Just when we thought we might hear from him no more, up popped Jay Nixon into the news last week.
The De Soto native and two-term Missouri governor, out of the spotlight since leaving politics in early 2017, announced that he had signed on with No Labels, a movement to create, if not a complete third political party, an alternative in the 2024 presidential election.
The movement is said to have been spawned by a legion of increasingly frustrated Americans who are tired of the ever-more radicalized two main parties. They feel unrepresented and unloved by Democrats and Republicans because they are not crazy-partisan enough for either. They are common-sense Americans with moderate views, but they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.
That is one origin story.
A more sinister view of No Labels is that it is a dark money effort of wealthy GOP donors who want to split the alleged “moderate vote,” sucking votes away from President Joe Biden and putting Donald Trump back in the White House.
The No Labelers have no nominee of their own, which makes it sound a little Star Wars-y. Or maybe Field of Dreams-y – “If you build it, they will vote.” How and when they will go about choosing a nominee has yet to be determined.
Nixon has taken on the very important-sounding title of director of ballot integrity for No Labels.
The organization, if that’s what it is, is facing the 9,000-meter, uphill, nail-strewn hurdle race of getting on the ballot in as many states as it can in time for the 2024 election.
Whether that gargantuan task can be completed remains to be seen. What No Labels has successfully targeted – not that it took the nose of a bloodhound – is that there could be a market among disgruntled voters for a middle-of-the-road candidate, preferably one who can’t personally remember the Korean War.
That is no disrespect to our elders who can. Even they would likely prefer a candidate less than three-quarters of a century old who can walk up a flight of steps without incident or go at least a few weeks without being indicted – again.
Nixon, no spring chicken himself at 67, looks like a cabana boy next to the expected two nominees, not that he has expressed any desire recently to ascend that mountain.
Those hopes, if ever they existed, were dashed in 2014 with his less-than-decisive response to the riots in Ferguson following the Michael Brown shooting. Though he had two more years to serve as a lame-duck governor, that was it for him.
Nixon wasn’t a bad governor. He was a conservative Jefferson County Democrat, which is to say, what some might consider a moderate Republican today, if there were any. He had the misfortune to preside over a final purge of Democrats in the General Assembly (except in Kansas City and St. Louis) and eventually in all statewide offices.
His home county turned on a dime, too, going from a 60-year Democratic stronghold prior to 2010 to a redder-than-red Republican juggernaut in less than a decade.
There were larger forces at work that brought this about, but those who didn’t like Nixon could point a finger at him.
Today, many of his former Democratic colleagues are not pleased with No Labels and Nixon’s decision to support it. Even if they don’t buy the dark money conspiracy, people such as former U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, who also represented Jefferson County for more than a decade, believe the movement will drain more Democratic votes than Republican and give Trump a leg up.
Opponents will mobilize to make that path to the ballot as difficult and lawsuit-heavy as they can.
Nixon and Co. already are decrying why any American, politician or otherwise, would work to block electoral choices for other Americans.
Maybe it’s because third-party candidates can’t win, but they can change who does.
The history of third-party presidential candidates is long and has a perfect record – 100 percent of them lost.
The most recent serious attempt was the late businessman Ross Perot in 1992, who got almost 19 percent of the popular vote. He tried again in 1996 and got 8.4 percent.
John Anderson in 1980, George Wallace in 1968, Strom Thurmond in 1948, all well-known in their day, all did worse than Perot.
Ralph Nader, now 89, still gets blamed for costing Al Gore the 2000 election when Gore lost Florida, the deciding state, to George W. Bush by 537 votes.
Nader, running on the Green Party ticket, garnered 97,421 votes in Florida.
None of that cuts any ice with the No Label people. They are like the extreme optimist who told friends he planned to never die, telling them, “Somebody’s got to be the first.”
It’s a tempting proposition, a middle-of-the-road candidate not beholden to anyone (except the movement bigwigs who select him or her in a smoke-filled room, not in state caucuses or primary elections). A fiery, common-sense independent, a man or woman of the people!
Pass.
Sorry, Jay. As messed up as our system may be, with octogenarian candidates, the electoral college and all the gerrymandering monkey business at the state level, at least we all have the opportunity to vote.
If we don’t like the choices, it’s on us to support better candidates.
That’s the American way.
