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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri, the senior political correspondent at Puck, and this is my election podcast, Somebody's Gotta Win. We're in a presidential election cycle where people don't feel like they have a lot of choice. Sure, Republicans are holding a primary with half a dozen candidates, but no one seems to be breaking through, at least getting nowhere near Donald Trump, who's popular within a faction of the Republican Party, but very polarizing beyond that. Plus, he has some major electability issues, like 91 indictments.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, an 80-year-old candidate, is not exactly lighting up the Democratic Party the way he used to when he promised to save the soul of the country from Trump in the last election. Well, it's 2023 now, and polling shows that a majority of Democrats think that Biden is too old to run for election, like two-thirds of them. Those numbers scream to me that people want choice.
It also may explain why at one point Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was polling as high as 15 percent in a Democratic primary against Joe Biden. You might be thinking this is the moment for a third party candidate to finally break through with some moderate sense and decency and save the country from polarization.
But supporting a third-party candidate has its risks and could result in the re-election of Donald Trump, even if that's who you don't want to win. At least that's what former Republican and Lincoln Project founder Reed Gallen has argued to me. And he would know a thing or two about third parties. He tried to start one. Reed, we have known each other for a bit now, about a year or so. You...
Are a disaffected Republican, correct? I guess I'm not only disaffected, but also former at this point. But yeah. Former. Okay. You worked on the McCain campaign, right? McCain, George W. Bush twice, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I grew up in it, right? Other kids went to summer camp. I went to the NRCC. So yeah. This is a big deal.
And it was Donald Trump that essentially pushed you over the edge. Is that fair to say? Oh, 100%. Yeah. You know, look, I in 2016, I didn't work for anybody or I was doing my own thing. I was writing about the campaign every day. I really was interested in that. But, you know, look, I'd known Jeb Bush before.
you know, for a million years because of obviously the Bush connections. My dad had worked for George H.W. Bush, so like had a lot of family connections there. Yeah, had seen Rubio in person, really liked him, had known Cruz since 2000, or 2020, yeah, since 2000, so he wanted nothing to do with him. But once Trump came on the scene, it was like,
If this is what the party wants, like, you know, people like, oh, I didn't leave the party. The party left me. I would say it was mutual. Right. They left me. I left them. And we've, you know, gone our separate ways. But yeah, for sure. Once once I saw like either I was so blind, so ignorant, it was opaque to me. But once I realized what Republicans wanted, it wasn't what I wanted and I was out. And then is that when you went on to form the Lincoln Project?
We didn't form the Lincoln Project till December of 2019. So after I left the Trump, excuse me, after I left the GOP, I should say, you know, I spent a few years in the wilderness. I did a lot of I spent a lot of time in the political reform space, you know, the, you know, the.
open primaries and you know those kinds of things tried to start a third party briefly with a group called the serve america movement we got ballot access in one state in new york uh it's already gone if that gives you a sense of how successful is that in andrew yang uh it was pre pre-yang it was so part of the forward thing here i think last year but this was pre-yang it was an incredibly uh
educational experience. Spent some time working for someone like a Howard Schultz on a third party presidential bid. And then, you know, it came to a point where, again, in late 2019, it was like, okay, we're going to do this. I can't afford to have this guy reelected. And, you know, the rest is history. We're almost history, hopefully. Right. So you have a lot of experience in third parties, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
And Lincoln Project, though, they don't support third parties. That's fair to say. Yeah, look, we're not a political party. We're not a policy organization. We are political. We are a fighting organization, right? Right. You fight against third parties at this point. I would say this. It's not that I'm anti-third party or we're anti-third party. Right. If you're going to start a third party, understand why you're doing it, one. And two, if you're doing it, understand
understand the context in which it's happening, which is right now, especially at the national level, this is the fight for the country, right? We always say, Tara, oh, this is the most important election of our lives. I really do believe this is it, finally. After saying this for 15 or 20 years, this is finally it. And if you're going to go and give people, first of all, if you're going to give someone a third option, that's fine. But understand that it's like, oh,
Greens or libertarians, right? You're doing this because you're disaffected. Are you going to win? Almost assuredly you weren't. Do you have the opportunity to serve as a catalyst for someone who shouldn't win to be successful? Yeah, that's the whole sort of spoiler deal.
