Are you familiar with “No Labels,” the heavily-bankrolled third party movement that preaches “centrism” and threatens – despite its ostensibly good intentions – to hurt Joe Biden’s re-election prospects and help the criminal defendant/convicted sex abuser reclaim his crown?

As if we already don’t have enough to worry about, in the struggle to protect democracy.

The last thing we need is a third party pulling votes from the Democratic ticket. But that’s what would happen if No Labels – backed by secret donors; cheerled by the likes of Joe Lieberman (a perpetual retread) and Sen. Joe Manchin – achieves its goal of landing on all ballots in all 50 states with a “unity” presidential ticket.

No Labels has long been developing its ’24 shtick, which goes like this: Americans are yearning for a bipartisan common-sense party that will end our polarization and usher in an era of problem-solving, free at last from the “broken” Democrats and the “broken” Republicans who are all hostage to their respective ideological fanatics. Manchin, the conservative Democratic senator who’s flirting with idea of running as No Labels’ standard-bearer, said not long ago that the movement could prove to be “the greatest contribution to democracy.”

All that common-sense problem-solver talk sounds good in theory…until you learn that No Labels, in 2015, said that one such problem-solver was Donald Trump. There was even a No Labels convention, starring Trump at the podium. And today we don’t really know who’s pumping money into the movement (reportedly, $70 million so far), because its non-profit status doesn’t require donor disclosure. The few publicized names include a former Trump backer (Nelson Peltz) and a billionaire Republican party backer (Louis Bacon).

No Labels’ leaders seem to think that most Americans are equally fed up with both sides, to the point where the supposedly massive pool of independent voters will elect a No Labels ticket (the NL pollsters insist they can win the Electoral College with a 37 percent plurality of the popular vote). But I’ll go with William Galston, who helped to create No Labels back in 2010. Galston, a respected policy scholar and former Clinton White House adviser, quit the group this spring, and said this:

“I cannot support the organization’s preparation for a possible independent presidential candidacy. There is no equivalence between President Biden and a former president who threatens the survival of our constitutional order. And most important, in today’s closely divided politics, any division of the anti-Trump vote would open the door to his re-election.”

The latter sentence says it all.

Recent history is instructive. In the 2000 election, third-party candidate Ralph Nader won 93,000 votes in pivotal Florida, luring liberals who didn’t think Al Gore was liberal enough; as a result, George W. Bush won Florida (and, ultimately, the presidency) by 537 votes. And in the 2016 election, as more of us will recall, Trump won the pivotal states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania with welcome help from third-party candidates Gary Johnson (who drew disaffected moderates) and Jill Stein (who drew liberals who didn’t think Hillary Clinton was liberal enough).

Crunching the 2020 numbers, it’s clear that Joe Biden won that pivotal trio of states because no third candidates were in the mix. The Stein and Johnson voters of 2016 flocked to Biden 2020 by a 30-point margin. Translation: Democratic candidates are more dependent on swing voters than Republican candidates. A national poll in 2022 concluded that Democratic-leaning voters are generally more willing to consider a moderate independent candidate – whereas, in this MAGA era, Republicans in general (and hardcore conservatives and rural folks in particular) are far more immoveable.

As ex-NL stalwart Galston recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Democrats will overwhelmingly support (Biden) if the only alternative is the former president, but unenthusiastic Democrats – who are far more numerous than unenthusiastic Republicans – may seriously consider a third option.” No Labels is already on the ’24 ballot in Arizona and Nevada, two swing states that Biden won in ’20 by less than three points.

But what’s most galling about No Labels is its purblind affliction. It keeps moaning about the purported dearth of bipartisanship, about how nothing gets done – whereas, in reality, the current president has repeatedly demonstrated, with actual results, that bipartisanship is indeed still possible. He just finished negotiating a bipartisan deal to ensure that Uncle Sam can pay its bills. He negotiated and signed an historic bipartisan infrastructure law, a bipartisan law boosting the nation’s semiconductor industry, and a bipartisan law that treats veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.

This past weekend, Biden announced the debt ceiling deal this way: “The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want. That’s the responsibility of governing.” That’s also No Labels’ entire raison d’etre. Biden stole it.

Matt Bennett, a center-left Democratic organizer, said it well yesterday on Twitter: “Remind me again why No Labels view this president, who just cut another big bipartisan deal, as an equal risk to the last one, who is a sociopathic conspiracy theorist?”

No Labels will soldier on nonetheless; it’s currently planning to stage a national convention next April and pick a ticket. Joe Lieberman, who (irony of ironies) would’ve become vice president if third-party candidate Nader hadn’t screwed things up in Florida, is pleading for people to stop knocking the NL movement. He recently said, “I mean, give us a chance here. We’re creating an option.” But he floated a promise:

“We’re not going to actually run a bipartisan third-party ticket unless we think we plausibly have a chance to elect that ticket, and that we’re not going to disproportionately affect one of the other tickets.” (Italics mine.)

Wait a sec. Are we supposed to believe that No Labels would spend well over $100 million to get on our ballots and stage a spring national convention…only to slam on the brakes at the eleventh hour, thus pissing off their activists and secret donors, if the polls show that they’re hurting Joe Biden?

Is there an emoji for contemptuous laughter?