According to several recent mainstream political polls, a majority of 2024 voters prefer not to have to make a choice between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump as they did in 2020.

Other polls indicate that despite this preference, if nothing changes between now and Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, this is precisely the choice voters will be facing. Trump is way ahead in the polls for the Republican nomination, and it is unlikely that any serious challenge will be made to a sitting Democratic president from a contender in his own party despite Biden’s unpopularity.

Democratic political leaders, in particular, are scared to death as to how much traction a group called the Forward Party or other so-called centrist movements, such as No Labels Party, get in the coming months, because they feel if it becomes a key player in the 2024 presidential election it might hand the election to Trump, especially in a close race. They rationalize that any third-party effort would be more philosophically aligned with branches of the Democratic Party, taking votes from Biden.

The other centrist party that is becoming more active is called the No Labels Party. Despite its having been around for more than 10 years, it is not very well known, but its concept of pushing an approach that invites center-leaning voters and politicians from both parties to join its movement is gaining adherents and some public relations buzz.

The Forward Party, has snagged two high profile Pennsylvania state senators, including Lisa Boscola, whose 18th district includes much of Northampton County, including the cities of Bethlehem and Easton and much of the Nazareth area.

Although she will remain a Democrat, Boscola said she has embraced some of the centrist principles of the Forward Party, which formed last year. Considered a renegade Democrat at times, Boscola has bucked her party’s leadership and voted with Republicans on a few major issues.

For example, she was highly critical of former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s draconian policies that closed many businesses during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also joined Republicans in passing a package of three proposed constitutional amendments that, among other things, would require voters to present IDs before casting a ballot.

The other state politician who has embraced the Forward Party’s tenets is another Democrat, Anthony Hardy Williams of Philadelphia.

Party founder Andrew Yang introduced the two at a news conference at the Capitol in Harrisburg last week, repeating the message he had written in a Washington Post op-ed piece last year with co-founders Christine Todd Whitman and David Jolly, “Political extremism is ripping our nation apart.” They went on to say that today’s outdated political parties have failed by catering to the fringes - the far left for progressive Democrats and the far right for ultraconservative Republicans.

Yang, a billionaire businessman, unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 and for mayor of New York City in 2021. Whitman is a former Republican governor of New Jersey, while Jolly is a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida. Another who has joined forces with the group is former Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, who was also the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate after having defeated Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in the 2010 primary. Sestak now lives in Virginia.

Boscola is realistic in recognizing that it will take time for Forward to be able to make a dent in Pennsylvania politics, but she said this is a start to return to an era of less partisanship in government. Boscola echoed the feeling of many of her constituents, who, she said, are “exhausted and frustrated” with the state of politics today.

Republican political strategist Craig Snyder, who is assisting the Forward Party in Pennsylvania, said the party will not have a presidential contender for next year but did not rule out one for 2028.

Third-party presidential bids have never been particularly successful in the United States. Even with all of the money that billionaire Texan H. Ross Perot threw at the effort in 1992, he received 19% of the popular vote but no electoral votes. In that election, Democrat Bill Clinton handily defeated Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush. Post-election analyses showed that Perot pulled votes equally from both Clinton and Bush,

Perhaps you feel as about two-thirds of polled prospective voters and I feel that we don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch, but we know instinctively that the political deck is stacked against us in our hope that a viable centrist party that aligns more with our political views will take root in our country. Knowing how difficult it is for a third-party candidate to buck the establishment - even former President Teddy Roosevelt could not do it in 1912 - most of us will decide not to “waste” our vote, hold our nose and vote for either the Democrat or the Republican nominee.

By BRUCE FRASSINELLI| tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.