Reading the RFK Jr. tea leaves
So, what will RFK Jr. do tomorrow? He is slated to make some sort of announcement.
Darned if I know, but here’s something to ponder:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to drop out of the presidential race by the end of this week, sources familiar with the decision tell ABC News.
Sources tell ABC News that Kennedy plans to endorse Donald Trump — but when asked directly by ABC News if he will be endorsing the former president, Kennedy said, “I will not confirm or deny that.”…
Sources cautioned the decision is not yet finalized and could still change, with one source adding that Kennedy’s hope is, in part, to finalize things quickly in order to try to blunt momentum from the Democratic National Convention.
If this endorsement happens, what will RFK’s erstwhile supporters do in terms of voting? They seem to me to be an independent lot who don’t like to be told what to do, and so the endorsement wouldn’t necessarily have them flocking to Trump. Then again, it seems to me that in general Trump would tend to be closer to their political viewpoints than Kamala would, so it could benefit Trump somewhat. And since the race seems close, this could matter.
Kennedy has good reason to be angry at the Democrats and want to shaft them. For him, it’s personal:
Kennedy told ABC News regarding the Democratic convention and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, “I think it was a coronation, it’s not democracy. Nobody voted. Who chose Kamala? It wasn’t voters.”
He also complained about the way his campaign has been treated. …
For weeks, Kennedy, buried under an avalanche of lawsuits brought by Democratic groups challenging his place on state ballots, has accused Democrats of acting undemocratically by trying to strip his supporters of the opportunity to vote for him.
Shanahan on Wednesday said, “We’re getting prosecuted politically right now. This is not normal for democracy.”
Ah, but it’s the new normal for the Democrats. They’re been doing it to Trump for years.
It’d be funny if Trump made the most (in)famous anti-vaxxer Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The Democrats don’t believe in democracy.
Vote Dem, that’s what they will do.
I have mixed feelings about how much this will help Trump. It may not have much impact either way; the Kennedy name does not carry as much import as it used to have. Conceivably it could even hurt Trump if enough of his voters then resign themselves to voting Dem out of TDS.
But it could also shake things up, giving fence-sitters more courage to switch parties. Here’s an interesting article by Ruy Teixeira who long has been warning Democrats about losing their grip on working-class voters.
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/democrats-are-super-happy-working
It doesn’t say much for today’s higher education that the college-educated are so much more likely to vote for Kamala than the working class. But we already knew that. Apologies if this has already been linked elsewhere here.
According to Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr’s VP, a Trump-Kennedy alliance is a real possibility, not just a rumor or a trial balloon:
________________________
The independent presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering abandoning his quest for the White House to “join forces” with Republican nominee Donald Trump, Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan says in a new interview posted online Tuesday.
Shanahan said the campaign is also considering remaining in the contest to try to win more than 5% of the popular vote and “establish ourselves” as a third-party alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties, and build on that ballot access for the 2028 election.
“There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump, or we draw somehow more votes from Trump,” Shanahan said in the interview on the “Impact Theory” podcast.
“Or we walk away right now and join forces with … Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that and explain to our base why we’re making this decision,” Shanahan told interviewer Tom Bilyeu.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/20/rfk-jr-campaign-trump-alliance-shanahan.html
________________________
That’s serious talk.
I think Kennedy’s supporters are more disillusioned with the Democrats and potentially more aligned with Trump than conservatives might suppose.
If RFK Jr endorsed Trump, I’d expect at least 3/5 going to Trump.
I remember how taibbi spoke about what they did to nader
I expect that SHIREHOME is correct. As much as I can tell, RFK Jr. is, at his core, a liberal Democrat that differs with the party on very little (Covid response, Anthony Fauci’s NIH, and vaccinations in general). So his supporters will not flock to Trump except possibly as an FU to the Democrats for screwing over their preferred candidate. He is dropping out because he hasn’t captured support from a lot of donors and voters. So the impact on the election will likely be small.
Make him ambassador to the UK; just like his grandfather.
I don’t know how much most Americans know about all the lawfare being used to interfere with this election. When I read Dems on other blogs Trump is constantly referred to as a felon. They are confused why anyone would support a convicted felon. These are educated people who always take the news at face value. I can’t understand this. It drives me crazy.
I agree with FOAF that it could shake things up by causing the fence sitters and those who haven’t been following the election beyond what they’ve heard from the MSM to take a closer look at Trump. This is an interesting development which will be impossible for the MSM to ignore. A lot will depend upon what RFK Jr. has to say about his reasons for abandoning the democrats and supporting Trump.
