Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on third-party candidate impact and 2024 fundraising

Geoff Bennett:

A new bipartisan organization called Citizens to Save Our Republic is opposing the effort by the group No Labels to run a third-party candidate in the 2024 presidential race.

That's with concerns growing among Democrats and Republicans opposed to Donald Trump's candidacy that a moderate third-party candidate could serve as a spoiler in the race for the White House, ultimately peeling off Biden voters and benefiting Mr. Trump, if he's the GOP nominee.

Former House Democratic Majority Leader Dick Gephardt is one of those officials teaming up against No Labels. And he joins us now.

Thanks for being with us.

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO):

Good to be with you.

Geoff Bennett:

No Labels, as you well know, says it plans to run one Democrat and one Republican on the same ticket next year.

You are leading a group of former Democratic and Republican lawmakers aimed at stopping that effort. Tell us why.

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt:

Well, if these were normal times, we would have no problem with this.

Third parties, we have always had third-party efforts. These are not normal times. We avoided having a broken election in 2020 by a whisker. Only because Mike Pence and six or seven state electoral officials, all Republicans, stood up to major pressure from former President Trump did we avoid a broken election.

The president at that time was the one who tried to overthrow our government and overthrow our electoral process. As Liz Cheney said, he can never be near the White House again.

The No Labels effort, we believe, if you look at all the polling data, all the data you can look at, would probably elect Donald Trump, if the two candidates are Trump and Biden.

Geoff Bennett:

How can you be so sure, though, that a moderate candidate would peel votes away from Joe Biden and benefit Donald Trump, if he is the nominee?

I ask the question because there are a number of Republicans who would never vote for Joe Biden under any circumstances, would likely hold their nose and vote for Donald Trump. Couldn't a moderate candidate then end up peeling votes away from Donald Trump?

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt:

We commissioned a national survey and a survey in the six or seven swing states that really determine national elections.

And it shows conclusively that, if it's a two-person race, then Donald — that Joe Biden wins by four points, which is precisely what he won by in 2020. But if you put a third-party, independent, bipartisan candidate — and that's the way we phrased it, to give it the best benefit of the doubt — then Joe Biden loses by five or six points.

If you look at 2020, it was independent moderate voters in six swing states that stayed enough with Biden for him to win the race over Donald Trump. We cannot have Donald Trump back in the White House. He engineered a overthrow of the electoral process. He would do it again.

We cannot allow that to happen.

Geoff Bennett:

The founding chairman of No Labels is the former Senator Joe Lieberman, who has said repeatedly that the last thing he'd ever want to do is have a hand in returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office.

One, do you believe that? And, two, does that assuage any of your concerns?

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt:

I like Joe Lieberman. I served with him in the Congress. He's a great person.

But if that's what they're saying, why don't they say publicly that if the Republican candidate is Donald Trump, they will not go forward with this effort? That's what I can't understand. They say they're forming an insurance policy in the case the candidates are Trump and Biden.

That's precisely the time they should not do this, if their goal is not to reelect Donald Trump.

Geoff Bennett:

There is now a full coalition of political groups opposing No Labels, to include the progressive group MoveOn.org, the center-left think tank A Third Way, the anti-Trump group Lincoln Project.

How will your organization be different?

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt:

We are totally bipartisan.

We have got great former members of Congress, like Jack Danforth, Chuck Hagel, Bill Cohen, and others. We have got great former Democratic officeholders, like Gary Hart, Tim Wirth, and others. And we are moving into this space not to attack No Labels, not to criticize them severely for what they're doing.

We understand there are a lot of really well-meaning people in that organization. We're just trying to get them to look closely at the facts. And when they're in the place where they're going to make this decision of what they're going to do about going forward, we hope they will understand that we cannot afford this risk of a third-party candidate if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.

And our greatest worry is that campaigns take on a life of their own. If, next spring, they have raised a bunch of money, and they have candidates who are announced and out there, it will be very hard to pull that effort down.

That's our great worry, is that we will just blindly walk into a reelection of Donald Trump.

Geoff Bennett:

Understanding the worry that you have just articulated, tell me more about how you will do the work. How exactly will you stop them?

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt:

All you can do as is keep hoping and messaging to everybody, including all their people, their funders, whatever, that this is too high of a risk to take, that, if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, they should stop this effort and not go forward with it.

So we're going to do messaging in every way we can. We're going to talk to everybody that's involved and try to speak common sense to them that this is a risk we cannot take in this country. This democracy is fragile. It's always fragile. It can collapse. We can lose our ability to have elections.

There are millions of Americans now who believe the 2020 election was stolen. Donald Trump is still asserting that it was stolen. We're in a bad place. These are not normal times. And we're just asking the folks at No Labels to really come to their senses and not do this, if the risk is anywhere near what I think it is.

Geoff Bennett:

Former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt, now with the group Citizens to Save Our Republic, thanks for your time, sir. We appreciate it.

Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt:

Great to be with you.