The Democratic National Committee is building its first team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates, people involved told NBC News, as the party and its allies prepare for a potential all-out war on candidates they view as spoilers. ...
The move comes as a coalition of outside groups — which includes Democratic and anti-Trump Republican organizations — stockpile money and work to stymie third parties.
“There is some Jill Stein hangover,” Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research group, said referring to the 2016 Green Party nominee who was seen as a spoiler in places like Michigan. “A lot of people, including me, regret that we didn’t go after her further.”
Democrats have long blamed Green Party candidates such as Stein and Ralph Nader for contributing to their losses in 2016 and 2000.
But they say third parties will be especially impactful in 2024 because of the nature of Trump’s support base.
“Trump needs to split the anti-Trump coalition. If we’re united, we win. If we’re not, he wins,” Dennis said. “We see [Kennedy and No Labels] essentially as an arm of the Trump campaign and we intend to treat it as such.”
Democrats have been quick to point out that the biggest donor to Kennedy's super PAC is also one of Trump's largest donors, an heir to the conservative Mellon family.
As they see it, Trump has a ceiling of support of around 46%, so to beat him, they need to compel the remaining majority of voters to back Biden. Trump can win without a majority of the vote, they argue, if third parties splinter what they see as the anti-Trump majority.
“The single biggest threat that helps put Trump back in the White House is third-party candidates. It’s not Biden’s age. It’s not whether Trump gets convicted. It’s not any of that stuff,” said Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic strategist who co-founded a new super PAC that is preparing to run TV ads in battleground states.
The group, Citizens to Save Our Republic, is backed by a long and somewhat bipartisan list of bold-faced Washington names, including two former defense secretaries, five former senators, 14 current and former members of Congress, three former presidential candidates and several well-known Democratic and anti-Trump Republican operatives.
“It’s not like Trump doesn’t lose a vote or two, but the erosion occurs much more out of Biden than Trump," Trippi said. “The Trump people know he needs strong third parties."
Indeed, Trump's campaign and his allies largely agree with that analysis, at least publicly, and some encouraged Kennedy to enter the race.
Trump expanded his vote share from 2016 to 2020, from 46.1% to 46.9%, but won in 2016 and lost in 2020 because of third parties, Trippi argued. In 2016, third-party candidates collectively received almost 5% of the national popular vote, while they earned only about 1.5% of the vote in 2020.
Citizens to Save Our Republic has already run TV ads warning “all third parties and spoilers," is preparing for a much bigger ad campaign in key states, and has begun an insider push to pressure No Labels to commit to standing down if it becomes clear it can't win.
"The Biden campaign is going to have to spend a boatload of money educating people about the danger of a third-party vote,” former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said. "Biden will have to spend money explaining there’s no vote for anyone else that’s not a vote for Trump.”
The anti-third party coalition, whose hub is the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, has mostly focused on No Labels, given its superior fundraising and organization. ...
Meanwhile, Rick Wilson, the ex-Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, said that he and his colleagues are worried that third-party candidates will be an appealing option for anti-Trump Republicans and soft Democrats who don’t want to vote for either Trump or Biden.
“These are people that are not going to go from Biden to Trump, but they might go from Biden to a third party,” he said.
Wilson said that he likes the idea of a multiparty democracy in theory, and would not be bothered by No Labels’ presidential ambitions in a more traditional election, but that the stakes are too high this year — even if it means depriving voters of options and making them choose between two candidates they might not be excited about.
“I’m not forcing anybody to do anything, I’m just living in a reality where if it’s a three-party problem, a three-body-problem, Donald Trump is going to win,” he said.
, who the play nice Democrats?. Every week Biden should be holding press on the constant repub fuck shit and their refusing to sign beneficial bills
