The conventional wisdom on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s electoral chances has flipped a few times already since this election cycle began.
First, running as Democrats, his fellow Dems ridiculed him for “running in the wrong party.”
But laughter turned to fear as it became clear that as an Independent, he was pulling more votes from an ailing Joe Biden than he was from Donald Trump.
So Democrats and their allies tried to stop him, launching lawsuits across the country to keep him off the ballot. In some states, they succeeded. Just this week a New York judge took him off the ballot in the state over a legal technicality.
But now, with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, we’re back to square one. As Harris locks down support, RFK now pulls more voters from Trump — at least according to polling guru Nate Silver.
“So his margin has shrunk,” Silver said of RFK in an interview on NewsNation.
“There were a lot of voters who were in a ‘pox on all houses’ mode when it was a Biden-Trump race, who have now migrated back to Harris and traditional Democratic voters who are concerned about Joe Biden’s age,” he continued.
“As best as we can tell, and we crunch all these numbers, RFK now takes more votes from Trump than from Harris. I mean, he’s anti-vax, he’s anti-establishment, and that’s overcoming the Kennedy name and that brand. So, you know, Democrats, for example, wanted him off the ballot here in states like New York that lost. It’s been successful for now. That’s probably a mistake. They’d rather have RFK draining anti-establishment votes from Trump.”
Dems are reactionary. One moment they can be your best friend; the next, they will try to destroy you. Their lack of political impulse control could now come back to bite them. If only they let RFK stay on the ballot, perhaps they’d be in better shape right now.
In other words, if Democrats actually stood for democracy, they could find it actually worked in their favor.