RFK's campaign (will run as independent/third-party) (3 Viewers)

[samiam5211]

It looks like he's going to be on the ticket in November. I think he should get his own thread. He's about to become well funded, and it's going to be a professionally run campaign no doubt. I don't think it's out of the question that he get's Perot like numbers, and even if he get's 1/4 of that it could be a disaster for the Biden campaign that is probably looking at a few thousand votes in a few states turning the election anyway.

There is going to be money behind this campaign from all sorts of angles. No matter what anyone thinks about RFK, it would be a terrible mistake to not take this campaign seriously. He might take some from Trump for sure, but he's going to take more of the anti Trump vote from Biden, and Biden can't really spare any votes. Not all people who were going to vote for Biden would disagree with the things RFK has said about vaccines, and he's not going to be spending his time campaigning on just vaccine skepticism.

There are many more people voting for Biden who aren't enthusiastic about Biden than there are on the other side.

MSN

Asuper PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has begun polling his support as an Independent, one of the strongest indications to date that the long-shot Democrat is set to announce a party affiliation switch.

The poll, conducted by the firm John Zogby Strategies and commissioned by the American Values 2024 PAC, comes amid growing speculation — fueled by Kennedy himself — that he will leave the Democratic Party in the upcoming weeks.

 

[Optimus Prime]

RFK is going to pull far more votes from the right. That antivax MAGA crowd hates it when Trump starts crooning about Operation Warpspeed.

here's hoping

 

[samiam5211]

He's not going to pull anyone from the right with a half Chinese, open borders socialist on the ticket.

 

[CoolBrees]

He's not going to pull any amount of people of consequence from either of them. Certainly not Biden.

The far left never supports a Dem. Like ever. The Green Party is my affiliation. We run someone every cycle. Average voter can't even name them. 2000 was the only year it mattered - but Gore should have won his home state and it wouldn't have mattered then either. And Nader is the man and I would vote for him again.

Besides, the far left antivax factions are resigned to places like CA, WA, OR. Places it doesn't matter for Biden. He's already won all three states.

But in Florida and Wisconsin etc The far right is the base of the Republican Party. RKJr being Antivaxx and Q curious will affect Trump.

RKJr lives in the area where the extreme right and left come together. The difference is the extreme left has no power anywhere outside of some local and state governments in far left states ie the west coast

And Trump is the one who needs more votes. Biden just needs to hold serve and it is another landslide.

 

[UriUT]

He's not going to pull any amount of people of consequence from either of them. Certainly not Biden.

The far left never supports a Dem. Like ever. The Green Party is my affiliation. We run someone every cycle. Average voter can't even name them. 2000 was the only year it mattered - but Gore should have won his home state and it wouldn't have mattered then either. And Nader is the man and I would vote for him again.

Besides, the far left antivax factions are resigned to places like CA, WA, OR. Places it doesn't matter for Biden. He's already won all three states.

But in Florida and Wisconsin etc The far right is the base of the Republican Party. RKJr being Antivaxx and Q curious will affect Trump.

RKJr lives in the area where the extreme right and left come together. The difference is the extreme left has no power anywhere outside of some local and state governments in far left states ie the west coast

And Trump is the one who needs more votes. Biden just needs to hold serve and it is another landslide.

I present you with Jill Stein. She garnered ~10k [edit: just checked, she got 51k] votes in mich. Hillary lost approximately by that vote. Now, we had depressed votes from Detroit that year, as were many other factors. But I don't think in a contentious election coming up that will be decided by a handful of states, one can cast spoiler candidates aside as insignificant.

And last I heard, she decided to run again this year, for the green party.

 

[SFIDC3]

RFK is going to pull far more votes from the right. That antivax MAGA crowd hates it when Trump starts crooning about Operation Warpspeed.

Agreed....anecdotal and all but my wife's crazy cousin and husband who were big Trumpers until very recently are now fully supporting RFK.....hopefully there will be many, many more.....

