"The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter -- the mutual enemy is Biden. . . . Why wouldn't we put our vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden. . . .
If you don't get to 270,. . . Congress picks the president. They'll pick Trump. So we're rid of Biden either way. Does everybody follow that?"
New York manager of RFK Jr.’s campaign
There is a reason Republican billionaires are donating to the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign. He takes votes from Biden.
RFK Jr. is hard to define politically. He isn't a centrist. He is eccentric. He is "some kind of weirdo fringe," in the words of Matthew Bennett, a leader in the left-center Third Way think tank. The problem for Democrats is that some of the "weirdo fringe" things he says sound about right to a lot of people on both the left and the right.
In this political era shaped by Trump, Democrats and Joe Biden represent the party of normal. Democrats are the party that can govern. A Democratic House caucus could pass legislation. The Democratic president supports longstanding bipartisan positions on NATO, on Israel, on trade, on public health.
The GOP under Trump is the party of tear-it-down. At its best it could be considered the "creative destruction" of progress and renewal, but its primary focus now is negation. Shut down the government. Stop majorities. Stop border legislation. Stop abortion. Its presidential candidate is a proud hooligan, vandalizing old norms. He flagrantly connived to overthrow an election and justifies it. He is proud of it. He tweets crazy things in the middle of the night. Trump is the chaos candidate -- the foil and opposite of Biden.
There are people who prefer where Trump is on that axis of normal and chaos. There is yet another salient axis today: It is conspiracy-friendly/conspiracy-resistant.
Trump -- like RFK Jr. -- appeals to those Amerivan with conspiratorial instincts. Trump says that elections are not what they appear to be. Don't believe the so-called "evidence" or audits or re-counts. The news is fake. The health care system is lying. Vaccines are dangerous. The deep-state-controlled government is fake. Government investigators are fake; prosecutors are fake; judges are fake.
The left has its own conspiracies. Some of the largest hotbeds of vaccination resistance are in leftist schools and communities. There is widespread leftist conspiracy thinking regarding adulterated and artificial ingredients in food, and in corruption in big business, in the CIA, FBI, and local police. It is the left that worries most about the military-industrial complex and secret money in politics.
RFK Jr. is best known for his vaccination skepticism, but he also says that Sirhan Sirhan did not assassinate his father and that the CIA assassinated his uncle, JFK. He says he doubts that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was part of a Trump-led effort to stop the vote count. He has said that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that anti-depressants cause school shootings, that chemicals in water cause kids to become transgender, that AIDS isn't caused by HIV, that Republicans stole the 2004 election, and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance.
RFK Jr. currently polls around 15% in three-way contests. When RFK Jr. is included in current polls, Biden's support drops more than does Trump's. RFK Jr.'s brand is Democratic and environmentalist. With Democratic voters crowded into their blue corner, and people restless for new Democratic faces, Biden's "status quo normal" vibe seems blind and tone-deaf to people who believe that dark forces are ruining America. I can imagine people on the left thinking: RFK Jr. is a little bit crazy, but at least he isn't a Republican and he's right about _________. And here is where they can fill in the blank. The JFK assassination? The FBI sabotaging Martin Luther King? Cell phones tracking us? Distrusting big pharma? There is always reason to question authority.
Urban and out-of-area readers may under-estimate the strength and in-your-face belligerence of some of Trump's voters in rural America. Trump has locked down his base. The conspiracy-minded among them won't be tempted by RFK Jr. They have their man. The lawn signs are up on rural roads. "Trump won." Yesterday I parked behind a pickup truck with this home-made modification.
I have never seen anything equivalent from a Biden supporter. I don't see people driving Priuses bedecked with flags and Biden signs. If there is partisan erosion to a conspiratorial third party candidate, I expect more of it to come from Biden.
The Democratic national campaign will attempt to disqualify RFK Jr. by citing his kookiest ideas. But some of those will have an air of truth about them to Democrats. This is an era of widespread distrust of institutions. I expect Democrats to deal with the RFK Jr. threat with a simple message that re-affirms partisanship -- in this case negative partisanship. The message will be "A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote for Trump." Full stop. Democrats know what they don't like.
Exactly. And disheartening. I have friends who are long-term lefties who do harbor irrational ideas regarding vaccines, pharma, and ag (which is not to say that every criticism of pharma and ag is unwarranted). I don't think any of them would vote for RFK Jr, but I didn't think any friends would vote for Jill Stein, either.
On the other hand, I think that RFK Jr may ultimately hurt Trump more; as Trump's woes mount, and as he is tied closer to the forced-birthers, I think there are perhaps a lot more of his weaker base who might get peeled away. I don't know.
I believe that the path to Democratic victory is for Dems to remain the normal party: institutionalists, incrementalists, sober and rational.
Let's not let the day go by without remembering Frances Perkins, who would be 144 years old today.
"When, in February, 1933, President-elect Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins to serve in his cabinet as Secretary of Labor, she outlined for him a set of policy priorities she would pursue: a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; unemployment compensation; worker’s compensation; abolition of child labor; direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief; Social Security; a revitalized federal employment service; and universal health insurance."
---- Look at that list. We've won nearly every one of those, except the last, and there's some backsliding on child labor, but institutionalists and incrementalists generally win in the end.
https://francesperkinscenter.org/learn/her-life/