In the 2008 presidential election cycle, a group of relatively prominent political players hatched a provocative project called Unity08. The idea was to put together a bipartisan national ticket, which would compete alongside the major parties’ nominees. It failed spectacularly, in large part because no serious contenders for national office wanted anything to do with the initiative.
In the 2012 presidential election cycle, a different group of relatively prominent political players hatched an eerily similar project called Americans Elect, which had effectively the same goal. This time, however, the effort had tens of millions of dollars, and ambitions to compete in all 50 states. It, too, failed spectacularly.
More than a decade later, an entirely different group of political players came up with the exact same idea. The No Labels operation claimed to have a $70 million budget and ballot access in 19 states, including several battleground states that will likely dictate the outcome of the 2024 race.
If you’re wondering whether it would fail spectacularly, just as its forerunners did, wonder no more. NBC News reported:
No Labels, the bipartisan group that had been working toward putting a third-party presidential ticket on the ballot in all 50 states in 2024, announced Thursday that it was ending its efforts. “No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” No Labels CEO and co-founder Nancy Jacobson said in a statement. “No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
The operation failed for a variety of reasons. No Labels, for example, didn’t have a platform, and no one — inside the group or out — could explain what it intended to do in the event that it succeeded. It didn’t help when prominent officials within the operation resigned, and former Sen. Joe Lieberman — arguably No Labels’ most…
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