'The risk is enormous': DC insider issues a warning about voting for third-party candidates

Former United States Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned in The Guardian on Monday that "third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green party are in effect front groups" for reelecting ex-President Donald Trump.

"No Labels has pledged to spend $70 million to support a third-party candidate in 2024 who could easily draw enough votes from President [Joe] Biden to tip the presidential election to Trump" and "has already qualified as a presidential party that can run candidates on the ballot in 10 states, including in both Arizona and Florida," Reich explains.

Reich stresses that while No Labels "claims to be a centrist organization seeking a new bipartisanship... it will not reveal its donors, one of whom is reportedly the conservative mega-donor Harlan Crow. Politico reports that No Labels has brought on a major Trump donor as an adviser in the pivotal battleground state of Florida."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

According to Reich, No Labels is not the only problem.

"Every other third party claiming to be in the 'center' or on the 'left' – including the Green party, which is already on the ballot in the two key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin and whose most likely candidate for president is Cornel West" only benefits Trump. Reich says that this also applies to "the People’s party, especially if Robert F Kennedy Jr becomes its nominee."

Reich writes that "if a third-party candidate takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House," especially if the margins are slim in "the five states most likely to decide the 2024 election in the Electoral College – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin."

Biden, Reich cautions, "has no margin for error. Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would make him vulnerable. Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10m cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – less than half of 1% – were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump."

Thus, Reich concludes, "The risk to the future of American democracy is enormous. If No Labels were a legitimate third party rather than a Trump front, it would withdraw from all ballots for the 2024 election, and try again in 2028. If Cornel West and the Green party had positive intentions, they would do the same."

READ MORE: How old is too old?

Reich's full editorial is available at this link.