So you think right now the problem is, is that third parties are spoilers for Biden, essentially, this time around? I would say, yeah. I mean, because here's the thing is that the if you just let's let's take a step back from the third party and look at the two major parties, Republicans and Democrats, the Republican Democrat, the Republican Party, excuse me, is is homogeneous. It's 90 percent white. Right. Republicans fall in line. Right. They get behind who they're going to get behind. Now, if.
the case, then whoever Trump's already got in the bag is going to keep. And they've got to go figure out how to gobble up, you
you know, a few disaffected Republicans. Soft Republicans, probably. Right. Soft Republicans. The Democratic Party is much different. The strength of its coalition is its diversity, but that's also its weakness, which is Democrats. And look, I'm not a Democrat, as I've said, but I've now worked alongside many of them for almost four years. They have to go make the case
each and every election cycle to their people. Now, is there a core that will always show up? Absolutely. But there are plenty who, you know, will stay home. We saw that in 2016, right? If, you know, I like to say happy Democrats vote, unhappy Democrats don't, right? Republicans vote all the time, right? They're like, because they see it as a different thing, which is at this point now, and just to get a little bit philosophical,
Republicans, hardcore Republicans or lifelong Republicans see this election, even if they don't like Trump, as a referendum on the future of the country, but also existential because the world that they knew or that I knew coming up has radically changed and it's never coming back. And so they're now trying to grasp and hold on to this thing for one last hurrah, even though most of the people who feel that way are
you know, economically successful, college educated, right? So they're the anti-woke Republicans essentially, or anti, like Republicans that feel that the Democratic policies have become too progressive or they're cycling out of control. Or they've decided, yeah, look, it's like in 2020, when Joe Biden was the unexpected Democratic nominee, they thought they were going to get Sanders, right? The Republicans thought they were going to get Bernie, which they almost did.
And they ran the Sanders playbook against Biden. And it almost worked. Right. Because in this country, a socialist versus a sociopath, the sociopath has an even money chance of winning because the idea is like, you know what? Like, I might be crazy, but I'm not going to steal your shit.
Right. And for a lot of Republicans, especially, it's like, oh, and I think there's a lot of sort of subtext to lower taxes and individual liberty. Right. Which is basically like, I don't want anybody telling me what to do because nobody ever has. It's kind of ingrained in like the American psyche anyway. But it is. But now it's almost weaponized. Right. Which is like.
you know, this idea of like, oh, you know, I can do it all on my own. Right. I mean, look, if you even go back to like the, the, like the, the William F. Buckley sort of pull you, pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethos.
It's all BS, as Stuart Stevens wrote in his book, because William F. Buckley had his dad buy the publishing house to help him publish his book. Even he didn't do it. Right. So depressing. So it's always been sort of a BS thing. And so, you know, this is where, again, you see what Trump and Republicans are doing. Why are they doing this? They know their guy is damaged goods. Right. Right.
So they have to make Biden equally bad. They have to make him equivalently incompetent or corrupt. Okay, fair enough. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why voters are unhappy with Biden. I don't think top of the list is the idea that he's corrupt, but they're trying for that. I do wonder though, why if you are a former Republican, why you wouldn't just support one of the many, many, many Republicans in the GOP field right now running to be president?
By many, I mean, I think there are 10 right now that are still in the race. If you count Will Hurd, did he ever enter? I don't know. I think he's in, but he's not. It's like, you know, it's like if a tree falls in the forest, like you may, I guess he's there. Because a couple of things. One is they're not going to win.
And two, because of what you saw on the debate stage in where were they, Milwaukee in August last month. Yeah. Would you, you know, please raise your hand if you'd support a convicted Donald Trump. All but two of them raised their hand and really Christie sort of tried to do the Habsie thing. Right. Where it's like, oh, just looked around. Yeah. He was like, wait, should I do this?
And, you know, Nikki, oh, Nikki Haley's the normal one. Is she? Tim Scott's the good one. Is he? You know, Doug Burgum, he's, you know, from North Dakota. Like, okay, great. He's the folksy one. He's the folksy one, right. He's the folksy billionaire. Um,
And so like that tells you all you need to know, which is the party is shot through. Nikki seems like a pretty conventional. Yeah, she seems like a pretty conventional candidate. I mean, Tim Scott, too. Yeah. But again, but if you had. But again, if you say it's OK that this guy gets convicted of all these crimes and you'd still support him.
He still runs the party. Yeah, he owns the party. It's his. So you're like, he owns the party. So I'm going to go up against the guy who owns the party rather than defend the people who might be trying to take him on. Again, you know, 85% of voters want someone like a Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or a Vivek Ramaswamy. Tell me how any of the quote unquote normals break through that wall. Right. I mean, tell me how it works. I just don't see it.
Right. Unless I guess they all consolidate around one person by a dollar. Well, but if they were going to do that, though...
