Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson on Friday took a victory lap after the centrist organization No Labels announced it would not field a presidential candidate in 2024.
Writing on his Substack page, Wilson acknowledged the theoretical appeal of a centrist party in the United States, but he said that such a candidacy in this year's race would have only been a boon to former President Donald Trump, as it would have split off votes from President Joe Biden.
In the end, Wilson argued, the movement "ended with a whimper."
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"Let’s call this thing what it was: a dark money organization designed to help Trump and get back at the Clintons," Wilson argued of No Labels' bid to field a presidential candidate. "Months and months of internal chaos, false hope, and pointless candidate searches have doomed this pointless endeavor while disheartening a lot of NL volunteers and activists who thought this was something it wasn’t."
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Wilson also gave a tip of the cap to the wide spectrum of organizations -- ranging from the centrist Third Way to the progressive MoveOn -- that lined up against the No Labels bid.
"Despite different approaches, many groups took on the No Labels lie from the start," he writes. "The Lincoln Project led the way with aggressive research and messaging. Special props go to Philip Germain and Greg Minchak at TLP for spearheading this effort. Third Way, with Matt Bennett and Lucas Holtz played a vital role in knocking down the absurd No Labels polling and electability arguments."
The bottom line, argues Wilson, is that the effort showed strength in a progressive-centrist alliance focused on putting aside differences to ensure Trump does not return to the White House.
"The existential risk of doing anything that reduces the chances of defeating Donald Trump is so high that avoiding it means we’ve got enough on our plate with even a well-meaning third party…which [No Labels] most certainly were not," he concludes.
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