BE VERY AFRAID OF NO LABELS (UNLESS YOU'RE DONALD TRUMP)

A few days ago, Axios ran a story about Minnesota swing voters who don't seem to be responding well to Ron DeSantis's culture-war campaign:

Axios sat in on two online focus groups Tuesday night with 13 Minnesotans who voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Nine identify as independent, three as Republican and one as a Democrat....

No one said they're more likely to vote for DeSantis after being shown a video, shared by his campaign online, that portrays him as an anti-LGBTQ crusader.

... Respondents described him as a "wild card" and "unpredictable" ...

Others had a harsher view of the governor: "We saw what happened in Germany 80 years ago," said Jeff D., making a reference to Hitler's rise.

Amber H. echoed the voter who called DeSantis a "wannabe dictator" after watching the video....

That's good news if you think DeSantis could be the GOP nominee. But it doesn't really matter in the much more likely event that we'll have a Trump/Biden rematch.

But this detail, tossed in at the end of the piece, should really worry you:

Seven of the 13 voters said that they'd ditch Biden in favor of "a generic, middle-aged, white, male, Republican governor with mainstream conservative views," when asked about that hypothetical matchup by the moderator.

There aren't very many swing voters in America these days, but remember, in 2020 Biden came within 44,000 votes of an Electoral College tie, which would have been resolved by the House in Trump's favor. If roughly half of the swing voters who voted for Biden that year would be willing to ditch him for a No Labels-y candidate, then the group could easily throw the election to Trump.

I write this at a moment when No Labels has just released a policy document that -- it kills me to say this -- is not laughable or easily dismissed. I'm not saying that I agree with it. But it's easy to imagine swing voters nodding in agreement.

The document is equal parts reasonableness, neoliberal boilerplate, and GOP-donor-friendly deficit hawkery. (Obviously, there's quite a bit of overlap in the last two categories.) To moderate voters, much of this will be appealing:

On the issue of abortion, No Labels avoids taking a stand on what point in a pregnancy abortion should be allowed, but rather argues that the issue needs to be reframed with “empathy and respect” to reflect the mixed results of public polling.

“Most American do not support a total ban on abortion and most Americans do not support unlimited access to abortion at the later stages of pregnancy,” the document reads....

The group seeks a similar middle ground on transgender debates. The group argues that most Americans support laws that protect transgender people from discrimination, while they also “don’t want sexuality and gender issues taught to young children in elementary schools and do want fairness in women’s sports.”

We should create a path to citizenship for Dreamers ... but we should also stop letting so many undocumented immigrants stay in the country. We should improve math and reading scores and make sure no child goes hungry ... oh, and charter schools are awesome. We should have universal background checks and not allow gun purchases by those under 21 ... but we need to respect an individual right to own firearms.

This will all seem reasonable to many voters, but probably not many Republican voters. For them, absolutism on guns, immigration, abortion, and trans people, to name just four issues, is an ingrained part of personal identity. By contrast, moderate Democratic voters (and voters who lean Democratic when the Republican opponent is Trump) aren't really invested in liberal ideas. So, yes, the No Labels candidate will absolutely appeal to more 2020 Biden voters than 2020 Trump voters.

We need to prevent the No Labels candidate from electing Trump, but I'm sorry to see that the public face of that effort could be an ancient mediocrity named Richard Gephardt:

Former House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt is planning to launch a new bipartisan group ... to oppose the No Labels third-party presidential effort, according to people familiar with the plans.

Gephardt was a hack in his time and is a lobbyist now. His group seems to be trying to kill the No Labels bid in its crib, which simply won't work. It's making the billionaire-funded No Labels seem counter-Establishment, which can only help the group in this political climate. Of course some voters will respond well to talk like this:

No Labels founding chairman Joseph Lieberman ... said the effort to stop the No Labels project was an effort to deny Americans options.

“They are really working overtime to prevent the voters from a choice,” he said....

Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) and former House member Fred Upton (R-Mich.) also issued statements voicing continued support for the No Labels effort.

“Panicked Washington insiders in the Democratic Party who claim to oppose voter suppression are actively working to suppress the vote and to deny choice,” Hogan said.

Opponents of the No Labels presidential effort need to accept its inevitability and beat the group's candidate as a candidate. Calling the effort illegitimate won't work.

I get pushback whenever I say this, but Donald Trump is the favorite to win the presidency. This is a major reason why.