David M. Shribman
WARREN, N.H. — Not that they share a mutual dislike, nor that they consider each other a threat to the nation or to democracy, nor even that they hold a decades-long grudge, but Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt are at it again. And the fact that two old Democratic warhorses, both in their 80s, have jumped into the political fray in recent days stands as yet another example of how the 77-year-old Donald Trump has roiled American politics.
Their clashes more coincidental than personal, Lieberman and Gephardt both were finalists in Al Gore’s 2000 running-mate search; Lieberman emerged the winner, though the Democratic ticket lost the election. Three years later, the two found themselves on opposite sides in an affirmative-action debate; Gephardt criticized several Democrats, a group that included Lieberman, for skepticism of the practice, now under even more aggressive assault. In the yearlong run-up to the 2004 presidential nomination struggle, the two were the leading candidates for the Democrats’ prize, which instead went to Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, at the time trailing deep in the polls.
Now, two decades later, Lieberman, 81, heads a group floating the notion of a third party. Gephardt, 82, heads a group opposing the idea.
The two aren’t sniping at each other and, indeed, both are regarded as congenial men who take politics seriously. Both regard their cause as an expression of deeply felt patriotism. Both understand that the 2024 election represents a critical moment in the country’s passage. This is not a disagreeable collision: no attacks on each other, no aspersions of character, no dirty tricks.
On the surface, the clash is about the dominance of two established parties over the country’s politics. Really, like everything else in American public life the past seven years, it’s about Donald Trump.
Lieberman’s movement, unveiled the other day here in the state that traditionally holds the first presidential primary, is called No Labels. It reflects the widespread feeling that neither Trump nor President Joe Biden should serve a second term in the White House. The yearning is for someone else.
Gephardt’s movement aims to stop Lieberman’s. He understands that yearning; he was an establishment politician with a subtle rebellious streak, a buttoned-down conventional politician — no one had to look up his bio to know that he had been an Eagle Scout — who was at the forefront of the late 1980s rebellion against the orthodoxy of free trade.
“If this were normal times, we’d have no problem with that movement,” he said in an interview. “But Trump tried to overthrow the government and our electoral system. I understand the angst people feel about the choice between Biden and Trump. But sometimes in life, you get two bad choices — and that’s where we are. It’s their goal to have an ‘insurance policy’ against a contest that is Biden versus Trump. But they don’t want to elect Trump. Those goals are in conflict.”
In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Lieberman argued that if polling suggests that the third-party movement would “help elect one or another candidate, we’re not going to get involved.”
Since 1860, when the 6-year-old Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln, new parties have been more aspirational than influential. They have tipped elections to established-party candidates; almost certainly Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) Party helped elect Woodrow Wilson, while Ross Perot’s 1992 candidacy helped elect Bill Clinton, and Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green Party candidacy helped elect George W. Bush.
Lieberman knows that history, which may be why he told The Atlantic, “The last thing I’d ever want to be part of is bringing Donald Trump back to the Oval Office.”
But Angus King, the Maine Independent who joined the Senate the year Lieberman departed, worries that that is precisely what the No Labels movement will do.
“Yes, the public wants more choices,” he told me. “But the problem is the mathematics of the process. It’s winner-take-all. If you get one more vote than the other candidate, you get 100% of a state’s electoral votes. You have to either win or skew the results. A moderate, middle-of-the-road candidate is going to siphon votes away from the Democrat. Look at the battleground states: They all went Democratic by a few percentage points. That means this group will elect Donald Trump.”
Meanwhile, the center-left Third Way also is challenging the No Labels effort, taking on its drive to get on state ballots a year from now. It argues that No Labels “is offering an illusion, not a choice,” with the result that it “will be a spoiler that reelects Trump.”
Third parties in American history have been more effective on the state level than nationally, often taking a left-wing profile. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (1918-1944) and the Wisconsin Progressive Party (1934-1946) dominated their states for a period in the last century. So, too, did the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota (1915-1956), the only one that spread to another country; it had branches in the Prairie provinces of Canada.
The formal unveiling of the No Labels movement was held Monday on the campus of Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H. (That was the setting of the CNN town meeting Trump used so effectively and has been a traditional venue for candidate appearances.) It surprised no one to find Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, at the center of the proceedings.
He was accompanied by former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah — himself a bipartisanship symbol, having been elected as a Republican, then appointed ambassador to China by a Democratic president (Barack Obama), followed by his appointment as ambassador to Russia by a Republican president (Trump). But Manchin has flirted promiscuously with the notion of running for president, and his standard line is that when he takes on challenges, he wins.
Manchin has been at the center of Senate politics as well; he’s the Democrat Biden has had the hardest time corralling to support his (mostly progressive) agenda. Manchin faces a difficult reelection, probably against popular GOP Gov. Jim Justice. If he abandons that Senate race, the Democrats’ prospects of retaining Senate control are diminished substantially. One way or the other, he’s a central figure in the 2024 calculus. Of course, he is not exactly part of a youth movement either. He turns 76 next month.
A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
