Right now, about 55 percent of poll respondents disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as president; just 39 percent approve.
Right now, about 52 percent of poll respondents feel unfavorably towards Donald Trump, and just under 43 percent feel favorably.
No doubt, negative polarization will prompt many Republicans and Democrats less than enamored with their likely nominees at the moment to “come home” by November. Democrats who think Biden is too old will vote for him to stop Trump, and Republicans who find Trump to be an exhausting will vote for him to end Biden’s presidency.
But this still amounts to a showdown between a widely disliked incumbent president who turns 82 shortly after election day and a widely disliked former president who turns 78 in June. There will be a lot of Americans yearning for some younger, better third option.
On paper, this is a golden opportunity for the independent group No Labels, which has qualified for the ballot in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah. The group says it is currently active – meaning they have already filed for ballot access or are actively gathering signatures – in 14 other states.
While the No Labels candidate is extremely unlikely to win the presidency, the levels of dissatisfaction and disaffection in the electorate have to be at least comparable to the conditions of 1992, when H. Ross Perot won 19 percent of the vote nationally.
While there’s no combination of a Republican and a Democrat that will be perfect, you can envision some reasonably well-known combination of officials running on a simple message of, “We’re not senile, we’re not geriatric, and we’re not insane. How about it, America?”
So why would No Labels spend any time contemplating nominating one guy who we know can’t persuade people to vote for him over Joe Biden?
Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, a Democrat running a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, said on Saturday that he would consider running on the ticket of No Labels, a centrist group exploring an independent bid, if it appeared the general election would be a rematch between Mr. Biden and Donald J. Trump.
In an interview, Mr. Phillips publicly articulated for the first time the circumstances in which he would accept the No Labels presidential nomination, and said he was in regular communication with Nancy Jacobson, the group’s chief executive. Democratic allies of Mr. Biden have been alarmed by No Labels, worrying that any candidate it runs could siphon votes from him.
I know people think this is picking on Phillips, but no one showed up to one of his events in Manchester, just a few weeks before the primary.
Let us point out that “sore loser laws” in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arkansas and Alabama bar a candidate defeated in a major-party primary from running as an independent or on a third-party ticket in the general election. Nominating Phillips would leave 91 electoral votes on the table. (It is unclear whether a sore loser law would bar a candidate who lost a presidential bid from being named a vice-presidential candidate for another party; my guess is that question would get hashed out in courts.)