What they would, the first, the predicate of that would have been is the, the night that Trump announced reannounced late last year was that November? Um, they all, anybody who was in would have said, or anybody who had a conscience would have said, we cannot do this again. We cannot have this. They hadn't even announced at that point. It doesn't matter. The whole, the whole balance of the party needed to start in on that. And then as they got in, they all needed to go in on Trump.
All day, every day. But doesn't that just like make him the victim that he claims to be when he talks to his, you know, supporters? You know, yeah, but I mean, what's the alternative? None of them are even laying a glove on him now.
So you got to choose a path, which we've seen is you have to stay in his face. You have to help become the eclipse that blocks out his light. He needs to have the light and he doesn't like it. And so if he's attacking everybody, do I think it would have worked? Hell, I don't know. I don't know that there has been an eclipse yet. What's the eclipse? Tell me. Who's doing that? I don't think there will be at this point. There won't be.
So do you think the Lincoln Project has been a successful way to counterbalance Trump? I think so for a couple of reasons. One is I think that if you go back to 2020, you know, what we were able to do
in, say, the spring and summer of 20, before the Biden campaign, you know, let's say this, before the 2020 conventions, right, in August of that year, we were able to make ourselves Trump's main antagonist, right? He turned toward us because he hated us so much, and he still hates us that much. And so while Biden and his people were getting their act together, we were happy to take all those lumps, right, which we still are.
Um, he still hates us, right? He, he attacks us, you know, I don't know, monthly, regularly, whatever it is. Um, and we even hear it from the inside, like that, like he rages against us and his people have to tell him like, don't do this is what they want, which is true. Um, because again, we want him distracted. Now it's hard to believe that we're still trying to find a way to make him crazier than he's going to be naturally. Um,
Right. Yeah. But also what it says is if you're a current Republican, if you're a former Republican, if you're a conservative leaning independent, you don't have to be with him. There are people like you.
who see the world largely the way you do, right? That understand that this is bigger than an R or a D behind your name. And we're not asking you to be Democrats. And we're not even asking you to love Joe Biden. We're not asking you to. But you have to vote for him. But you got to vote for him this one last time, right? One more time. Because if Trump loses to Biden this one time, then it's over. You're saying that his grip on the party has vanished.
I don't know if it would vanish. I don't know that it would vanish, but it would certainly be different, which is there would be, you would see all of the, not all, but you'd see a lot of the fever break, I think, or at least a fair amount of it because now...
You know, is this really? The virus wouldn't just move on and continue through Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. No, well, let me say this. I'm speaking about Trump in particular. But no, you're right. The virus has fully taken hold of the GOPs, such as it is cerebral cortex. Yes. No, it has. The poison has soaked in. It could be Gaetz. It could be DeSantis. I mean, look what just happened. It's like COVID. We'll have it forever. Right.
Right. Yeah. Just look. But you're saying it may not be as strong without Trump. Is that what you're trying to say? Maybe not at a national level, but certainly within the states. I mean, look what just happened in Texas with Ken Paxton. Right. The guy's been a crook since he took office as the attorney general of the state of Texas. And what happened? The shadowy, dark money, you know, conservatives go out and they tell these senators,
You vote to convince Ken Paxton, you're going to get a primary opponent you can't beat. And this is where, right, like eventually, Tara, this thing will eat itself, right? Because this is these kind of movements. The only people they hate more than you and me are each other.
And so, you know, the otherwise, quote unquote, normal member of the Texas legislature and, you know, will eventually get a crazy primary candidate that beats him or her. And then we've seen some other places like I think there was just a county in Iowa, right, where, you know, an otherwise normal Democrat beat a MAGA wacko, right, for a countywide office. Why? Because the MAGA people have no interest in governing, but they do hold a lot of power right now and they will continue to push their people up through the ranks.
I think the difference is here is that the rest of them are for the rest of them. It's all an act. Right. They might be crazy, but they're not Trump. Trump is Trump speaks the language natively. The rest of them are right. And if anything, he seems like he's getting even stronger. I mean, every time he has another indictment, it just seems to like actually push soft Republicans his way in some ways.
Well, again, it's an authority. We have to back up. It's an authoritarian movement, right? Bigger than the party. The Republican Party is its political wing, but it's a movement. Trump is its leader. I don't know that he's necessarily the alpha and the omega so much as he was an accelerant and he's he has become the leader of it. But, you know, it's got the Leonard Leos. It's got the Fox News and the OAN. Fox News isn't his network anymore. No, but those people are likely to vote for Trump.
They're not voting for Joe Biden, probably. Well, let's talk about this idea of a third party for people like yourself, right? I mean, and not just people like yourself,
A lot of people are feeling very disaffected in this environment. Trump and Biden are tied in a general electorate. All the polling shows that. Two thirds of Democrats don't want Biden to run for reelection. It's Democrats and it's Republicans. It's never Trumpers. And it's Democrats who are like, really, I'm going to vote for this guy again. Who knows what kind of shape he's going to be in. It's going to be 82 when he gets elected.
