Is that an endorsement — or a kiss of death?

It’s probably neither, especially since it’s hardly specific to Ron DeSantis. Politico reported yesterday, later picked up by the Washington Post, that the group plans to vigorously promote a third-party candidate — if Republicans nominate Donald Trump. If they nominate someone else, anyone else, Politico reported, they’d probably take a pass. It’s simply a matter of numbers, and of the numbers that matter:

The centrist political organization No Labels has defended its third-party presidential bid by insisting there’s a broad voter appetite for a candidate running in the political middle.

But the group said it would likely exit the race entirely if Donald Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination — even as more conservative candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis run to Trump’s right. …

“From the polling and modeling that we see today, if it’s any Republican other than Trump, those voters probably” back the GOP nominee, Clancy said. He mentioned DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott or former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as broadly acceptable alternatives for some 20 million GOP voters.

We’ll get back to what those numbers really mean in a moment. The Washington Post claims that No Labels isn’t just looking at the Republican nomination. The group’s leadership hints that Joe Biden might trigger their third-party challenge too:

No Labels, a nonprofit group that does not disclose its donors, has been working to qualify a new party of the same name for state ballots in 2024 that could be used by an independent bipartisan presidential ticket in case the major parties nominate “unacceptable” candidates. The group’s leaders have said they view Trump as unacceptable, while telling others that they would not move forward if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wins the GOP nomination.

The group has declined to say definitively that it views Biden as unacceptable, though many Democratic strategists fear the effort will move forward if Biden and Trump are the nominees.

That’s what prompted the meeting of the Never Trumpers with No Labels on which the Post reported, and it was apparently a full-court Bidenland press.  Among those lobbying the No Labels party leadership were former Biden aides Ron Klain, Cedric Richmond, and Stephanie Cutter, along with moderate Senate Democrats Doug Jones, Heidi Heitkamp, and Claire McCaskill. The Post reports that figures from the Biden-endorsing Lincoln Project are part of the mix, as well as Bill Kristol and Lucy Caldwell.

No Labels apparently still kept its powder dry on this point, but its main ambition is to act as a spoiler to Trump if he wins the nomination, not Biden. That’s why they’re looking at numbers of disaffected Republican voters rather than voters in general. A third party candidate has next to no chance of winning a single state, let alone challenging for an Electoral College victory, without a broader base of support across the spectrum. (Joe Manchin has zero chance in his own home state no matter who else ends up on the ballot.) The idea has always been to drain the GOP and benefit Biden by providing a candidate to attract protest votes against Trump. Twenty million overstates that potential; that would be almost 30% of Trump’s 2020 vote total and close to half of his total in 2016. But even a drain of two or three million in key states from the GOP candidate would be enough to re-elect Biden in a rematch, which is clearly what the No Labels mission would be.

If Republicans nominate someone else, though — and it doesn’t have to be DeSantis necessarily — then a No Labels bid would end up draining votes almost solely from Biden. Democrats have plenty of reason to feel dissatisfied with Biden, after all; inflation alone is one reason, but also his clearly failing cognition and the inevitability of a barely functional President Kamala Harris is another. Hard-line progressives are wildly unenthusiastic about Biden’s presidency, and moderates and independents don’t like Biden much either, as his polling shows.

Some of that drain would take place even if Trump ran, but the No Labels strategy would hope to capture far more disaffected Republicans with Trump on the ticket. Without him, though, it’s a straight drain from Biden, perhaps even more so if a younger candidate took the GOP nomination and all No Labels could offer is another Senate-oriented fossil like Joe Manchin, who will turn 77 next year, as a Biden bookend.

That’s why No Labels would not find DeSantis, or Tim Scott or Nikki Haley or Doug Burgum for that matter, ‘unacceptable.’ It’s not an endorsement; it’s a recognition of futility.