No labels, no candidate, no logic

In this story about how No Labels can’t find anybody to represent them in their ratfucking project, one of the cynical grifters responsible for trying to install the astroturf tries to explain how No Labels could actually affect the presidential election:

Later in Tuesday’s video conference, Mr. Davis walked the group through a scenario in which a No Labels ticket could win several states in the general election, depriving Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump of the 270 electoral college votes required to win.

Such an outcome would prompt a contingent election — a constitutional provision by which the president is chosen by the House of Representatives, and the vice president by the Senate. Such a scenario has not occurred since the 1800s.

In Mr. Davis’s telling, representatives of a major party might opt for the No Labels candidate over the other party’s candidate. In the interview, Mr. Davis said he had discussed the matter on the call to address concerns among delegates about the possibility. He also said Mr. Biden was inviting such a scenario by, in Mr. Davis’s view, framing his campaign as an effort purely to stop Mr. Trump.

“It seems to me Biden is more interested in stopping Trump than anything else,” Mr. Davis said. “Funny things happen. That’s all I can say.”

A contingent election would be a “mind-boggling disaster,” said William Ewald, a constitutional legal scholar at Carey Law School at the University of Pennsylvania. “In an election in the present political climate, whoever won, there would be people rioting in the streets, and not figuratively.”

No Labels won’t carry any states, but let’s assume arguendo that they got enough Electoral College votes to prevent a majority candidate. What would happen then is:

• Republicans would control a majority of state House delegations under any scenario, since No Labels aren’t running any House candidates
• The Republican delegations would all vote for Trump, making him president
• No Labels would have zero leverage over the Republican state delegations in either theory or practice because electoral votes become irrelevant once you’ve thrown an election to the House.
• The end.

I really wish the reporter had actually pointed out how this scenario would work, but anyway. These clowns also have a historical analogy to suggest:

On the videoconference and again during the interview, Mr. Davis cited the election of 1876 and its aftermath as an example of how this year’s election could go if neither of the major-party candidates accumulates 270 electoral votes, or if electors refuse to support the candidates in the Electoral College.

In that election, after no outright winner emerged, an electoral commission ultimately awarded contested votes to Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, in an arrangement made possible by the Compromise of 1877, in which Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from Southern states, ending Reconstruction.

The fact that their dream analogy is an election 1)which was decided by fiat by Republican-leaning elites because not enough states ran democratically successful elections to produce a legitimate electoral college winner and 2)which led to apartheid police states established in the former confederacy tells you pretty much everything you need to know about No Labels and how they view the democratic process. The only good news is that their plan it too dumb to produce its desired outcome.