, said in an interview. “It will elect Donald Trump, and he should never be near the White House again.”
That American presidential elections generally have been conducted between just two major, established parties is a fundamental difference between politics in the United States and Canada. “It’s difficult for a third-party candidate to compete for reasons that don’t exist in Canada,” said Frédérick Gagnon, director of the Centre for United States Studies at University of Quebec in Montreal. “Money is important in Canadian politics, but it is far more critical in American politics, and it’s the American parties that help raise the money.”
A handful of contemporary American lawmakers run as Independents, but that doesn’t mean they are members of third parties. Two of them are in the Senate: Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, both of whom caucus with the Democrats but remain apart from them.
“Independents aren’t in a third party because we are, well, independent,” Mr. King explained. “We’re not affiliated with either party and being unaffiliated makes it possible to work with both parties. There’s real liberation in that. We don’t have to toe the party line. We don’t have to worry about what members of our party think. It’s a luxury – not to mention not having to face a party primary.”
The No Labels effort is being led by former senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee. “We’re not in this to be spoilers,” he said Sunday on ABC’s This Week program. “If the polling next year shows, after the two parties have chosen their nominees, that in fact we will help elect one or another candidate, we’re not going to get involved.”
Experts attribute the defeat of Mr. Lieberman’s ticket, led by former vice-president Al Gore, to the votes that consumer advocate Mr. Nader won in New Hampshire and Florida.
Third-party movements historically have been the source of new ideas in American politics – the Populists of 1892 and the Progressives of 1924 are primary examples – but overall they play the part of irritants possessed primarily with the power to influence, but not win, elections.
“American third parties lack the organization and they don’t have the financial power of the established parties,” said Robert Bothwell, an emeritus historian at the University of Toronto who has written widely on Canada and the United States. “They’re wills-o’-the-wisp.”