Pelosi unloads on No Labels as Democrats’ fears about Biden challengers increase

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is the latest Democrat to express concern about No Labels’s attempts to offer a third-party presidential ticket in 2024, claiming the group is working to “jeopardize” President Joe Biden’s chances at reelection.

“No Labels is perilous to our democracy. I hesitate to say No Labels because they do have labels,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. “They’ve called for no taxes for the rich. No child tax credit for children. They’re called let’s undo the Affordable Care Act.”

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Pelosi spoke at a breakfast hosted by Third Way, a centrist group that is one of several speaking out against No Labels’s unity presidential ticket campaign. Third Way recently accused No Labels of working to prevent both Biden and former President Donald Trump from winning the White House.

The former speaker said she had ignored No Labels’s efforts for a long time, even when the group considered launching a primary challenge against her in 2017, but the 2024 election has forced her to speak up.

“When they jeopardize the reelection of Joe Biden as president of the United States, I can no longer remain silent on that,” Pelosi said.

No Labels has sought to open the door for a third-party candidate in several presidential contests. For the 2024 election specifically, the group says it hopes to provide alternatives to Trump or Biden for voters who do not want to see a repeat of 2020. It has gained access to ballots in Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, and Nevada — four of several battleground states that are the focus of both Democrats and Republicans.

The group has denied accusations from Third Way and Democratic allies and lawmakers who say No Labels’s efforts will aid the GOP in 2024.

“It’s so disheartening to see Nancy Pelosi literally make things up about No Labels to score political points. She ascribes positions to No Labels that they never took. She accuses No Labels of causing chaos in the House even though they’ve spent 14 years working to forge bipartisanship and combat the extremism destroying the country,” Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, national co-chairman for No Labels, said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.

“Congressional leaders don’t like it sometimes when No Labels challenges their partisan agendas and their power, but we don’t apologize for that for a minute,” Hogan said. “Someone needs to speak for the commonsense majority, and we are glad to do it.”

No Labels has explained that launching a third-party ticket may become necessary in 2024 “in the event both major parties nominate presidential candidates that the vast majority of Americans don’t want.”

“If this happens, No Labels itself will not run a candidate, but we will have the launching pad, specifically in the form of ballot access across the country,” the group said in a statement in May.

No Labels, which has been courting Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) as its standard-bearer, has reportedly considered changing its strategy to put a Republican on top of the ticket. In that event, Biden would only win one race, Pennsylvania, by 7 points. The president also would only win Pennsylvania in a Biden versus Trump race by a 5+ point lead.

In the event that no president reaches a majority, Third Way said No Labels is hoping to trigger a contingent election, which is decided by a special vote in the House of Representatives, which they said would “create chaos.”

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Democrats are already facing a headache from their own party after Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) launched his campaign on Oct. 27 in New Hampshire, echoing his repeated plea for Biden to pass the torch “to a new generation of American leaders.” He is relatively unknown on a national scale and will face an uphill battle to become the Democratic nominee, as the party has thrown its full support behind Biden and brushed aside Phillips’s bid as impractical.

Biden confided in former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about the threat of a third-party candidate overshadowing his general election campaign during her visit to the White House in September. Clinton, whose loss in 2016 was blamed on Green Party nominee Jill Stein, told Biden he needed to take the third-party threat seriously and come up with a way to compensate for it.