Elon Musk floated a new political party on Friday after falling out with President Trump over the big, beautiful bill, The Hill reports.
Said Musk: “The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle! And exactly 80% of people agree. This is fate.”
He followed up with a potential name for the group, “The America Party.”
Elon Musk seemed to suggest support of a third political party as he escalated a growing fight with President Trump that boiled over on Thursday, The Hill reports.
He asked his 200 million followers on X: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”
“Losing to a twice-impeached convicted felon has left a small, but growing, number of Democrats wondering if their party brand is so toxic that they should shed the label — particularly in battleground and red states,” Politico reports.
“The deliberations, some of which are taking place in private, reflect the extent to which Trump’s win has made the party unsure of what to do next. Few Democrats are dismissing Trump as a fluke anymore after he carried the popular vote and expanded his support among key parts of their base.”
“Democrats who have jumped ship are making the bet that voters are so frustrated with the existing political parties that they will reward them for shaking things up.”
Eliot Cohen: “Those of us who first became politically homeless in 2016 have lately been in a quandary: We need to figure out who we are. If we are not to succumb to the Saruman trap—going along with populist authoritarians in the foolish hope of using them for higher purposes—then we had better establish what we stand for.”
“Labels matter in politics. They can also lose their meaning. There is, for example, nothing ‘conservative’ about the MAGA movement, which is, in large part, reactionary, looking for a return to an idealized past, when it is not merely a cult of personality. Today’s progressives are a long, long way from their predecessors of the early 20th century—just invoke Theodore Roosevelt’s name at a gathering of ‘the Squad’ and see what happens.”
“Even the terms left and right—derived, let us remember, from seating arrangements in the National Assembly during the early days of the French Revolution—no longer convey much. Attitudes toward government coercion of various kinds, deficit spending, the rule of law—neither party holds consistent views on these subjects.”
A new Gallup poll finds 58% of U.S. adults agree that a third major party is needed in the U.S. because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” of representing the American people.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) suggested that a new political party might need to be created to replace the Republican Party if he is defeated, the New York Times reports.
Said Cheney: “Whether it’s organizing a new party — look, it’s hard for me to see how the Republican Party, given what it has done, can make the argument convincingly or credibly that people ought to vote for Republican candidates until it really recognizes what it’s done.”
She added: “There is certainly going to be a big shift, I think, in how our politics work. I don’t know exactly what that will look like. I don’t think it will just simply be, well, the Republican Party is going to put up a new slate of candidates and off to the races. I think far too much has happened that’s too damaging.”
“Some Libertarian Party leaders are fuming over the party’s decision to have former president Donald Trump headline their national convention this month, with national committee members calling on the party to rescind the invitation,” the Washington Post reports.
“The choice to have the presumptive nominee from another party speak at the Libertarian Party’s nominating convention has inflamed growing schisms within the minor party.”
“As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign mounts a bruising state-by-state battle for ballot access, he has often credited enthusiastic volunteers and grass-roots backers with driving the effort,” the New York Times reports.
“In fact, the operation has become increasingly reliant on consultants and paid petitioners whose signature-gathering work has yielded mixed results and raised questions of impropriety, even among Mr. Kennedy’s fans. In order to get Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in all 50 states, as is his goal, his campaign has deployed a multipart strategy: aggressive legal action, shrewd political alliances and surprise filing tactics meant to slow or prevent challenges.”
“The Democratic National Committee is building its first-ever team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates, people involved told NBC News, as the party and its allies prepare for a potential all-out war on candidates they view as spoilers,” NBC News reports.
“The DNC has hired veteran Democratic operative Lis Smith, best known for her work guiding the 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, to help oversee an aggressive communications component of the anti-third party strategy, which also includes opposition research and legal challenges.”
John Hendrickson: “I’ve spent the past several weeks talking with No Labels’ leaders, staffers, consultants, and opponents, trying to understand the organization’s endgame. I came away confused, and convinced that the people behind No Labels are confused, too.”
“They’ve correctly diagnosed serious problems in the American political system, but their proposed solution could help lead to its undoing.”
Greg Sargent: “No Labels faces a problem that runs deeper than the lack of high-profile candidates willing to take the third-party plunge: The group’s core argument has proven impossible to sustain, and everyone paying even cursory attention to its activities knows it.”
“For months, as No Labels has sought to secure a line on ballots in as many states as possible—the group claims 16 as of now—its officials have sworn vehemently that they have no intention of mounting a candidacy that only functions as a spoiler or helps Trump. Joe Lieberman, the group’s founding chairman, often says as much. The true intention, it says, is to answer the public’s alleged call for an alternative to the two parties with a ‘unity ticket’ that will birth a new coalition of public-spirited voters who value bipartisan compromise over petty partisanship and dysfunction.”
“But no matter how hard No Labels strains to project such pious intentions, the all-but-certain impact of such a plan has proven impossible to disguise. It is borderline impossible for such a bid to win outright in enough states to assemble a majority of 270 Electoral College votes—Ross Perot and Ralph Nader won none; the last third-party candidate to win any electoral votes was George Wallace, 56 years ago.”
“Political operatives opposed to No Labels’ potential 2024 presidential ticket took over the NoLabels.com domain last year and purchased Google search ads aimed at spreading the misleading claim that the group supported former president Donald Trump and other right-wing causes,” the Washington Post reports.
“Arizona political operative Charles Siler, who led the effort, described in a recorded deposition how he created a website that echoed the design, color scheme and language of No Labels’ actual website, NoLabels.org. But the mirror website was filled with pictures of politicians not embraced by No Labels, including Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).”
Jonathan Chait: “At the risk of insulting the reader’s intelligence, apparently, it is necessary to point out that the choice construction of a presidential election is nothing like a restaurant menu. When you order from a restaurant, every diner gets to eat whichever dish they want. For that reason, it’s in the restaurant’s interest to provide them with as many options as the restaurant can competently supply. When I go to a restaurant, I want the menu to offer me something that caters to my individual tastes.”
“To continue with the restaurant analogy, a presidential election is like a restaurant where, even though we have different choices on the menu, every diner gets the dish that gets ordered the most. That changes the incentive completely. In that kind of restaurant, I would neither expect nor even want a menu with lots of choices. I would want a menu designed to give me the choice closest to my preference.”
Gallup: “Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do ‘such a poor job’ of representing the American people that ‘a third major party is needed.'”
“This represents a seven-percentage-point increase from a year ago and is the highest since Gallup first asked the question in 2003.”
Nate Silver: “Having looked at data on dozens of third-party candidates in other races — mostly for offices like Congress and governor when building election models — I’m skeptical that they serve as spoilers as often as their critics claim. Third-party support tends to collapse down the stretch if the candidates aren’t seen as viable…”
“Third-party candidates typically also get less support in swing states, where voters know a protest vote could be more costly.”
“A national political movement that could offer an independent presidential ticket in 2024 as an alternative to major-party nominees said Monday it has now won ballot access in 10 states, after North Carolina election officials formally granted official status to a ‘No Labels’ affiliate,” the AP reports.
“The other states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.”
The Arizona Superior Court ruled that No Labels Party is a qualified party in Arizona, Ballot Access News reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.