 

[CoolBrees]

I present you with Jill Stein. She garnered ~10k [edit: just checked, she got 51k] votes in mich. Hillary lost approximately by that vote. Now, we had depressed votes from Detroit that year, as were many other factors. But I don't think in a contentious election coming up that will be decided by a handful of states, one can cast spoiler candidates aside as insignificant.

And last I heard, she decided to run again this year, for the green party.

Hillary wins Michigan she still loses.

Blaming Jill Stein for Hillary is not helpful

 

[Optimus Prime]

Of all the reasons Hillary lost I wouldn’t even put 3rd party candidates on the list

 

[MT15]

If they are hanging out with Flynn and Stone I don’t know how much more obvious it can be who they are targeting as voters. It ain’t Biden voters.

 

[UriUT]

Hillary wins Michigan she still loses.

Blaming Jill Stein for Hillary is not helpful

That wasn't my point. (edit: 2016 had numerous problems for hillary, and clinton had much to be blamed) It's whether rfk jr or any other non major candidates have significance in spoiling the coming election.

Will RFK Jr. and other third-party candidates help doom democracy?

It’s tough to break the partisan duopoly without empowering spoilers.

www.motherjones.com

Nor should we forget the history of Russian interference in our elections. In 2016, Russian trolls ran a social media blitz to boost Stein, as part of Moscow’s clandestine scheme to undermine the US presidential election and help Trump. This operation included the hack-and-leak operation that targeted Clinton, via the release of emails and documents stolen from the Democrats, and, no doubt, contributed to her loss. In 2020, Russian operatives colluded with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to spread false information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s activities in Ukraine.

Guess who came to dinner with Flynn and Putin

NBC News reviewed video and photos from a 2015 Moscow gala that Mike Flynn was paid $45,000 to attend to see who else was in the room.

www.nbcnews.com

(Stein did well enough to help Russia achieve its aims. Her vote totals in the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan were all greater than Clinton's margin of defeat, and arguably denied Clinton an Electoral College victory.)

I agree with David Corn. We don't know how RFK Jr will affect the coming elections, but it is troubling and has significance. Will it be similar to Nader's effect or Ross Perot?

The Nader effect was clearer. In 2000, running on the Green Party ticket, he pulled in 22,198 votes in New Hampshire, more than three times the 7,211 vote lead George W. Bush had over Gore. In Florida, where Bush edged out Gore by 537 votes, Nader bagged 97,488. While impossible to prove, it is a reasonable hypothesis that had Nader not been on the ballot, Gore, a noted environmentalist, would have picked up enough of those Nader votes to win. (Also complicating that election was ultra-conservative commentator Pat Buchanan’s Reform Party; his vote total in Florida was boosted by a poorly designed ballot in Palm Beach County that likely cost Gore more than 2,000 votes.) Had Gore triumphed in 2000, you can imagine the United States taking vigorous steps to address climate change—which President George W. Bush did not—and avoiding the catastrophic invasion of Iraq that yielded the deaths of more than 4,000 American troops and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians. In 2000, RFK Jr. was right.

 

[MT15]

He’s being sponsored by Trump folks, MAGA operatives are running his campaign. They clearly think he will siphon from Biden, and his choice for VP is aimed to do just that. (I would be willing to bet good money that he didn’t choose her - she was chosen to discourage anti-vax MAGA from voting for him and to appeal to younger hard left types.)

We will just have to hope that these hard left folks will wise up to what a horrible person he is and how loony he is before the election. He’s just as bad a person as Trump, maybe worse.

 

[LA - L.A.]

I think the reason he chose Nicole Shanahan is because he needs millions of dollars in a hurry to fund his efforts to get on state ballots. He's only on the ballot in about 4 states at this time. Over half the states require third party candidates to declare a running mate before they can collect the signatures they need to get on the ballot. He's quickly running out of time.

His campaign is being poorly managed, because he should have picked a VP running mate at least two months ago. There was no consistent political similarity or public appeal between the people on his short list of potential running mates. The only consistency was famous or lots of cash. It actually looks like Nicole bought her way onto the ticket by paying for his Superbowl ad, so it might actuall be that she chose JFK Jr and not the other way around.