Honestly? I’ve been waiting for this to happen for weeks. I was going to vote for him, because I think he is more knowledgeable than Trump about how to “drain the swamp” in DC, but over the past couple of months it’s been abundantly clear that Kennedy wasn’t going to eke out a win and might not even be on the ballot in every state, so I decided I would support Trump instead. Rumors also have it that Trump might be considering offering Kennedy a position in exchange for endorsement, which would be exciting.
RFKjr might make an effective spokesman on the subject of assassination bound into politics, I think. He’d have to agree to do that though.
RFK Jr. was denied Secret Service protection under the Biden admiinistration.
Given the assassinations of JFK and RFK, Kennedy and his supporters were horrified by this denial. They likely saw it for the cruel cynicism it was.
I’ll bet the near assassination of Trump really resonated with them. After that attempt the Biden people were forced to make Secret Service available to RFK Jr.
The enemy of one’s enemy isn’t always one’s friend. But the RFK people have been seeing the current Dem leadership as their enemy for some time now and for good reasons.
Again, I think this makes a move to Trump likely, if endorsed.
When I started my journey to the right, I began discussing the issues with my leftist comrades.
I was deeply shocked by the viciousness of their responses. It became personal.
This definitely sped up my movement from left to right.
Here in New Mexico, which some polls now have leaning blue instead of solid blue, I was going to cast a protest vote for RFKJr until it started to look as if doing so would hurt Trump. Therefore, I will be voting for Trump, for the third time.
Here is my guess, as an amateur observer.
If RFKJr endorses Trump tomorrow, the Trump-deranged followers of the Kennedy/Shanahan ticket will either stay home or vote in protest for any third-party far-left candidates that the DNC hasn’t sued off their state ballots. The rest of Kennedy’s supporters will vote for Trump, and that will hurt the Harris/Walz ticket.
I don’t know how many truly independent voters support RFKJr. Very few, I suspect. But even if RFKJr has more Democratic-leaning independent supporters, the Trump-deranged among them may be enough to cost Harris/Walz the election if it’s close, and if the rest of us turn out to vote for Trump.
In other words–as in 2020, and setting aside (for the moment) the effects of Democratic cheating–this election will be a referendum on Trump and not on the “Biden” administration.
The Harris-Walz ticket is a truly scary prospect. If elected, probably with fraud because that’s what Democrats do, they will be tyrants in the Joe Stalin mode. You can then kiss your Constitution goodbye.
I assume, with some factual certainty, that Democrats will forge the votes they need to “win” with the chosen one. However, fewer options are open to them in terms of lawfare compared with 2020. And there will be more eyeballs on those suspect battleground states this time for sure. Is Kamala actually converting undecideds? I highly doubt it. She’s not that smart. Just a lot of words strung together in a hot mess. Maybe RFK, JR endorsing Trump pushes him beyond the cheat code range.
Somebody at Althouse suggested RFK for Attorney General. That would interesting. He would have to clean out all the Obamabots.
If RFKjr does endorse Trump, I suspect that the greatest affect among RFKjr’s supporters will be a refusal to vote. Happily, the democrat leadership’s stupid treatment of RFKjr has alienated his supporters and handed RFKjr a big rhetorical stick. Hopefully, he’ll use it liberally in tomorrow’s announcement.
RFK’s VP Nicole Shanahan describing the dirty tricks the democrats employed to destroy RFK’s campaign.
See here:
https://x.com/TomBevanRCP/status/1826311118710567153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1826311118710567153%7Ctwgr%5Eae86ac41b5243c31c4e432789a720679d93d0cb3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F668307%2F
Her description of the dirty tricks used by the democrats is no surprise to me, but I really wonder if she and RFK were surprised by what the demonkrats did.
Trump should give RFK Jr. the FDA. They and Big Pharma are a little too cozy. And he has Kennedy money, so it’s harder to
bribegive him a padded landing zone.I really wonder if she and RFK were surprised by what the demonkrats did.
Mike Tyler:
As an ex-leftist, ex-Democrat, I quite believe that they were surprised. I was often surprised as I made my changes.
It’s hard to change. Nonetheless, people, even Democrats, do change.
This blog started as a discussion of political change. Why is it so hard to believe that it actually happens?
Huxley
Because it’s really rare from what I’ve seen.
