For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump. Now, even as Biden has all but erased his polling deficit against Trump, he’s getting some more good news in surveys that include other candidates.
Two recent major national polls show Biden running better in a five-way than a two-way race. According to NBC News, Biden moves from two points down to two points up when the non-major-party candidates are included. In the latest Marist poll, Biden leads Trump by three points head-to-head and by five points in a five-way race. Since left-bent candidates West and Stein are pulling 5 percent in the former poll and 4 percent in the latter (presumably taking very few votes from Trump), you have to figure Kennedy is beginning to cut into the MAGA vote to an extent that should get Team Trump’s attention. And it has, NBC News reports:
“Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he’s confident that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will pull more votes away from President Joe Biden than from him — a net win for the Republican’s candidacy.
“’He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine,’Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. ‘I love that he is running!’
“Behind closed doors, however, Trump is less sure. A Republican who was in the room with Trump this year as he reviewed polling said Trump was unsure how Kennedy would affect the race, asking the other people on hand whether or not Kennedy was actually good for his candidacy.”
Politico notes that Kennedy is drawing higher favorability numbers from Republican voters than from Democratic ones, which could indicate a higher ceiling for RFJ Jr. among Trump defectors. And it’s generally assumed from his past performances that there is a lower ceiling on Trump’s support than on Biden’s; he needs to be able to win with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote, as one Republican told Politico:
“’If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional,’ Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. ‘They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.’”
One likely reason that Kennedy could be appealing to Republicans is the residual effect from the positive attention he received from conservative media when he was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries; his identification with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories also resonates more positively on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. So it’s in the interest of Team Trump to begin telling the former president’s sympathizers that RFK Jr. is actually a lefty, and that started happening recently, as the New York Times reported: “Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, pointed in particular to Mr. Kennedy’s views on climate change and the environment, writing on his social media site that Mr. Kennedy was more ‘radical Left’ than Mr. Biden.”
The idea, of course, is not only to discourage potential Trump voters from drifting toward the independent candidate, but to encourage potential Biden voters to consider a Kennedy vote.
If Kennedy continues to draw votes from both Biden and Trump, each of their campaigns will need to make a strategic decision about how to deal with him: Do you ignore him and count on the usual fade in support afflicting non-major-party presidential candidates as Election Day nears, or do you attack him as too far left (if you’re Trump) or too far right (if you’re Biden) and try to make him a handicap to your major-party opponent? The more aggressive approach has become common among Democrats seeking to intervene in Republican primaries (or in the recent case of the California Senate race, a nonpartisan top-two primary) by loudly attacking candidates they’d prefer to face in the general election, encouraging Republicans to flock to the supposed menace to progressivism. This kind of tactic — if deployed with some serious dollars — could have an effect on Kennedy’s base of support.
Certainly Trump seems to be considering it. With his usual practice of saying the quiet part out loud, Trump opined: “If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats.”
Trying to minimize losses to Kennedy and maximize opposite-party votes for Kennedy could become a routine practice down the stretch. Where and by whom this strategy is pursued will depend in part on where RFK Jr. is ultimately on the ballot. Right now he has nailed down ballot access in just two states, Utah and Michigan. CBS News reports the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is close to securing a spot on the November ballot in a number of other states:
“Kennedy’s campaign says it has completed signature gathering in seven other states in addition to Utah and Michigan — Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa.
“The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”
Coping with Kennedy could become a game of three-dimensional chess between the Biden and Trump campaigns. But if it begins to look like RFK Jr. has become an existential threat to Democrats or to Republicans, you can bet they’ll go medieval on him without even a moment’s hesitation.
As near as I’ve been able to see so far, Kerry’s stand on the issues is exactly like Bush’s except that he thinks we ought to have some sort of health policy, and he isn’t ready to ban abortions or utterly ban gay marriages.
I don’t think we have that much of a consensus in the voting public. If Bush and Kerry split the Bush vote, that leaves a whole lot of people to vote for someone else if someone else can get funding and organization.
So people can pick Kerry or Bush depending on party loyalty, or whose eyebrows they like better. But it’s a sad state of affairs when that’s what we’re stuck with.
I don’t think working for Nader is going to be a trendy thing to do this year. In fact, I think you would put yourself in serious danger of getting a face full of rotten tomatoes. This might cut down on the effectiveness of Nader’s campaign organization.
Unfortunately, the Republican controlled media will probably give him as much media exposure as they can possibly get away with.
I have to disagree with my Good Friend Charlie Cook whose OP ED appears in today’s NyT….he ought to get out more often..,,,,
If he’d come to visit us in San Francisco, specifically if he were here today, he could see Ralph Nader speak at SFSU.
