ABOUT THIRD PARTY BIDS

Former Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was never the most progressive or partisan of Democrats. Even when he briefly contemplated running for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, Nixon aimed to appeal mostly to America’s moderate swing voters. “There’s still a wide avenue to run as a moderate, centrist, somebody-whothinks-about-working-people-every-day Democrat in the heartland,” he said at the time.

Nixon never made that run for president. He isn’t done with centrist presidential politics, however.

The former governor — he left office in 2017 — announced late last week that he is joining No Labels’ campaign to run a third-party “unity” candidate for president in the 2024 election. Nixon will serve as the party’s director of ballot integrity, working to ensure No Labels has a spot on each state’s presidential ballot. … Nixon may genuinely believe in centrist politics, but his work for No Labels is unlikely to put a sensible moderate in the White House, a figure who can bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the Democratic and Republican parties.

Instead, Nixon and his new allies are likely to give us another four years of Donald Trump. …

Many Americans don’t neatly fit the two-party binary system. That’s why alternatives like instant runoff voting — which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference — are so intriguing for folks who want to support a third party without inadvertently throwing an election to a candidate they detest…

Trump is radical and lawless, the man who incited an insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. Getting him elected in the name of centrism and unity would be the least moderate outcome possible.