I think going with Nicole is a lot more about immediate cash needs than it is any long term campaign strategy. I don't think she's going to hold up well to scrutiny now that she'll be a target of both parties. There's a lot that potential Trump voters aren't going to like about her and there's a lot that potential Biden voters aren't going to like about her. The opposite is also true.

I don't think picking her is going to substantially change the dynamics of how many votes JFK Jr. gets and who those votes are taken from. I think most of the people who vote for JFK Jr. will be people that wouldn't have voted for either Biden or Trump.

I know someone who has donated to JFK Jr. and will vote for him. She isn't a hard or extreme left or right person. A significant percentage of RFK Jr. votes will probably come from angry moderate/centrist voters as a protest vote against having to choose between Biden and Trump again.

JFK Jr's biggest challenge is getting on the ballots in enough states to have a chance at winning enough Electoral College votes to actually win the election. If he doesn't do that, he's probably not going to get enough votes in any state to swing that state's election from one candidate to the other.

 

[MT15]

 

[Optimus Prime]

….Whatever Shanahan’s other virtues, the most important reason for her selection is that she is worth a fortune as the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who ranks as the 10th richest person in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Their 2023 divorce settlement is confidential, but the Wall Street Journal reported that she was seeking more than $1 billion.

Now that Shanahan is on the ticket with Kennedy, campaign finance law allows her to pour unlimited amounts of money into his campaign — something he badly needs.

His campaign treasury is running low, with just over $5 million cash on hand reported in its latest federal filing, and qualifying for a spot on state ballots across the country is an expensive proposition. Candidates must have the resources to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures.


So far, Kennedy, who is polling in the low double digits nationally, has only made it onto only one ballot: Utah’s.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing him of violating the law by relying upon a supposedly independent super PAC to do the legwork for his campaign.


Shanahan was already a major donor to that super PAC, American Values 2024. She chipped in $4 million to help pay for a bizarre 30-second Super Bowl spot that manipulated footage from a famous ad that his uncle John F. Kennedy had run during the 1960 campaign……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/27/rfk-jr-running-mate-nicole-shanahan-money-vice-president/

 

[J-DONK]

He’s being sponsored by Trump folks, MAGA operatives are running his campaign. They clearly think he will siphon from Biden, and his choice for VP is aimed to do just that. (I would be willing to bet good money that he didn’t choose her - she was chosen to discourage anti-vax MAGA from voting for him and to appeal to younger hard left types.)

We will just have to hope that these hard left folks will wise up to what a horrible person he is and how loony he is before the election. He’s just as bad a person as Trump, maybe worse.

Trump first trial starts in April, one other question is how does RFK do vs random Trump appointed Republican? How many votes does he take in that situation?

 

[MT15]

Trump first trial starts in April, one other question is how does RFK do vs random Trump appointed Republican? How many votes does he take in that situation?

let’s see how many states he can qualify for the ballot. He’s had some difficulties so far.

 

[MT15]

Well, this is concerning. Her stance is superficial and seems to be based on personal experience rather than data. You can argue that IVF is too expensive and that insurance should cover it, but it does work and to call it a lie is just crazy. Some of the stuff she is supporting seems to be faddish and not science-based also.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/28/robert-f-kennedy-vice-president-nicole-shanahan-ivf-00149523

 

[bird]

Well, this is concerning. Her stance is superficial and seems to be based on personal experience rather than data. You can argue that IVF is too expensive and that insurance should cover it, but it does work and to call it a lie is just crazy. Some of the stuff she is supporting seems to be faddish and not science-based also.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/28/robert-f-kennedy-vice-president-nicole-shanahan-ivf-00149523

Faddish and not science-based? Now, that is surprising. Or not.

(Btw, I tried to reply, goofed it up and ended up with a mess. Oh, well)

 

[MT15]

Ouch….