For some reason, the age thing doesn't really apply to Trump. I do think there's a difference between Adderall. Also, no, I think there's a big difference between 70s and 80s. I really do. Having seen it up close with family members, there's a difference when you turn 80. So lo and behold,
No labels, third party. Well, it's really a political advocacy group, 501c4, that has supported, you know, centrist politicians and candidates, but without having to disclose who the donors are. Although we know some of them, like Harlan Crowe, who, you know, obviously was, uh,
Supreme Court Justice... Clarence Thomas's. Yeah, Clarence Thomas's sugar daddy. He's one of the donors and there are a lot of others. And they tend to be CEOs, big corporate hogs, kind of giving them cash. And you got to wonder...
Well, what is it for? And is it going to cause chaos this election? You know, they're not the only ones. Cornel West is running with the Green Party, which is also already on all the ballots, right? And I've heard a rumor that, you know, maybe RFK Jr. runs as a libertarian. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. And that libertarian line is on the ballot in most states, right? Yep. So this new party, no labels, claims to be centrist, claims to be the, you know...
the party for people who just cannot bear another Trump-Biden rematch. They're calling themselves an insurance plan, an insurance policy.
In case of a rematch, what looks like it's happening. And they're even going to hold a bipartisan nominating conference in Dallas. That's what Senator Joe Lieberman says. He's on the board of this organization. And I've been reporting on this for a while that they are spending $70 million to get on the ballot on in all 50 States. And that includes Arizona. They've already gotten ballot access in Arizona, a swing state where they do like to vote. Oh yeah. And Colorado and in Arizona, they do like to vote for third party candidates and
Gary Johnson pretty much, I think he helped Trump win Arizona in 2016. He was an independent candidate who may have taken votes over from Hillary. You know, they're in North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Oregon. So what is going on here? Like, is this a real thing? Could they get as much as 18% of the vote, 20% of the vote? And who is this going to affect? I mean,
There's a lot of debate in town. Some people say, oh, there's just a spoiler for Biden because disaffected Dems are going to vote for no labels. But some people are saying actually could be a spoiler for Trump, too. So let's let's go back. So the history of third party candidacies is not a good one in this country. They they rarely have success. They have not garnered an electoral vote.
since John Connolly in 1980. And that was even, I think, like a West Virginia guy who just sort of defected. So even Ross Perot didn't get an electoral vote. Ross Perot got not one, got zero goose egg electoral votes. He got 20% of the popular vote, right? He was up as high as 37 after the first two debates. But the problem with Ross was he was crazy.
Right. So he was convinced the Bush family was going to attack his daughter's wedding and all this other stuff. And he dropped out and he got back in. But so let's just because because the no labels people, Nancy Jacobson, who runs this outfit. Right. They like to hold up Ross as the is the possibility. OK, he could do it. Here's their problem. Aside from their other myriad problems, Ross was truly an outsider.
Right. He was a business guy from Dallas. My mom worked for his company for a million gajillion years. I used to drive by his house every day on my way to high school. Oh, wow. You're so close to this. And all the guys in my high school, right, they all had Ross T-shirts, the seniors that could vote. But Ross was truly an outsider. And if you go back and you watch Perot's like economic, like infomercial, which is really what it was, like he called all of the stuff that we've seen economically.
He said this was going to happen. He tapped into something that people were feeling because he believed it. He wasn't a Republican. He wasn't a Democrat. He was something truly different. Right.
The people that no labels are putting up, whether or not it's Joe Manchin from West Virginia or Larry Hogan from Maryland or John Huntsman from Utah, who couldn't even win a primary in his own state the last time he ran for governor again, you know, or any of these people like, first of all, like, OK, so are they younger than Donald Trump and Joe Biden? Yeah. Yeah.
Are they giant bowls of vanilla ice cream? They are. Are they the voice of the new generation of what America's looking for? Or are they the voices and faces of like what America's plutocrats would like? Because here's the thing, Tara, is they all want like the people that are backing this
They're being sold on this idea that this unity ticket where you'd have a Republican and a Democrat serving together, I don't know who's on top and who's on bottom, would bring some quote unquote sanity back to Washington, D.C. First, ha, right? Second,
How's that going to work? Right. Remember, we had to pass the 12th Amendment because they the second place vote getter becoming vice president in the Electoral College. So you've got, you know, Larry Hogan, Joe Manchin, John Huntsman. Right. These are people who do not excite the census. They're not different. They come from the two major parties. And.
