THE ‘NO LABELS’ JOKE. How do presidential candidacies start? Most begin with the ambitions of one person — one governor or senator or, in Donald Trump’s case, one real estate mogul and reality TV star who thinks he or she should be president of the United States. Perhaps he or she even has a vision for leadership. The ambitious would-be candidate then sets out to win the support of the political party, and the race is on.

That’s the usual way. Right now, though, we’re seeing a strange variation on the process in which a party, a would-be party actually, has decided it wants to have a candidate in the 2024 presidential election and is holding a sort of talent search as it looks for the right man or woman for the job.