No Labels independent party could play role of spoiler to democratic presidential bid in 2024

A new political movement has ambitions for next year that scare Democrats right down to their shoes. It’s called n ew Labels, and its leaders aspire to offer a third-party candidate for president in 2024. Dems feel this will hand an election to Trump that he couldn’t otherwise win. History shows they might be correct.

In 1992, an unknown governor from Arkansas won the Democratic nomination for president at least partly because better-known party insiders figured that the incumbent Republican president couldn’t be beaten. Then a couple of things happened. First, President George H w Bush issued and then reneged on his famous “Read my lips: n o new taxes” pledge.

n ever mind that those very tax increases helped to set the stage for the phenomenally successful American economic decade of the “Internet boom” 1990’s. Tax-averse conservatives resented Bush’s backtracking.

Many observers feel that Bush’s pledge violation cost him that election and vaulted Bill Clinton to worldwide fame. w hile it played a role, perhaps more important was the formidable presence in the 1992 race of third-party candidate and eccentric Texas millionaire H Ross Perot.

Perot had run before but in 1992, his candidacy almost certainly siphoned off enough Bush votes to push Clinton over the line. Perot won 18.9 percent of the popular vote. That was the highest share of the vote won by