Over at TNR’s The Plank, a variety of people have been invited to debate about the advisability of an Obama-Clinton “unity ticket.” As it happens, Alan Wolfe and yours truly were the first to send in submissions, both supporting the “unity ticket.”
I tried to be sensitive to the various arguments against the “unity ticket,” especially those of Obama supporters who view this possibility as a self-repudiation of Obama’s message and the very rationale for his candidacy. I also made it clear there are plenty of practical obstacles to an Obama-Clinton collaboration, most notably the fact that we don’t know if either principal is open to it at all.
But in the end, my own conclusion was that a unity ticket would most efficiently resolve the candidate-centered divisions in the Democratic Party that have grown ever more apparent as the primary contest has dragged on, allowing the party to briskly move on to a tough general election campaign. I’m sure other participants in the debate will argue otherwise, and as always in these extracurricular essays, I was speaking for myself, not TDS.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 26: Kennedy Now Taking As Many Votes From Trump As From Biden
Polls are showing a subtle but potentially important shift that I discussed at New York:
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.
Interesting that the only post to get any response in a while is this one, showing, I think, how Democrats this time around are more interested in personalities and images rather than real policy issues. Pretty sad.
Thanks, folks, for the comments. I’d like to specifically address Gregg’s, since his there-are-plenty-of-other-veep-options argument against the unity ticket is one you hear from a lot of people (viz., Mark Schmitt’s post in the TNR colloquoy).
It’s true there are a lot of good names floating around out there, but that’s the problem: there are as many rationales for a particular choice as there are candidates. What kind of running-mate does Obama need? A woman? A “populist?” Someone with a strong national security background? Someone from a battleground state? There’s probably no one choice who covers as much political ground as HRC.
Ed Kilgore
In discussions I’ve had about this, the usual comment is why would Obama want Hillary as VP? With Hillary comes Bill, and between them they would be constantly trying to take the spotlight off Obama.
But the VP is powerful only to the extent that the President yields power. Hillary in the Senate has her own power base, and we can expect her to have a leadership position there.
I can envision a situation like that in the late 1970s and 1980, when Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill joined forces to destroy the Carter Presidency [at least, that’s how I saw it at the time]. In this scenario, Hillary has too much “integrity” to compromise on health care, or whatever, and noisily protests this and that until, finally, in 2012, she MUST run against Obama for the sake of the country.
Maybe keeping Hillary close at hand is the best course.
As someone who supported Obama during this primary campaign, I would have to say there were times when Hillary said things that were offensive to me, and seemed un-Democratic. These sorts of things happen in all campaigns, and will come back, as they always come back, to hurt Obama in the general campaign. But I am not a Hillary hater, and winning this election is too important to the future of our country to allow my personal pique to undermine my understanding of the big picture.
Really? Perhaps you would like the Clintons and their Dem voters to sit silently behind a curtain, the way the women delegates were forced to do at the First Anti-Slavery Convention.
Of course, it would have to be an awfully big curtain, since the Clinton voters make up half the Dems.
While you’re at it, maybe you can tell the Clintons and their voters; “You can vote for us and send money to us, but we don’t want any input from you, much less sharing any power with you. After all, the Democratic Party has a long tradition of losing nobly, and the only Dem President who’s won two terms is an awful embarrassment to us.”
That way, you can be assured that the Dems lose again in 2008. That’s what you want, right?
You may count me as one who would fall off the Obama wagon if HRC is his running mate. Whether I would then vote Republican is an open question I will reserve judgement about. With McCain running, given his age, I would see HIS VP selection as at least as important as Obama’s.
The arguments against Hillary as VP are well stated above, and resonate with me. To me, his biggest vulnerability is that he is painted by the GOP as “just another pol”, and choosing Hillary as a political ploy would give that theory real legs.
I probably represent the “swing voter” bloc pretty well, based on my history and views. I also have concluded, after 5 decades as a voter that that current Democratic Party has an uncanny penchant for shooting itself in the foot, for pulling defeat out of the hot fire of potential victory. This “dream ticket” (read: nightmare scenario) would be the proof positive of that view, in my opinion.
I could be wrong, I admit, but why risk it? If Obama is not strong enough to craft a winning campaign without a Clinton flavor, then he does not deserve the office of President.
I see two issues: whether such a “unity”ticket would sell and whether it would work in an Administration.
There might be some plausibility that it would sell and help get Obama elected. I think a more interesting question would be who else would help deliver voter segments that Mrs. Clinton has some strength with and who could make inroads into segments that McCain has strengths.
When I heard Sam Nunn’s name mentioned in this regard, my gut reaction was that would make a formidable team. And Mr. Nunn is a real statesman. Self-serving is not a term I would ever attribute to him. There are others.
Whether having Mrs Clinton as VP in an administration– not to mention Bill with time on his hands– would work, c’mon! That would be a situation that would have to be so highly managed. I think Sara Powers’ remark that Hillary was a monster that would say anything was very revealing. It would be very surprising if Obama perceived Clinton as not bringing severe risk factors into his administration.
–Gregg
Ed, besides the repudiation issue you mention, there are two more reasons for Obama not to want Clinton on the ticket. 1) Hillary’s traditionally high negatives and the fact that she is sure to be a GOTV organinzing bonanza for the Right (since McCain is their nominee it is possible that, without Hillary on the ticket, many GOPers will stay home); and 2) Bill. If I were Obama I would not want him on the loose as even a tangential part of the Administration.