https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk-jr-launches-independent-bid-president-leaving-democratic/story?id=103831120
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is dropping out of the Democratic primary race against Biden to launch an independent campaign for president next year
Nah. He’s now a spoiler candidate. Can’t win, but can shave off Biden’s votes for Trump.
Nader 2000.
I, personally, don't know any democrats who would vote for RFK over Biden. To me, it seems more likely that he'd split the Republican vote.
The worry isn’t with the highly or moderately informed voter block, it’s with the people who pay little to no attention to politics, yet still vote. Those are the people that are more likely to vote for a family name with a positive brand - which “Kennedy” is.
Bigger margins leave you less vulnerable to fuckery by corrupt election officials and judges.
Fact of the matter is, if Nader wasn’t on the ballot in 2000, Gore would’ve like had a healthy margin. He had almost 100,000 votes, and Gore only needed several hundred.
Fact of the matter is, if Nader wasn’t on the ballot in 2000, Gore would’ve like had a healthy margin
you can't prove that.
Nope, but you’d have to be fooling yourself if you thought, the people at the Nader rallies were down with Bush. If Nader wasn’t on the ballot, those votes were going to be Gore, people who declined state, or people writing in candidates out of protest.
Gore needed less than 1% of Naders voters. The odds would’ve have clearly been in his favor.
you can't prove a counter factual. In a world where Nader isn't on the ballot, you don't know who the dem nominee was either.
Thankfully, polling has suggested that he's actually more popular with Republican voters than Democrat, so we might get a reverse-Nader.
From the American Enterprise Institute: "But Kennedy’s candidacy, which was succored by mischief-making MAGA Republicans as a spoiler in the Democratic primaries, seems very much more likely to bite the hands that fed it than to harm Biden in a rematch with Trump."
From the National Review: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential bid seems less a threat to Joe Biden than another obstacle in Donald Trump's path back to the White House"
schadenfreude intensifies
Given how stupid American voters are, I'm going to go ahead with "hope for the best but expect the worst" here. I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but I'm sure not going to expect it.
So now that RFK Jr is going to actually syphon off the mythical "moderate Republicans" from trump...
We won't have to hear that as a reason Biden can't give Dem voters what they want... Right?
Biden doesn't have to give anyone anything. He will be the nominee, provided he has a pulse, and he can easily raise enough money to win his election and help downticket democrats. Everything else is a distraction.
The real trick is, if we see a democratic majority in the house and senate (unlikely, but possible), how will the Democrats avoid the progressive agenda then? Who can they blame for the lack of progress? Probably the courts, and obstructionist Republicans, both problems they could avoid if they actually wanted to pass a progressive agenda.
The current Republican majority in the house is completely due to gerrymandering. I mean that if we had eliminated all gerrymandered districts (going both ways) in America in 2022, the Democrats would hold the House today.
There are lawsuits out in a number of states. The Democrats will almost certainly gain several seats in New York state alone (possibly up to 6 or 7). And there are lawsuits in a ton of southern states from Florida to Texas, where after a recent Supreme Court ruling, it's likely that several of these states will end up with 1-2 additional Democratic seats each (with an equal number of lost Republican seats).
It's possible that political winds will swing further against the Democrats by 2024 elections, but it looks right now like those winds aren't the only consideration.
I think the reason he might be more of a threat to Trump than to Biden is that instead of splitting the Democrat vote, he's more likely to split the insane/idiot vote.
Let's not fool ourselves. While Trump's base is full of idiots, Biden needs a healthy share of idiots to win.
We need to start nipping this in the bud. RFK Jr. isn't your grandfather's Kennedy. He's more akin to a Republican in many ways.
There are a few things I can agree with. Yes, I do think the pharmaceutical companies have hooks in the government. I think they are joined by other corporations as well, as money = power and we follow the "He who has the gold makes the rules" version of the Golden Rule here rather than "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" version. And I'm sure shenanigans were done in 2004 to get Bush over the hump, though Kerry did our side no favours. But the bottom line is that this guy is going to draw away even more people from our coalition. We need to remind each other than 74 million Deplorables came out of the woodwork in 2020 to cast their vote for Trump. We'll need every last person who does not want a Trump-Repeat to vote Biden and ignore shiny objects like RFK Jr.