There’s an old saying in politics: If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. It means there are consequences to the company you keep. That comes to mind as I watch the collective insanity that has gripped the Democratic Party establishment over the No Labels ballot access effort for 2024. The self-proclaimed oracles of the left are so certain that No Labels will help elect Donald Trump that they are willing to compromise their most cherished principles to stop it, including allying themselves with disgraced groups like Move On and the Lincoln Project and, worse, adopting the very Trumpian voter-suppression tactics that they claim to oppose.
Recently tapped to lead the new anti-No Labels super PAC is former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, a decent and well-respected leader. Perhaps Gephardt was unaware of what he was signing onto: A year-long ax-grinding campaign intended to smear the founders of No Labels on a deeply personal level and undermine at all costs a movement of voters who want many of the same things that he wants. Or perhaps he was unaware of the shady characters that he was aligning himself with – like Rick Wilson and the Lincoln Project.
Shortly after assuming his position, Gephardt said on NBC News that it would be “un-American” to try to prevent No Labels from accessing the ballot. “We shouldn’t do that,” he said. And he’s right. But that’s exactly what his allies are doing. They are filing lawsuits and running interference to try to prevent No Labels from gaining ballot access. Move On sent a thuggish letter to secretaries of state asking them to “investigate” No Labels’ ballot access work. Gephardt knows this is wrong, and he shouldn’t cooperate with it.
These tactics are intimidation at best and obstruction at worst. According to the very statute Jack Smith cited against Trump – 18 US Code Sec. 241 – it is a crime for “two or more persons” to conspire to “injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution.” And organizing voters for the ballot has been upheld as protected speech under the First Amendment.
In other words, to stop Trump, they are willing to become Trump. Most frustrating of all, they aren’t even stopping him. Their stubborn insistence that No Labels will help Trump is unsupported by facts. They have no idea who No Labels might give their ballot line to – it could easily be someone who appeals to the millions of Never-Trump Republicans. Karl Rove wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal to that effect just yesterday, arguing that a No Labels ticket could ruin Trump’s chances at reelection.
The insistence of these Democrats that Biden will fare worse than Trump against No Labels betrays an insecurity and lack of faith in Biden’s candidacy, particularly its ability to appeal to the middle. It’s quite telling.
To confuse and scare people, they take the allegations a step further by claiming that No Labels is intentionally working to elect Trump. They have known No Labels for 14 years. They know its founder and leaders. They know it is not a pro-Trump group and yet they say it anyway. That’s called lying.
These Democrats, including Jon Cowan and others I have known my whole career, are tarnishing their brand and confirming what so many accuse Democrats of: elitism and hypocrisy. So certain are they in their infinite wisdom that they believe they should have the power to overrule voters and control the options available. This isn’t just arrogant; it’s anti-democratic. They know better. Dick Gephardt, in particular, knows better.
He knows better than to sign his name to the below-the-belt personal warfare that is the hallmark of Rick Wilson and the Lincoln Project. They just ran a six-figure ad campaign on CNN and MSNBC attacking not the ideas behind No Labels, but the people. Wilson is known for nasty negative tactics like his infamously disgusting attack ad against the late war hero and Senator Max Cleland.
In case the TV ad against No Labels didn’t hit close enough to home, they also rented a bus and plastered a photoshopped image of our founder, Nancy Jacobson, and her husband alongside Donald Trump and drove it through their neighborhood. They have tried to frighten our vendors. They have warned our young staff that they will “never work in this town again.”
And then there’s the misogyny – and I don’t use the term lightly. They cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that No Labels is run by Nancy Jacobson, insisting instead that it must be her husband, Mark Penn, a former Clinton advisor, who is really pulling the strings. I have been around No Labels from the beginning, and I have seen Mark maybe three times. This organization is Nancy’s life’s work. But to these self-proclaimed progressives, that just can’t be. There must be a guy behind it all.
I believe strongly that reasonable people can disagree and still be good, decent people. That’s what No Labels is all about. If these Democrats don’t support what we’re doing, that’s okay. If they want to work to oppose us, that’s okay too. But battle us on the ideas. Do it above the board. Meet with us in person to discuss this, as we have offered to do.
Integrity is when actions and words align. The reason so many voters have lost trust in our political establishment and rallied around No Labels is that, too often, our leaders are caught saying one thing and doing another. I hope that former Rep. Gephardt will call on his cohort to return to its convictions and take a higher road. It’s not too late to avoid the fleas.
Holly Page is a co-founder of No Labels, was the executive vice president of the DLC, worked on the 1992 Clinton for President campaign, and was until recently a strategic advisor to Third Way. This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