What we have seen in both no labels polling and some private polling and other stuff is that when you say, would you vote for a third party candidate? You know, maybe they get 20, 25 percent. When you put one of these guys names on it, it drops to like five.
OK, so one, their idea, the no labels idea that they could win any electoral vote is fiction. They'd have to get to 35 and beat both Trump and Biden. Explain to me how that happens. Secondly, secondly, if you look at this polling, as you noted in your question, more voters come out of Biden than come out of Trump.
Why? Because, as I noted when we first started talking, that there are enough disaffected Democrats and enough soft Republicans who've been with Biden who said, if I don't have to hold my nose and vote for this guy because, you know, John Huntsman seems fine, then I'll do that. And, you know, and so if in a target state, let's say Michigan, in a two way race, Biden beats Trump, let's say, 49, 43. Right.
In a three-way race, Trump beats Biden 42-39. Okay, so my question is, why would you take a chance with putting this man back in office? And this is where no labels, I believe, frankly, is in the tank for Trump because they know that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are not equivalent, but that's the message that they're pushing.
That's the message that they're pushing is that Joe Biden doesn't get anything done. He's a captive of the far left, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, well, you know, what about all your problem solvers, Nancy, in Congress who voted for all these bipartisan things over the last two and a half years, right?
He's not the same, but they have to make him the same, just like Fox or OANN or all the right wing wackos to justify their own existence, which is you're going to get Trump reelected. Now, if your insurance policy turns out to be a Molotov cocktail like and burns the house down.
Like, what good have you done? But their candidates seem more conservative than liberal, I guess. For sure. Because again, back to what you said, Harlan Crowe- Yeah, it takes away from the soft Republicans. But Harlan Crowe's not backing Bernie Sanders for president. If you look at this policy thing that No Labels put out right in August, I think, right? Like, it's all George W. Bush sort of Republicanism, which in another time I'd be fine with.
Right? Right. If it was 1999. But it's Wall, it's, a lot of their donors are Wall Street types too, like Steve Schwarzman used to be a donor. He supports Kyrsten Sinema, who's a Democrat. Well, she's an independent now.
Yeah, she's independent now. Exactly. He also gave to Ron DeSantis' gubernatorial campaign. Right. Well, and that's the thing is, so this is this is the kind of doublespeak that the no labels folks get themselves into trouble with, because at the end of the day, they're not very good at this, which is they said if it was a candidate like Ron DeSantis instead of Donald Trump, we'd be OK with that. You would.
You would. After all the things that he's said and done in Florida, which is a precursor to what he might want to do. So you're suggesting that it's really about trying to elect a Republican. But isn't Nancy Jacobson's husband Mark Penn? Yeah, Mark Penny worked for Clinton for many years. He worked for Clinton, both Bill and Hillary. He got tossed out of both places. But he is now, you know, he is now a contributor to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.
you know, and he goes out of his way to, you know, say bad things about Joe Biden when he has the opportunity. One of their... So he's gone through conversion therapy as well? One of their national co-chairs, a guy named Pat McCrory, who is the former governor of North Carolina, Republican governor of North Carolina, the man who really started the bathroom wars for us back in 2014, right? He shares...
a chief strategist with none other than Donald Trump, a guy named Chris LaCivita. For your Democratic listeners out there, why should you know who Chris LaCivita is? Because he is Mr. Swift Boat, right? So tell me that Chris and McCrory don't have a little pillow talk once in a while. Just don't buy it.
Then there's also Josh Gottheimer, who is a Democrat, who is a chair of their Problem Solvers Caucus, which they support. And he's a Democrat. He's from New Jersey. Swing state, swing district.
A lot of the people that they support are, what do they call them? Problem solvers. Problem solvers. Main Street Democrats, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, look, and Republicans. And this is, you know, and so, yeah, it's like a Josh Gottheimer or a, what's his name? Brian Fitzpatrick on the Republican side from suburban Philly. Yeah, the wealthier suburbs. But No Labels has been distancing itself from its problem solvers, especially because a lot of their Democratic candidates
members came out against their third party effort. In fact, when the first Democratic member of the problem solvers came out against No Label's third party thing, they attacked him viciously. Who was that? Who was that? I can't remember. I think he was from Minnesota. I can't remember the guy's name. I'll find it for you. But to me, Josh Gottheimer is like the most outspoken of the crew. And has he said anything yet about this? I don't know. But the point is, is like
The no labels folks are very much trying to make this about only Democrats think this is a bad idea, which is not true. And this goes to your other part, too, about could it hurt Trump? It could. It absolutely could. And here's where, again, you know, they've lit a fuse that potentially they don't know what they're dealing with, which is if the Trump people think that no labels work.
could harm them, one of two things will happen. Either they'll tell them, pull the plug, or the attacks on their person will be vicious. I would venture to say that it's, do you remember the movie Casino?
