Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren They are contemporaries, old primary rivals and not exactly the closest of friends. Their failed 1988 presidential runs are forever linked by RICHARD BEN CRAMER’s peerless narrative of that campaign, “What It Takes.” Perceived as an early frontrunner in a competitive Democratic primary, DICK GEPHARDT moved his family to Iowa in the summer of 1987, determined to convey his seriousness about winning the first-in-the-nation caucuses and intent on visiting each of the state’s 99 counties. But he lost ground to former Massachusetts Gov. MICHAEL DUKAKIS and struggled to execute a plan to hit his surging rival on the debate stage. JOE BIDEN’s own short-lived campaign that summer fell apart after it became clear he’d plagiarized parts of his stump speech and inflated his record of student activism. Thirty-five years later, their eyes are simultaneously on the White House once again, albeit from far different vantage points. Biden is finally president — and Gephardt is trying to go on offense once again, this time in service of a new endeavor that could help his former rival secure a second term. Gephardt established his new group, “Citizens to Save Our Republic,” for the sole purpose of dissuading the organization No Labels from putting a third-party presidential candidate on the 2024 ballot. “In normal times, I would have no problem with it,” Gephardt told West Wing Playbook. “But these are not normal times.” The organization has no affiliation with the president’s campaign. And Gephardt insisted the point is not to bail out Biden. Rather, it’s to prevent former President DONALD TRUMP from a return to the White House that, he believes, could be fatal for American democracy. Polling of voters in six swing states that Gephardt himself paid for showed that’s the likeliest outcome if No Labels were to put a third-party candidate on the general election ballot. “If it's just the two candidates, then Biden ekes out another victory almost by the same margin he did in ’20. But if you put a third party independent bipartisan ticket into the mix, he loses,” Gephardt said. No Labels, a non-profit with undisclosed funders, has said it won’t decide until next spring whether it will attempt to launch a third-party ticket. Responding to blowback about possible repercussions, the group’s spokesperson maintained this week it would only do so if a candidate has a clear path to victory and not if that alternative to Biden and possibly Trump would likely tip the election to the twice-impeached, twice-indicted (so far) former president. “They say themselves they do not want to have Donald Trump be elected, that they do not want to play spoiler,” Gephardt said. “But by the same token, they say they will only do this if Biden and Trump are the candidates. So that's a conflicting statement. It makes no sense.” Even as he has given several interviews criticizing No Labels publicly, Gephardt said he planned to make his case “from a place of respect” for the organization and to avoid questioning the motivations of those behind it. “I've been a supporter of No Labels,” he said. “I'm all about bipartisanship. … One of my worries is that campaigns have a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy; and once you get way down this road, and you pick candidates, and you've raised a bunch of money, it’s pretty hard to unwind the effort.” Gephardt hopes to get No Labels to promise to stand down in the event that Trump is the GOP nominee. “This is not an effort to help Joe Biden,” he said “This is about retaining our democracy. I fully understand people's frustration and anxiety about a rematch [of the 2020 election]. But this is self-government. We are a free people. And we cannot have Donald Trump back in the White House.” Three decades ago, a campaign that seemed to epitomize America’s brass-knuckle politics ultimately found Biden quitting amid controversy, former Colorado Sen. GARY HART becoming the first presidential hopeful undone by the media’s focus on an extramarital affair and TV ads for then-Vice President GEORGE H.W. BUSH breaking new ground for scurrilous fear mongering. Today, in the Trump era, all that seems rather quaint. That, essentially, is why Gephardt is doing this. “There was never any personal animosity between him and Biden, although he’s not doing this for Biden per se,” said longtime Democratic strategist BOB SHRUM, who worked on Gephardt’s 1988 presidential campaign. “He’s an institutionalist. He never got to be speaker or president, but he played a very large role in American politics for 25 years. And I think he worries — a lot of us worry — about our system of government and how viable it’s going to be in the future.” MESSAGE US — Are you MICHAEL DUKAKIS? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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