No Labels, chaired by former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman and Benjamin Chavis, is fending off criticism that its goal to field an alternative, centrist presidential ticket in 2024 is playing into the hands of Donald Trump. Read their response:
As enthusiasm for No Labels’ 2024 presidential insurance project has spread, so too has the false malicious charge that our effort is designed or destined to elect Donald Trump in 2024.
We are the national co-chairs of No Labels and want to be very clear about what we, and our movement, believe:
Donald Trump should never again be president of the United States.
We don’t believe there is any “equivalency” between President Biden and former President Trump, who is a uniquely divisive force in our politics and who sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election.
But we reject the notion that No Labels’ 2024 presidential insurance project would inevitably help former President Trump’s electoral prospects if he were the Republican nominee.
We reject the notion that hyperpartisanship and hatred in America exist on only one side. There are forces on the extreme left and extreme right who do not respect foundational American ideals like freedom of expression, who are willing to trample norms and laws they find inconvenient to their pursuit of power or policy goals, and who seek to intimidate and ostracize anyone who thinks or acts differently.
We reject the notion that it is desirable or even possible to solve America’s defining national challenges with one party seeking to impose their will on the other.
We affirm forthrightly the importance of securing bipartisan commonsense solutions to our nation’s problems.
Most importantly, we know there is a growing commonsense majority among the American people who agree. They are exhausted by the politics of grievance and victimhood. They seek unity and cooperation. And they believe our country can do so much better than the choices of the election we seem headed for in 2024.
In national poll after poll, two-thirds of Americans say they do not want a rematch of the 2020 election, but the powers that be are not listening.
No Labels is listening and we are giving a voice to the commonsense majority of the American people. Our 2024 insurance project is a constructive effort to compel the two major parties to nominate candidates and present ideas that speak to this majority. But if they continue ignoring the clear will of most Americans, No Labels will have a ballot line in every state ready to nominate a potential Unity presidential ticket.
We welcome a fulsome debate about No Labels’ effort. Reasonable people with civility and integrity can disagree about the best way to heal the political divisions afflicting our nation.
But we won’t let the voice of America’s commonsense majority be shouted down or suppressed.
We have the privilege to live in the oldest continuous democracy in the world. In our system, the American people decide which candidates appear on the voting ballot. The American people decide who gets elected.
No party or candidate owns any American’s vote. A vote is something a candidate or party should earn, not expect as a result of blind loyalty or partisan animosity. There are times like today where we should put the future good of the nation before the extremes of political parties.
No Labels’ work to bring more voices and choices state by state into the political process isn’t a threat to democracy, it is to ensure and protect American democracy.
It is democracy–and we feel blessed to live in this one.
Nixon — “Silent majority”; Lieberman — “Commonsense majority”
When you have politicians seeking legitimacy through an imaginary relationship with an unidentifiable “majority” segment of the electorate, you have to think that they are perpetrating a con for all of the wrong reasons.
Joe: We already know that you are a far-right, war monger, chameleon politician. Please desist in your efforts to “protect” us from the far-right. You are the far right. For the time being, the US is at the least risk from civil war and further political/socioeconomic regression by keeping the Republicrat-oligarchs that we know. Even Bernie Sanders believes that it is our best bet to keep the current Republicrat oligarchs until the time when the young, progressive politicians seeking change are able to gain some real traction. We don’t need old, far-right war mongers, such as yourself, further muddying the political landscape at this critical juncture in our history…
I’m pretty much convinced that a large part of keeping the majority of Americans subdued politically, in this country, is by the use of the tactic divide, confuse and conquer of which Joe (shithead) Lieberman seems to be a part of. Logically he’s smart enough to know a stupid idea from a viable concept of positive, material change and maybe I’m giving him too much credit but nevertheless he’s on the wrong side of history again. Why doesn’t he go see if Netanyahu needs any help destroying his country, any more than he already has? Putz. Furthermore, hyperpartisanship of all that is good and hatred of all that is bad, is no vice. It’s actually how we’re going to kick Republican’s butt, once the Democratic Party leadership gets its head out of its ass.
I have known Joe Lieberman for more than 50 years. I worked in his first political campaign, a primary to unseat then State Legislator Edward Marcus (no relation) of New Haven.
Joe sat in a parlor meeting hosed by my parents and lied, stating that he and his then wife would send son Matthew to public school in New Haven (mom taught there).
Joe won the primary and the election, Matthew was enrolled in private school.
Joe was a proven liar then and continues to do so.
He is a washed up rejected politician hungering for attention, ignore him