No Labels Is Very Much About Labels

Despite its name, No Labels, a political organization that is working hard to organize centrists, is very much about labels. In its Declaration, it claims that “We are not labels, we are people”, but their declaration also says that “Most importantly, we are Americans.” The organization’s logo, with its prominent American flag, supports the view that No Labels is trying to brand itself with the American label. But No Labels is not only interested in reclaiming the American label from the “far left” and “far right”, it is also interested in hiding its centrist label. In its talking points, No Labels says:

No Labels is not a centrist, conservative, or liberal movement. In fact, No Labels is not about ideology; it is about an attitude and new approach. We do not ask any political leader to ever give up their label – merely put it aside — in order to work together and find practical solutions to our nation’s problems.

But in its Statement of Purpose, No Labels adheres to the following centrist ideology of incremental reform:

Americans deserve a government that makes the necessary choices to rein in runaway deficits, secure Social Security and Medicare, and put our country on a viable, sound path going forward.Americans support a government that works to spur employment and economic opportunity by encouraging free and open markets, tempered by sensible regulation.

Should liberals and independents who yearn for the common sense of universal healthcare “put aside” those views when they join the No Labels movement for more Medicare For Some? Should they bracket their outrage and let the “free and open markets, tempered by sensible regulation” continue to profiteer off the denial of healthcare?

No Labels shows their centrist bias against substantial reform when they promote themselves with a CNN video that explicitly labels them as a centrist organization.

The very notion that No Labels is not about labels is absurd. They are very much about labeling people who advance substantial reform as extremists. They confuse and conflate hyper-partisanship and ideological ignorance with substantial reform. Why is being “extreme” always wrong? While extremism is neither sufficient nor necessary for great ideas, great ideas are sometimes extremely different.

Extremism is also historically situated. Martin Luther King Jr. was extreme in advancing civil rights in the United States of America. Many abolitionists were extremely opposed to slavery. Extremism per se is not the problem; the problem is that some extremes are extremely bad. But the same is true for many non-extremes. For example, it would be extremely bad if we had listened to the centrists of the time and never abolished slavery in the U.S., or the centrists who would abridge the suffrage rights of women. There is a long history of hyper-centrism blocking important social reforms. What many centrists fail to understand or refuse to admit is that conflict avoidance is not the same thing as problem solving, and that their problems are not always the most important problems to solve.

While No Labels wants to avoid hyper-partisanship, they also, unfortunately, promote hyper-incrementalism, which is extremely bad for a country in such dire straits. A major problem with hyper-incrementalism is that it often neglects the immediate interests of the poor. How many centrists use the word “poor” or “oppressed” these days? How many of them are biased for the most needy? These are radical ideas in a society that would rather not look in the mirror to focus on the least amongst us. We would rather imagine our great center as a vibrant middle class. The middle class is very important, but the poor are more important. They need our help more. The worry is that this need for privileging the poor does not fit into the centrist ideology, whose middle class still hopes to succeed at life by following and advancing the rules of the rich. We can’t tweek our economic system into helping the bulk of the middle class through incremental change; we need fundamental economic reforms that move resources away from the rich and towards the poor and lower middle class.
There is a lot of wishful thinking in hyper-incrementalism; the most wishful of which is that we don’t need radical systematic reforms. Hyper-partisanship is a symptom of the deeper economic tensions within our society.

That No Labels is really a centrist label hampered by hyper-incrementalism, we only need to look at its Founding Leaders. There, we see a long list of accomplished incrementalist political insiders, many with professional careers as centrist Democrats and Republicans. While No Labels may want to be seen as an Everyman, their leadership surely is not. Where are the poor people in their founding leadership circle? Where is the lower middle class? Where are the people who can’t afford to wear suits? Where are the radical reformers from everyday life?

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation has recently sent out a call to help No Labels. For the aforementioned reasons, I am concerned that these dialogue professionals are being asked to adopt an organization that ignores the potential for radical reform. What is ironic, is that while they are preaching the gospel of moderation, they are simultaneously engaged in an extreme act of trying to maximize civic participation. While I support this radical effort to scale democracy, I am worried that extremely good ideas are being washed away in the professional rush to conform to and make money off of No Label’s centrist ideology.

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