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.
There’s no way in hell Obama’s going to pick Nunn for VP. There’s no reason to say why; anyone with half a brain knows why and it doesn’t need to be explained. Nunn’s just another old man in a country that’s had enough of old men.
Well, Steve Kornacki at the New York Observer offers one explanation — Nunn is Sistah Souljah:
“That Mr. Nunn is from a Southern state doesn’t hurt, and that some on the left have begun carping about his conservative record on social issues like gay rights is actually a political plus, too – a chance for Mr. Obama to reach out to center-right swing voters who roll their eyes at the liberal interest-group establishment.”
http://www.observer.com/2008/obama-and-cheney-option
Yeah, all of those soldiers who got early discharges for being part of the “liberal interest-group establishment” (for which read: queer) WILL just carp carp carp. They didn’t just start doing it, though. Where’s Karnacki been since the mid 1990’s? Apparently the choice of Nunn will reassure anybody troubled by the fear that Obama might have actually meant it about gays and lesbians being citizens too.
I actually agree with Karnacki on that point. It’s just what I’ve said before — if Obama picks Nunn, I won’t believe him on gay issues either. I’m already a skeptic.
“Lieberman’s position on military ballots in FL was dictated to him by the Gore campaign. It was only a “surprise” to those hard-line lawyers who were out of the Gore political loop. Moreover, Gore probably wouldn’t have even been in the position to win FL without Lieberman’s presence on the ticket (look at the 2000-2004 numbers in South Florida).”
I suppose I could have intuited the latter, but I’m happy to know the former. Lieberman’s statement at the time infuriated me. I honor our servicemen, but I don’t happen to think that the vote of a peacetime soldier in Germany is more important than that of a WWII veteran in Florida — and the latter were expected to follow the rules, sign their absentee ballots, and get them postmarked before Election Day.
Ducdebrabant:
I don’t think there’s any real chance of Nunn going on the ticket unless he offers something like the “repentence” you are suggesting.
Have to quibble with one of your analogies, though: Lieberman’s position on military ballots in FL was dictated to him by the Gore campaign. It was only a “surprise” to those hard-line lawyers who were out of the Gore political loop. Moreover, Gore probably wouldn’t have even been in the position to win FL without Lieberman’s presence on the ticket (look at the 2000-2004 numbers in South Florida).
Look, I hold zero brief for Lieberman these days; I seem to be “to the left” of a lot of Democrats who think he should be stripped of his committee assignment if he keeps attacking Obama; I think the mere act of endorsing McCain is enough grounds for booting him out of the Caucus as soon as is practicable.
But that doesn’t mean we have to accept a lot of revisionist history about Lieberman’s responsibility for Bush. If anything, Gore lost FL when he failed to push for a statewide recount from the get-go, as a lot of us felt at the time.
Thanks for the comments.
Ed Kilgore
It’s been pointed out to me on another site that a repentant Sam Nunn would be a very dramatic development and a real boost to gay people. So it would. The repentance is missing, though. He makes no apologies, offers no regrets, makes no promises, refuses to state a present position, and then he does something really surprising. He has the gall to claim credit for the fact that gay men and women, thanks to DADT, no longer have to lie on enlistment forms as they did pre-DADT. Thanks to DADT, perhaps, but very little thanks to Sam Nunn, who wanted to keep things exactly as they were. Neither DADT nor anything resembling it was his original position. If he’d had his way completely, they’d still be lying on enlistment forms and, I suppose, still be getting dishonorable discharges. You know, instead of just discharges. He’s a long way from admitting he was wrong, and that is a bottom line prerequisite in my view.
Sam Nunn could be a mistake if the Obama campaign is serious about winning Colorado, New Mexico or possibly Nevada. 2004 exit polls in Colorado indicated that 4% of voters were gay/lesbian. Many gay men (less so lesbians) hold a surprising positive view of McCain, particularly in these Western states. Placing someone like Nunn with such a distinguished pedigree of heterosexism/homophobia could prove a mistake. Why risk Colorado, New Mexico or Nevada (all will be very close) on the off chance you might pull in Georgia. At the very least, Nunn will need to do some explaining to these voters as to why he now thinks “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be revisited, and what are his current views.
More importantly, elevating a conservative, Southern white male into the future leadership of the Democratic Party is a mistake for 2016 and beyond. The Democrats need to look West, Northwest, and Southwest as they consider their future, not to the remnants of the old Democratic base in Dixie.
Perhaps Bowers is easier to differ with than Jonathan Capehart, whose article “Don’t Ask Nunn” was in the Washington Post last Wednesday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061002527.html
It may have been just a matter of time, but not quite as much time as it took Bowers. The comparison of Nunn to Lieberman may fail in one way, but unless Nunn enthusiastically embraces Obama’s program, I’d be very much worried about his independence turning into obstruction. He turned on a President of his own party already, when he was in the Senate, and what is the Vice President but President of the Senate? Another surprise like Lieberman’s jumping to the Republican position on putative military ballots in Florida without signatures or dates is not something I would care to see.
Nunn of course deserves credit for his work on non-proliferation.