It’s not just concerns about some third-party presidential candidates that are making Democrats more concerned. They are also becoming more and more suspicious of the motives of those people.

Supporters of President Biden see several threats looming beyond the Republicans themselves.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting more attention than many Democrats expected in his main challenge to Biden. A potential presidential candidate promoted by the No Labels Group is causing confusion. And left-wing scholar and author Cornell West’s decision to seek the Green Party’s presidential nomination is even more nerve-wracking.

Biden’s narrow victory in the 2020 electoral vote underpins many of these concerns.

Even though Biden won about seven million more votes nationwide than then-President Trump, the electoral vote would have been the same if Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin had reversed. Biden won less than 1 percentage point in each of those states.

This means that Democrats are keenly aware of the potential for third-party candidates to change the outcome of the 2024 election, as well as Republicans and conservatives seeking to influence such candidates. It means that they are aware of their willingness as well.

Mr. Kennedy’s presidential candidacy has been viewed with more suspicion by the Democratic Party than any other candidate, in part because of some idiosyncratic political compatriots.

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon was broadly sympathetic to Kennedy, and the candidate appeared on Bannon’s podcast. Longtime Trump ally and prankster Roger Stone even pushed the idea of ​​Trump Kennedy’s “Unity Ticket.”

At a New Nation town hall event last month, Mr Kennedy refused to promise to endorse Mr Biden if the president officially becomes the Democratic nominee. Kennedy will appear next week as a witness before the Republican-led House subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.

And on Friday, Kennedy called Trump “perhaps the most successful debater in the country since Lincoln Douglas” in a Fox News interview.

Taken together, this is more than enough to make other Democrats frown.

“I don’t know what’s going on there. I used to see Kennedy as a true environmental advocate,” said Democratic strategist Mark Longbaugh. “But now his candidacy is backed by a number of right-wing types who seem to be using Kennedy as a means to undermine Biden. I am very disappointed.”

The Kennedy campaign refuted these criticisms in an email to The Hill.

A Kennedy campaign spokesman said, “Weakness is not caused by challengers to weak or unpopular candidates.” “If President Biden is concerned about his re-election chances, he should defend the traditional Democratic values ​​that make him vulnerable: peace, civil liberties and clean government. No one will seriously challenge his nomination.”

Another kind of skepticism prevails over No Labels.

The group, which is considered a centrist, won’t decide until next year whether it will actually endorse a candidate, but it’s trying to ensure access to the ballot in as many states as possible.

So far, No Labels appears to have secured a spot on the ballots in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Utah.

On Monday, Senator Joe Manchin (D-VA) and former Utah Gov. John Huntsman (R-R) will speak at New Hampshire’s No Label City Hall.

More than anyone else, Manchin has been the center of speculation about Norabel’s presidential candidacy. If the senator doesn’t run for president, the senator will face an uphill battle for re-election in 2024 in the Republican-dominated state. He has a long history of willingly resisting party orthodoxy, even at the cost of angering his party colleagues.

But Mr. Manchin has made no definitive statement on either his presidency or his re-election to the Senate.

More broadly, the No Labels initiative has also drawn strong criticism from centrist Democrats.

For example, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-V.A.) told Politico in May that No Labels “wasted time, energy and money on bizarre efforts to confuse and divide voters, and it is clear that There will be one outcome: Donald Trump’s re-election.” as president. ”

Others further to the left are equally pathetic.

Joel Payne, chief public affairs officer for the progressive group MoveOn, which opposes No Labels’ voting push, said in this column that No Labels “claims to root out extremism in politics.” rice field. But diving in as a spoiler candidate will only allow Donald Trump, perhaps the most extreme president ever, to win in 2024. ”

No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy countered, saying the group itself had not put any names, including Manchin, in the running.

Clancy argued that the idea of ​​spoiling a no-label candidate is inaccurate because there is no way to know if an unnamed candidate will disproportionately steal votes from one party over the other.

More broadly, Clancy said, “What we’re doing is very basic, we’re working on giving the American people a choice, and we’re never going to provide voting slots anyway. Maybe, we’ve said that from the beginning.

“The mere fact that No Labels gives people a choice is what caused this overreaction,” added Clancy.

Mr West’s attempt to win the Green party’s nomination has been viewed quite differently.

Broadly speaking, Democrats don’t see West’s candidacy as malicious. Instead, he fears he and the Greens are being too blunt about the possibility of leaving election decisions to Republicans, including Trump.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod, best known for playing a key role in President Obama’s election, recently said in 2016 that the Green Party “played a huge role in turning the election in favor of Donald Trump.” I’m sorry,” he tweeted. Now that Cornell West is the leading candidate, they could easily do the same again. risky business. “

West, who was contacted by phone on Friday, hit back at that kind of warning.

“Any criticism of an existing president is interpreted as helping the Republican Party. So what?” West asked rhetorically. “Who would keep silent about the suffering of the Palestinians, the proxy wars of Russia, the needs of the poor and working people?

“No. We have to speak up one way or another, and as soon as we speak up, we’re accused of being Trump supporters. It’s irrational.”

With so much at stake in the next 16 months leading up to Election Day, the war of words is just beginning.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

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