Well, it’s now out in the open, after an announcement by Joe Liebeman’s office: my colleague The Moose, a.k.a. Marshall Wittmann, is shutting down his blog and leaving the DLC to become Communications Director for the Independent-Democrat from CT.I was travelling last week when The Moose suddenly did a post saying he was going into “hibernation.” I guessed pretty quickly where he was headed next, but couldn’t say anything until Lieberman made it public.It’s obviously the perfect gig for Marshall, and he’s the perfect spokesman for Lieberman. When he first came to the DLC in 2004, he had just changed his registration from R to Independent, endorsed John Kerry for president, and burned a lot of bridges to the Right–bridges he had already undermined in his work for John McCain in 2000. And although he wrote some of the most withering critiques of Bush, Rove, DeLay, the K Street Strategy, and the whole culture of the GOP appearing in the English language, he could not bring himself to join Our Team in the polarized politics of 2005-06, and was increasingly uncomfortable working in an unambiguous Democratic environment, even at the very tolerant DLC.The Moose became a passionate advocate for Lieberman’s primary and general-election campaigns in no small part because he sincerely believes both parties are in danger of abandoning the political center, and quite frankly because he is happiest free of either party’s yoke. This is obviously where Joe Lieberman is today. After voting for Harry Reid as Majority Leader, Joe will likely view himself as a completely free agent, much like The Moose.For regular readers of this blog, it’s been no secret that I disagree with Marshall on many issues, including Iraq, how Democrats should deal with polarization, the nature and significance of the progressive blogosphere, and the general political landscape.. I cannot count the number of times we’ve disagreed in internal DLC discussions, or around the office water cooler.But as I indicated a while back in a post defending The Moose against his blogospheric detractors, he has been a boon companion and good friend through thick and thin, not to mention one of the smartest and funniest people I’ve ever met, which counts a lot with me. And I still think his exceptionally well-informed attacks on the whole rotten culture of the latter-day GOP contributed far more to the Democratic Cause than he took away in his occasional ripostes against what he called the “nutroots,” especially among the media types who came to him so often to diagnose the conservative meltdown. It’s about as much as any Democrat could expect from a guy who, after all, was a self-proclaimed independent.I sincerely wish The Moose well in his new gig, and hope that his transition from a Democratic organization to an Independent-Democratic Senator will not slake his thirst for attacking the continuing ideological extremism of a GOP that’s half-convinced it lost on November 7 by being insufficiently right-wing.So let me say Hasta La Vista to the Moose. I don’t know if we will meet down the road as allies or friendly adversaries–hell, we both may be in assisted living before long–but I do know the blogosphere will suffer from the absence of his antlered presence.
TDS Strategy Memos
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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.