Thankfully, it’s December 2024; the next presidential election is 1,426 days away. Because I’m not a fan of what recent elections have fueled in our country (i.e. denigration, polarization, binary thinking, massive spending, assumptions of moral high ground, political attack ads, total lack of respectful dialogue — and that’s just a start), I’m grateful this election was not close. That’s not because I’m a fan of President-elect Trump, but rather because I am not a fan of how our country responds when the results are less conclusive.
Lest we digress, the point of today’s post is not to examine why what happened. We’ll save that to the analysts, who always need something to talk about and who currently seem all over the place pending personal perspective (i.e. sexism… racism… elitism… fascism… too moderate… too progressive… too radical… Biden got out too late… she’s a bad candidate… low turnout… super PAC alignment… the assassination attempts… the trans issue… FOX News… shift in Latino vote… immigration… inflation… it’s the economy, stupid… people are stupid… the prosecution of Trump… the lying about Biden’s decline… the VP debate… the working class… women… “The View”… Rogan… Liz Cheney… no Josh Shapiro… Israel… etc.. etc. etc.).
There was one aspect of the recent race, though, that especially disturbed me. As long articulated, the Intramuralist was not a fan of either presidential candidate (including Biden, prior to Harris, primarily due to his clear mental decline). My sincere concern about competency and character prompted me to be increasingly involved in No Labels, a 14 year old centrist organization focused on common sense problem solving (see past conversations about who they are, how they are different than the other parties, and their 2024 Unity Ticket).
The Unity Ticket was a plan only to be invoked if one, Biden and Trump were again our nominees and two, the ticket had a path to victory — not just spoiling the chances of one. The ticket would be one Republican and one Democrat; they would model for the country how to work well together. When the short window of time came in which such a scenario presented itself, meaning the primary votes were in and nominees were confirmed, No Labels was unable to attract a candidate. Now that the election is over, as reported by many, it has become clear how some worked tirelessly to ruin them. As written by The Washington Post last week:
“… leaders of No Labels are fighting back in three federal courtrooms with a sprawling legal-discovery effort aimed at exposing the secret machinations they believe led to their project’s demise. Leaders of the moderate Democratic group Third Way and of Investing in US, a political operation funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, are fighting to limit the document production.
But documents already unsealed by the courts reveal remarkable details about private proposals for a wide range of hard-nosed tactics that would go beyond public efforts like ads, op-eds and meetings to discourage the No Labels campaign. The documents include emails exchanged between various Democratic strategists involved with efforts to oppose No Labels.
‘Our main focus should be brand destruction but, where possible, we also need to throw up any and all roadblocks to stop them from being successful at signature-gathering,’ Lucy Caldwell, one of the anti-No Labels strategists, wrote in a document uncovered during the legal battle.
A separate ‘Direct Action Campaign’ proposal, which was never fully adopted, called for the personal harassment of No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson and her husband, Mark Penn, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The proposal to ‘socially stigmatize’ Jacobson and Penn, according to documents revealed in court, included plans to hire clowns ‘to hangout on their block’ in the Georgetown area of D.C., post fliers in the neighborhood attacking the couple, send a ‘truck carrying musical performers’ to wake them up at 6 a.m., and fly banner planes over Harvard University’s graduation attacking Penn, who does a poll for the university as chair of the Harris Poll and CEO of the marketing company Stagwell. Penn did not play a role in the No Labels presidential bid, according to the group….”
Wow. Note the manipulation, duplicity and lack of decency. Clearly partisans don’t want another party to usurp their perceived power; established parties aren’t all that welcoming of other options. The hypocrisy, however, is that they intentionally were working to destroy the voters’ options, all while claiming the desire to protect and promote democracy.
Let’s see what more we learn… at least in the next 1,426 days.
Respectfully…
AR