Yeah. Okay. Well, so, okay. Okay. Yeah. So it's much more, it's much more my generation than yours, but you know, at the end, like when everybody's getting rolled up by the feds, you know, the old guys are sitting in like Cincinnati or whatever. What about that guy? He's okay. What about that guy? He's okay. What about that guy? He's good, but why take the chance? And then the next scene is the guy getting to behind the ear in the parking lot. Right. Like, right. If you, if you're Chris Lasavita and Susie Wiles and Donald Trump, and you see this thing, like why take the chance?
Is even just being like on the ballot, like having just your name on the ballot, is that a problem for Biden and Trump? Like not...
not even having a candidate like they say they have a guardrail, right? Like that they can get off. Well, so this is this is a great question, because here's the this is here's the thing. So no labels is going to get there. They're trying to get and I think they probably will get close 35 ballot access in 35 states, which means that you have the right to run a candidate. Right. Whoever their nominees are have to get the other 15 states. Right.
But once you have this, and I'm putting all these in air quotes, although your listeners can't see it, this nominating convention... Wait, wait, you said that they have to get, their nominees have to get on the other 15 states. Those, there are another 15 states that require... A candidate personally to do it. Yeah. Okay. Do they have time to pull that off? They do. A lot of, yeah, it's really, yeah, it's really...
Up until like late August in some places, because that's when, you know, especially with absentee balloting and early voting, the secretaries of state have to start printing ballots. So it's later than you'd think. But, you know, it's really on ballot access. If you have money, good lawyers and time, it's a logistical effort as much as it is anything else.
um you'll find the people who will sign your petitions or do whatever um but the but the point is is that once those candidates are on the ballot in those states right once no labels has handed over its ballot line to joe mansion it's joe mansions it doesn't belong to no labels anymore it's joe mansion's candidacy it's joe mansion's campaign and they could be like joe uh
you know, it's late August. I think you really shouldn't do this. And Joe Manchin could be like, sorry. And they can't, Joe Manchin can't take money from them either, right? No, he'd be a federal candidate like anybody else. Although, as I understand it, his daughter of EpiPen fame is like trying to raise $100 million for some quote unquote, you know, centrist thing, which is just a Joe Manchin super PAC by another name. We don't even know if he's running for reelection for the Senate right now.
Right. I mean, a guy like Joe Manchin, he's got three he's got three paths in life. Right. Be a lame duck senator. Seems boring. Run for reelection, potentially lose in his home state of West Virginia or do this and go out in a blaze of glory. Well, you live in D.C. You know, this is a man who loves the lights. He'd love the attention. Certainly. Yeah.
On his floating yacht. Yeah, on his yacht in the Potomac. Yeah, it's really more like a tractor trailer. Right, but look, I mean, here's the thing is like Manchin, you know, Manchin is not better than any other politician. He's the same, if not worse. He's the epitome of the swamp creature, right? Mm-hmm.
And so like, okay, so he's a conservative Democrat. Great. You know, I love blue dog Democrats, but blue dog Democrats don't act like he does. Right. People who really want to show the best of what's possible don't act like he does.
They would be in the middle of negotiations trying to figure out how to get something done, not playing coy and saying, well, I'll tell you what I want after you've told me what I want. I mean, he got the IRA passed. They eventually got it done. Eventually. The Inflation Reduction Act. Right. But that was all... But Sinema gave the carried interest guys their money. Right. Right. But the point about no labels is, again...
They don't have good answers. They haven't proven how they can win a state, right? Let alone, you know, any electoral vote. And at the end of the day, if you want to be an insurance policy, the first thing you should do is make sure, again, you're not burning down the house. And
Look, from my perspective, Tara, and again, it is my perspective. I'm not a Democrat. I'm certainly not a progressive. But if the fight is going to be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, with all of the things that you mentioned understood, to me, it's a no-brainer. Why would you ever want Donald Trump back in office? This guy wasn't a good president to begin with. He didn't want the job. He didn't think he was going to have the job, right? He thought he was going to lose. And so now you want to give this guy four more years? Please.
And you're saying voting for a third party gives Trump four more years. Yes. And for me, not to be overly dramatic, spells the end of American democracy as we know it. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've been allowed of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.
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Can't wait for this one. Alien Romulus, rated R, now playing only in theaters. Get your tickets now. Just want to get back to one last thing. If the No Labels party line is on the ballot, it has to have a candidate next to it, right? Mm-hmm. If there's no candidate next to it, you can't do a write-in. I suppose you could, but at that point, it would be de minimis. Yeah. And who would actually go out to go write-in for a No Labels candidate? And so...
