DC Lobbyists to the Rescue

Here’s today’s political science quiz. Let’s say you’re the Democratic Party. You’re faced with the prospect of a third party candidacy based on a centrist philosophy that theoretically could take more votes away from Joe Biden than from Donald Trump. What do you do?

A) Name Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as your point person to speak for the party on all matters.

B) Move your party to the center to take the wind out of those moderate third party sails.

C) Form a Washington-based super PAC full of insiders and lobbyists.

It seems to me that the obvious correct answer is B, but you might have already guessed that the Democrats have picked C. Last week they announced the formation of the modestly titled group, Citizens to Save Our Republic, led by long-time Washington lobbyist and former Congressman Dick Gephardt. Its stated goal is to raise a bunch of money to stop the centrist group No Labels in its tracks.

It’s not clear how they intend to do that, but I would guess they’re going to pay a bunch of lawyers to try to keep No Labels off the ballot in as many states as possible, especially purple ones, like Wisconsin. They’ll save our republic by giving voters only two choices, each of which they hate.

They’ve also done some polling which shows that, with a No Labels candidate on the ballot, the numbers would go: Trump 40%, Biden 39% and No Labels 21%. Now, of course a 1% margin doesn’t mean anything as the margin of error in a poll is usually about 4%. And second, the No Labels line in that poll was just generic. If you attached actual names to it there’s no telling where those numbers would go, but probably down. I can’t believe the likes of Joe Manchin and Jon Huntsman are going to light a fire under anybody.

But here’s the point that my party seems determined to miss: A generic third party candidate espousing generally moderate views would get one out of five voters!! Moreover, a little more of that 21% would come from the Democrats’ share than from the other guys.

What does that tell us? It tells us that the Democrats have moved too far to the left. The obvious answer is to come back to the center to recapture those disaffected moderate voters. But instead of doing the obvious, Democratic strategists have decided to do the easy. The Washington answer to everything is to raise and spend a lot of money, mostly on a lot of consultants, pollsters and lawyers.

Democratic and hard-left commentators are using another of their typical strategies: calling their opponents dumb. The official party line is that moderates who are tempted to vote for No Labels are being duped because it’s all just a plot by big Republican donors to re-elect Trump. In other words, one-fifth of Americans are too stupid to see how they’re being used. The more likely reality is that most Americans are independents or only nominally Democrats or Republicans. The argument that a vote for No Labels is a vote for Trump is met with a shrug because the candidates are equally unpopular.

There are, in fact, some big Republican donors behind No Labels, but the group was formed by a Democrat and it has the interest, if not yet the active support, of center-left groups like Third Way. In fairness, No Labels is made up of its own set of consultants, donors and Beltway insiders. There is no genuine grassroots movement anywhere in this equation.

But, even if there are Republicans backing it in hopes of tipping the election their way, what of it? If a centrist movement is picking off Democratic votes then that’s the problem that needs to be addressed. Where the money comes from is just a side show. And let’s be honest. If big liberal donors were smart enough to come up with a third party that eroded the Republican voting base, Democrats and MSNBC would be saying that this was just a legitimate effort to show those erstwhile Republicans the light.

If this plays out the way Democratic strategists fear they’ll have only themselves to blame. If these were citizens who really wanted to save our republic they’d get to work moving their party back to the center.