CNN contributor Van Jones said Tuesday that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is creating a political “shockwave” in the Democratic Party.
American Values 2024, a political action committee backing the environmental activist, announced it had collected enough signatures to put Kennedy on the ballot in Arizona and Georgia, CNN reported. Jones called Kennedy’s potential performance “a big deal” that could sink President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. (RELATED: ‘Everything Is Different’: Long-Time Dem Voter Tells MSNBC Reporter He Doesn’t ‘Feel’ Biden Should ‘Represent Me’)
“If you understand basic math, this is a shockwave through the Democratic Party because it takes a lot less than the amount of support he‘s got, especially among young people, to throw this whole thing [for] Biden,” Jones told CNN host Erin Burnett. “And we can lose some states, but we can‘t lose many, and so we‘re having — we‘re going to have a tough enough time in Georgia, we’re going to have a tough enough time in Arizona anyway, but this is a big deal. This is a very big deal and I think, for me, my heart breaks.”
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Former President Donald Trump leads Biden by 4.7 points in Arizona in a head-to-head matchup according to RealClearPolling’s average, but the lead grows to 7 points when Kennedy, Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent candidate Cornel West are included as options. In Georgia, RealClearPolling reports Trump’s average lead over Biden is 6.8 points in a head-to-head matchup, but with Stein, West and Kennedy in the race, Trump’s lead grew to 8 points.
“I know RFK Jr, in fact, he endorsed and wrote for my first book. I‘m very close to his sister, Kerry,” Jones said. “He was an environmental champion hero of mine for a very long time, but if you don‘t have a pathway to win the White House, and I don‘t think that he‘s going to be on enough ballots to win the White House, then you shouldn‘t be doing this because you can only hurt Joe Biden and hand the country over to Donald Trump.”
Some Democrats blamed Stein for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 election, pointing to the margins in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Politico reported.
Trump currently leads Biden by 2.1% in the RealClearPolitics average of national general election polls for a head-to-head matchup, a lead that grows to 3% when Kennedy, Stein and West are included.
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