Trump has announced a surprise guest at tomorrow’s rally so I suspect it will be Kennedy but who knows. As to the effect of a Kennedy endorsement, I tend to agree that it will be marginal, perhaps it will add 1-2 percentage points to Trump nationally but maybe up to 3 points in some states which could be decisive.
@ JFM > “These are educated people who always take the news at face value. I can’t understand this. It drives me crazy.”
When they only see the news from one side, in which so much that we know about is omitted, distorted, or flat out invented, their opinions become understandable.
Not correct, but understandable.
Sadly, rectifying their erroneous impressions is time-consuming and requires background that they just don’t have.
I access probably ten times as much political and social news as most of my Democrat-voting family and friends, since I’m a Poli-Sci addict, and there is no way I can get a long enough hearing from them to convey all that information.
Change stories are interesting: so many are like Neo’s, where the sudden, unexpected, discovery that their news sources have lied about something important motivates an investigation that reveals many, many more lies.
It’s hard to know what that tipping point might be, for any individual.
The other problem is that they really don’t even want to know — literally; a recent group email from my family made that clear, in a rather off-hand fashion.
I won’t disturb their delusions, because there isn’t time in the day.
And even though they are all very nice, moral, generous, kind, productive, hard-working, intelligent, and educated (when that word had meaning), they are totally dependent on the Regime Media for their information.
And they believe the propaganda.
I counted up after reading that email.
AesopSpouse and I and our siblings/in-laws are not quite representative of the country: 4 Republicans and 7 Democrats.
The curious thing is that all of them are basically conservative in the classic sense; they’ve been suckered by the propagandistas’ word-changing into actually believing the Leftists mean what they claim, and all of that sounds good if you ignore what they actually DO.
@ huxley > “I was deeply shocked by the viciousness of their responses.”
That observation always reminds me of what I’ve come to call the Opposition Test.
Some years ago, one of the women who held a prominent LDS leadership position was often assigned to attend national and international conferences dealing with family and social/community issues. Of course, many (even most) of the other attendees supported policies antithetical to conservative doctrines — abortion and same-sex marriage were “hot topics” at the time.
She was asked once how she managed to get through those events, and even establish friendly working relationships with some of the people having opposing views.
She noted that the people she had the most amicable dealings with were firm in their own convictions, but were willing to listen to her, and others with similar positions, and explore ways they could reach common ground on things that needed doing to improve lives and societies.
It was easy to identify people like that very quickly, she said, because, “When you cross the others, they get mean.”
Donald Trump calls into Fox News (twice). He actually called back into Gutfeld at 10PM, after being cut short minutes earlier.
We have both videos posted on CC
https://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
UFOs, NHIs, and the apparent tug of war between forces within DOD, the Intelligence Community, members of Congress, Aerospace Contractors, and interested members of the public, over how much, if any, UFO Disclosure can be allowed.
What David Grusch has said in interviews and testified–under oath–to Congress about, and what Lue Elizondo has said in his almost innumerable interviews over the last several years, at conference appearances, on TV and, now, written about in his new book, “Imminent,” has all been cleared to be publicly revealed by the Pentagon’s Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSA).
Perhaps the folks at DOPSA think that more Disclosure is better, or that letting a little disclosure take place works as a safety valve, which diminishes the chances of a far larger, much more disastrous “Catastrophic Disclosure” from occurring.
On the other hand, with regard to the UFO issue and NHIs, DOD spokesmen, and the former head of ARRO, Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick, keep spouting the old “Party line”–which has admittedly kept things tamped down for the past 80 years–and keep denying that UFOs and NHI’s are real.
In effect, they keep saying,“nothing to see here folks, move on.”
Meanwhile, some aroused and alarmed members of Congress are introducing and passing legislation which aims at getting at the truth about the UFO Phenomenon, and enabling Congress to reassert it’s oversight over what they have been told, by whistle blowers, are various highly secret, deeply buried, apparently rogue “Legacy” UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs, which are apparently being pursued within some parts of government, and within some major aerospace companies; legislation which acknowledges and takes as real the existence of “Non Human Intelligence” and their “technologies of unknown origin.”
Another force which is also at play here is composed of the private citizens, and their various organizations, which–in efforts which have extended over a couple of generations, now–have tried, in their various ways, to push for UFO Disclosure.
Organized religion, in the form of the Vatican–whose archives and knowledge stretch back thousands of years–may also “have a dog in this fight.”
It’s quite a tug of war.
The Bernie Bros I knew were legitimately pissed at the primaries being rigged against him in 2016 and 2020, but within a few months all was forgotten and they were all for the Dem candidate.