They have ballot access in those states. And I'm just wondering if just by way of having Joe Manchin on the ballot, does that just cause problems? Whether he's actually electable or not, people just vote for him. Do they have any data or anything that shows that they'll vote for him regardless? No.
I don't think he has the name. I don't think he has a national name ID. No, but this goes back to the whole idea, though, of who's supporting this whole thing. $70 million in dark money, right? We should assume, Tara, that that's a down payment.
Right. That if these guys are willing to pony up six figures to do this, because in my mind, it's all a Trump super PAC anyway, that they'd be willing to do enough. And remember, they don't need to do it nationally. They only need to do it in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota. Right. They don't have to screw over Biden. Right. And again, I'm not I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not sorry. I believe that they are doing this for the wrong reasons. Now, people like, oh, there are people there who really believe in it.
Fine. You know what? The world's full of useful idiots. And that's what those people are at this point. Okay. Well, I'm gonna have to get a response from them on this, obviously. Please. And we'd love to talk to Nancy, right? We'd love to see Nancy in person, but she rarely comes out. Yeah. She's not usually... She's not the most press-friendly. Although she...
She seems to now want to speak to the press. When I first started reporting on this a year or so ago, she sort of said to me something along the lines of discretion is important for democracy or something like that. No, it was your reporting. And this is when you, I remember I was in the Austin airport when you and I first spoke about this. She said, when you asked why you weren't releasing the names of your donors, her words were, sometimes democracy needs anonymity.
Or something along those lines. I have to get that exact, yeah. But that tells you everything you need to know. Democracy does not need anonymity. You know what? Let me pull it up really quick while I have you on here. Oh, I got it. What's best for democracy is confidentiality. Yeah. Not, not true.
First of all. Second, just on this donor note real quick. And it was about the donors. Right. It is dark money. And what they are saying is our donors... Dark money means they don't have to disclose who their donors are. Right. And what they have said, what they say out loud, Tara, when it comes to their donors is our donors don't want to be public because they don't want the repercussions of doing this. And what I say is if you are a wealthy plutocrat in New York, LA, Dallas, Miami, wherever,
Right. And you want to potentially change the course of history. By definition, your name needs to be public because we should not have a small cabal of wealthy individuals. Right. Deciding who this wants to, you know, who who's going to be president next year. Now, I know you could make the argument that happens anyway. I'm not talking about that. Their argument that somehow their people don't deserve the scrutiny.
right, is part and parcel of the idea that it's a bunch of right wing, you know, donors who don't, you know, like they don't, they don't like Trump. I don't think there's so much right winger. I mean, maybe Harlan Crowe, but they certainly like discord. I think they like the, they like the blockage. They like the compromise, frankly, because it doesn't get a lot done. I mean, Wall Street does not like change. They don't like progress in a lot of ways. Right. And what is that? Why is that? Because it's
Because the system works for them right now. The system works for them. And with Biden, you might get change for the betterment of all Americans. And with Trump, you know you won't. He'll leave you alone. I would also disagree and say they don't like Trump because he's too chaotic. That's why you're not seeing Steve Schwarzman, you know, endorsing Trump or giving him money, Ken Langone, all these guys. Right. But if he got reelected,
And you said, I'm going to give $20 million. I'm going to make a $25 million investment in Trump Inc. You're on the good list. He's transactional. He's for sale. They know that. Maybe. I don't... Yeah, I don't know. I think they don't like the chaos of the Trump presidency. I think that's why they all flock to Ron DeSantis. They're like, oh, this is a guy we can trust. He went to Harvard, Yale. He's, you know, he's not chaotic. He's not insane. Right. But... How's that working out for him? Well...
Yeah, he was much further to the right than they could have ever imagined, I guess. Or at least he's playing it that way. The Jeff Rowe playbook in Iowa. We'll see. Thanks so much, Reed. This was interesting. But I do, yeah, I do think these are people who like stalemates. These are people who don't like change. I don't even know they're that ideological to the right. I don't think they believe in the things that Trump espouses or what his MAGA base espouses. I just think...
They don't want change. Like it's good for business. Gridlock is good for business in Washington. That is. But I would say this is that if they don't like chaos, then why would you do anything that's going to get you more chaos? Interesting. I don't know if they think that ultimately this is going to help elect Trump. But you seem to have the data that says that's what's going to happen. Yep. You don't think that just soft Republicans will go to no labels and take from Trump. You really don't think that.
