If you haven’t already heard, there’s a new political party attempting to assert itself in presidential politics that’s calling itself No Labels. In their own words, they’re “a national movement of commonsense Americans” that aims to nominate “an independent unity ticket” for the 2024 presidential election. Without scrutiny, this sounds like the moderate, bipartisan compromise that Americans have been longing for. But their self-professed centrism doesn’t hold up once you start asking questions, in fact No Labels actively avoids taking clear stances on most of our nation’s pressing political issues.

Before we dive in, let’s start by addressing the far-right, fascist Elephant in the room: any party that attempts to find a “middle ground” between hateful bigotry on the right and radical inclusion on the left will be forced to embrace some level of bigotry for the sake of compromise. That’s clearly evidenced by their newest recruit: a pioneer of anti-trans bathroom bills, former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.

"Centrism” in 2023 Involves Embracing Bigotry

Let’s quickly have a refresher of the Republican Party’s ideology in 2023. The party just got finished holding the entire country hostage over the debt ceiling and has now turned to defending a presidential candidate who’s been indicted for multiple crimes. They’re openly advocating for violence against groups they dislike. They’ve engaged in many, many undemocratic acts from racial gerrymandering to outright corruption on the state level. And let’s not forget the scrolling message at CPAC that stated that their attendees were all domestic terrorists. Seeking out a “middle ground” with these folks requires a person to compromise and say that at least some of the above behavior is okay, when none of it has EVER been okay.

Sympathetic voices might still say, “You’re jumping to conclusions! Surely No Labels wouldn’t support the bad parts of the Republican Party. They’re only gonna compromise with the good stuff!” Oh you poor naive soul… The recent recruitment of former Gov. Pat McCrory (R) is a brilliant example of the type of compromises No Labels is willing to make. For those of you who don’t remember, McCrory was a fierce proponent of HB2: the anti-trans bathroom bill that disgraced North Carolina on an international scale as companies like PayPal, Deutsche Bank and Time Warner scaled back plans for offices in the state and cost his state billions. He also signed into law many other clearly conservative policies like severe cuts to unemployment, a repeal of the state’s estate tax and increased restrictions on abortion. Seven years after losing re-election in 2016, McCrory hasn’t really made any compromises in his ideology. In a failed 2022 US Senate campaign he proclaimed “I was a huge defender -- and continue to be a huge defender -- of Trump policies” and has only cited the insurrection on January 6 as the reason for his turn away from Donald Trump.

What is No Labels’ Policy Platform?

No Labels posted an excruciatingly long, 91-page policy playbook to their website that somehow completely avoids addressing most of our nation’s most pressing political issues. Words and phrases like “firearms,” “abortion,” and “voting rights” are absolutely nowhere to be found in the document (or literally anywhere else on their website). There’s also no mention of policies that seek to address issues concerning discrimination, whether they be racial, gender-based or otherwise. They’re clearly not building a unity ticket based on compromise, they’re actually building a “franken-ticket” that incoherently mashes together policies from both sides while sidestepping any difficult topics where unity doesn’t exist. (It’s quite astounding that this “playbook” is almost 100-pages long when it contains such little substance. It spends most of its time regurgitating polling on three corporate-minded issues: jobs, taxes and infrastructure. )

Who Is Funding No Labels?

Billionaires who are trying their goddamned hardest to make sure you don’t know their identities are at the party’s core. As a result, No Labels has become synonymous with dark money: spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not publicly disclosed. Investigative journalists have been following the trail for years and have identified many prominent billionaires that have thrown their wealth behind No Labels. This video does a fantastic job of breaking down the movement’s funding sources but below is a brief “who’s who” of their most famous donors:

To start us off we’ve got Harlan Crow, y’know, the billionaire that has been showering Clarence Thomas with lavish gifts for reasons that most definitely DON’T include swaying pivotal SCOTUS decisions.

No Labels has had Andrew Tisch in its corner, a former tobacco company CEO, turned billionaire that infamously said that he believed that “nicotine is not addictive” while testifying under oath in front of Congress.

No Labels even has the backing of a couple of “former-Trumper” billionaires like Nelson Peltz, and Steve Schwartzman: billionaire CEO of everyone’s favorite soul-sucking private equity firm Blackstone. (The same Blackstone that’s driving rents up… well… everywhere.)

Anyone else notice that this “unity” party is led almost exclusively by rich white men?

Who Might They Nominate for President?

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this “unity party” is salivating at the thought of nominating Sen. Joe Manchin as their candidate, another rich white man. It’s this pick that really exposes that their definition of “centrist” is a rebranding of 1980s corporate conservatism. To recap, Joe Manchin’s form of centrism involves denying discrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans, consistently eroding environmental protections, refusing to raise the federal minimum wage and scoffing at attempts to safeguard voting rights. Opposition to these broadly popular policies places you to the right of the majority of the country and it’s not like Manchin has a long list of progressive policy wins to balance this blatant conservative tilt.

Simply put: No Labels is a political movement led by billionaires whose only goal is retaining economic power. Many of these men are former Republicans who are balking at the party’s current attempts at populism. Rather than support Republicans who fight against “woke corporations,” they’re seeking to push conservative candidates that will help them avoid the introduction of higher corporate taxes, enhanced labor protections, and really any policy that requires wealthy people to relinquish an ounce of their earning potential. Don’t let them fool you: these are not the “commonsense” solutions that you’re looking for. This is a fight for self-preservation; a campaign to perpetuate a status quo that exploits the masses to deliver gains to an already wealth-soaked elite. Why else would these men go so far as to hide their paper trail if their actions were truly a noble political endeavor about saving the country?