He and probably not too many others for I saw exactly two, Xerox’ed flyers…
No enthusiasm at a place like State means Ralph is going to have a real hard time breaking 1%…Of course the poll that Charlie easily demolished showed him at 6%..and the Post Poll at 3%
And read Ruy more often Chuck
It’s a long, long time until November, guys. A little too early to be engaged in the practice of chicken counting. I think that these poll numbers are about as good as its going to get for Kerry. Once job numbers begin to improve, which they will, Kerry will go down in the polls. When Osama is caught, which he will, Bush’s numbers will rise.
I feel for you, though. It’s not any fun to root for the stagnation of job creation or to tout the military endeavours of the current administration as failures.
The more Nader is on TV the less impact he has is my observation.
Plus, you need funding to pay for enough “volunteers” to collect all those signatures to gain ballot eligability. Good luck on that.
Campaign finance laws will probably provide enough transparency that the republicans will be exposed if they try too hard to prop up Nader.
No offense Ricky Vandal you may donate your time but the numbers Nader needs to be a player/spoiler won’t come without some cash to get the organization in the states that matter.
Rick, The people who are willing to subjet themselves and their families to the insults, privacy invasion and criticisms of politics seldom have the resume of Mother Theresa. Partly it is the reality of ambitious persons, partly it is what we get for allowing negative campaigning to work. Unfortunately, we have to treat it like sausage making. Enjoy the end product of environmental protection, human rights, more economic democracy etc. and don’t judge the politician by an unrealistic standard of purity. It really, really, really does matter who is in the White House, even if they have the blemishes of major personal ambition.
A lame deduction. A majority of the eligble voters do not vote. That is where Democrats should find voters. Trying to take Naders voters is nonsense. If they liked Cut and Run Kerry they’d vote for the backstabber.
Following up on the Miami Herald poll, it shows Kerry leading Bush 49-43. Amiong Independents, Kerry gets 57% and Bush “a little over a third”. It’s a terribly-written story at http://www.miamiherald.com. Also shows that Graham or Nelson add nothing to the ticket, but that Bush is doing better than in 2000 among Hispanics, carrying them 56-40 (they broke about evenly in 2000, with Bush having a one-point avantage) So maybe Bill Richardson would be the best choice for Florida.
If I understand Florida law correctly, Nader needs 93,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, and he’ll have to have help from the Republicans for that, since he won’t have the Greens.
Nader will only make it onto the ballot in a relative handful of states. So, I don’t care if he’s polling 6 percent, because it won’t impact the race all that much.
“Florida is lost to Kerry.”
Not so fast. This from today’s Miami Herald:
Increasingly critical of President Bush on his handling of the economy and the war in Iraq, more Florida voters now say they plan to support Democrat John Kerry than to help reelect the president, according to a new poll.
The Herald/St. Petersburg Times survey reveals striking vulnerabilities for Bush among key independent voters in the state that narrowly put him into the White House four years ago.
More Florida voters disapprove of his job performance than approve, another sign of the president’s lagging popularity since the 2001 terrorist attacks transformed Bush from a polarizing figure into a popular wartime president.
A majority of voters believe that the United States is ”moving in the wrong direction” under Bush — a marked reversal from two years ago, when 7 in 10 voters, including half of Democrats, approved of Bush’s job performance.
(Unfortunately Nader is still polling 3% in the Sunshine State. Let’s just hope Ruy is right about that fading by election day.)
Thank you!
I have no idea if you are right (though my lone brain cell and my gut tell me you are), but I’ll be able to sleep now.
I don’t see FL as remotely out of play in 2004, though I’d like to hear Ruy speak to that state. Interestingly, The Decembrist makes a decent case for Senator Bill Nelson of FL as VP.
AB
21,000 GOVERNMENT jobs, by the way!
Buchanan is my guess. It was Florida that Nader cost Gore. Florida is lost to Kerry. What he will pick up in 04 will be Ohio and NH, in neither of which will Nader be a factor. The very type of state that will be closer for Kerry will be a type that will not have much of a Nader factor.
Kerry is going to sweep the old North, save Indiana, which was sometimes referred to as Klandiana. The political forces are pushing the Dems in the direction of being the Party of the North, the modern day heir of the Party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. It is a unified base that can be held together. This in-between is what is killing them at times. Resistence is futile. They should accept their destiny as such a party.
The Dems can hold onto the Louisiana seat with Chris John. What they need is more Northern seats so that they do not have to rely on the Southern states, forcing the GOP to rely on them more heavily. Once the parties again become one for the liberal, individualistic North and one for the conservative statist South, although the reverse of 1860, politics will become more civil and more will become involved in elections and party activities.
We need to defeat them one more time. Show them that Lee’s surrender cannot be undone!