I think soft Republicans aren't for Trump no matter, I mean, not no matter what, but there are many soft Republicans who don't want to vote for Trump. If they had, if they had to choose between Trump and Biden, either they hold their nose and vote for Biden or they stay home. And that's better for, that's better for Biden. Yeah. I mean, if you look, if you look at, I think it's Wisconsin in 2020, 50,000 Republicans who otherwise voted for a Republican didn't vote for Trump in 2020.
That means they either left it blank or they voted for Biden. Same with Georgia. Did Joe Biden get more votes in Georgia? Yeah. Why? Because there was a significant undervote for Trump. Because there were a bunch of, you know, sort of Brian Kemp, Buckhead Republicans who were like, I just, I can't do it. I don't want anything to do with the guy. And they would vote for no labels, maybe. More likely than not, yeah. Let's make a prediction of the week. What's your prediction for this week?
My prediction of this week is that we are going to have a critical mass of insanity in the U.S. House of Representatives as you have Joe Biden at the U.N. General Assembly. You have the deadline for funding the government coming up here in what, just a little bit more than two, just a little bit less than two weeks. You're going to have, you know,
President Zelensky of Ukraine in Washington, D.C. And so you're going to have all the right wingers, the Matt Gaetz's of the world, their stuff going absolutely bananas. You're going to want them to increasingly decide if you if you give us real impeachment on Biden, then we'll give you your money. But otherwise, I think it's going to be yet another chaotic week.
in Washington, D.C., Tara. So you think that they're going to ask for more, they're going to ask for real impeachment to give up money to Ukraine. Mm-hmm. I think the Zelensky meetings are going to be chaotic for sure. Yep. We shall see how he is received in Washington. Well,
I would say for the most part, he'll be received as a hero, except for a very narrow band. I mean, look, even John, even Tom Cotton is telling, is asking Biden to send more missiles to Ukraine. Right. So it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Um, but nothing, very few, very few things do anymore. Well, thanks so much. Um, read, this was great. Appreciate your time. And, um,
Yeah, I hope to have you on again. I mean, we'll see when this nominating convention happens, if it happens. What's your sense? Yeah, I mean, look, to me, it's less about the time and the place, which is Dallas in April of 2024, and how they're going to decide how they actually choose these nominees. Because here's the thing, to your point, they can't just give.
ballot lines to a joe manchin or john huntsman that would be a massive in-kind contribution right so they'll have to come up with some sort of process to do this the truth is is that the process will be of you know a very small group of insiders who are already you know with no labels who they probably pulled the hell out of these people and ultimately it will be you know candidate a at the top candidate b at the bottom but
just on this, none of them are going to want to be second fiddle, right? They're all going to want to be the top of the ticket, which could have its own like weird dynamic of like a no labels, unprimary. Who knows? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Because the top of the ticket typically chooses their running mate. In this case, the party chooses it. It's definitely a weird dynamic to add in there. Very old school, you know, back to like the, you know, smoke filled rooms. Yeah. Where are they?
The smoke-filled rooms, they're all vaping rooms now. Yeah, that's true. Or gummy rooms or something. Gummy rooms. That might actually cause some agreement in Washington. All right. Thanks, Reid. Have a great day. Thanks.
So obviously, I had to give No Labels a chance to respond. Their chief strategist, Ryan Clancy, called Reid's allegations that they're trying to help Trump a lie. And he pointed out that their co-chair, Senator Lieberman and Dr. Benjamin Chavez Jr., have all made it clear that they believe that Trump should never be president again. As for why they don't disclose their donors, they said it's because they're a nonprofit. That's a 501c4. And they're just trying to get ballot access.
and they want to protect their donors from intimidation and bullying from groups like the Lincoln Project. I still think if you're able to raise $70 million to get ballot access, and you have access to the type of individuals who can raise that type of cash, a lot of them Wall Street types, and they have such a big influence on the electoral process, you should be disclosing who is paying for this, who is willing to fork over that money, especially when it has such a direct impact on our electoral system.
But alas, they want to protect the people who are funding their initiative. Doesn't everyone. But, you know, at the end of the day, candidates have to disclose their donors. But these 501c4s, because they don't actually help specific candidates, they can sort of hide behind this idea that they're a sort of social welfare group or an issue advocacy group. And they don't have to disclose who is pushing for this issue to be front and center. Right.
It's a shady part of our electoral system. So are super PACs. There's a lot going on there. We'll dig into that another episode too, but thank you so much for joining me. If you like my reporting, you can sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest at puck.news slash Tara Palmieri. And you can get 20% off with the discount code Tara20. And if you like this podcast, please rate and share it with your friends. I'll be back on Tuesday with another episode.