WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — Democrats are increasingly worried that a third-party run for president in 2024 could essentially hand the White House to the Republican nominee regardless of who that may be.
The concern is rooted in the idea that the 2024 election is likely going to be another close race, and if an Independent or middle-of-the-road candidate were to run, they’d have no shot of actually winning the presidency.
But on the margins, the third-party candidate would probably take away more voters from President Joe Biden than they would from the Republican nominee. Even 1-2 percentage points in key battleground states could throw the election.
There has also been a lot of speculation that a group like “No Labels” — a political group that describes itself as a centrist organization, looking for less partisanship and more bipartisan solutions to America’s basic problems — is openly flirting with putting someone up on the ballot for president.
Names like Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan have been floated as possible “No Labels” candidates.
But Democrats believe “No Labels” is receiving funding and donations from big Republican donors, hoping it’ll spoil the Democrats’ chances.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison addressed the situation over the weekend.
“This is not the time in order to experiment. This is not the time to play around on the margins. And what we see is a lot of folks who want to be relevant and try to be relevant in these elections and not looking at the big picture,” Harrison said. “We’ve got to re-elect Joe Biden. We have to re-elect Kamala Harris.”
Might Democrats have a point?
After 2016, Democrats talked a lot about Jill Stein, who ran as a third-party candidate. In three states that decided the election — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — Stein’s percentage of the vote was bigger than former President Donald Trump’s margin of victory.
If Stein hadn’t run, Democrats believe those votes would’ve been Hillary Clinton’s votes, and with those three states, Clinton would’ve defeated Trump.
DNC staff are well aware of this recent history, hoping that they don’t see a repeat of 2016 in 2024.