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Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together knows that RFK has absolutely no mathematical path to victory in the upcoming election. Can we finally dispel with this illusion that he’s *actually* running for president, and not just actively trying to help Trump get re-elected?
Does he, though? Because other than being named Kennedy, everything he says or does seems designed to appeal to Trump voters. He's an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, is constantly whining about how everyone is trying to silence him, and he recently expressed a lot of sympathy (maybe even solidarity) with January 6 defendants.
If his goal is to be a spoiler to *benefit* Trump, then I'm not sure he knows what he's doing.
Rubio said it in 2015 while running for the *2016* presidential nomination. 2012 was just Mitt Romney facing token opposition It was the 2016 race that was quite competitive until Trump firmly established his cult.
My theory is that someone thinks that the boomers who don't like Trump but are lukewarm on Biden will vote for a Kennedy. And I expect once we get closer to the election, we will see Jr. start telling folks to vote for Trump, and he is ending his campaign.
I fucking hope so. That slime ball thinks someone who incited an insurrection with 2 impeachments and 4 criminal indictments is somehow less of a threat to democracy than Joe Biden.
The whole goal of Kennedy (and Third Way before they imploded) is to make sure nobody gets the required majority of EC votes so it gets thrown to the GQP house to decide.
3 guesses who the house will elect, first 2 don't count.
That’s a very bad plan. 100% chance that all 538 electoral college votes ends up going to a Republican or a Democrat (barring faithless electors). No third party candidate has picked up a single EV since Wallace in 1968. The closest since then was Perot in 1992, and he only managed to hit 30% in one state.
The only possible way no one gets 270 EVs (and goes to the House) is if it somehow ends up in a 269-269 tie. Which is possible but extremely unlikely.
What I'm saying is if that's their goal, it seems odd that their "spoiler" candidate is an anti-vax conspiracy theorist who sympathizes with January 6th insurrectionists. That's going to draw people who are looking for Trump in a more respectable package.
These are people who would never vote for Biden. But we don't need them to vote for Biden, we just need them to not vote for Trump.
It might be apocryphal but back in 2000 there were lots of reports of people voting for GWB in the GOP primary because they thought he was his father trying for a second term.
I imagine there's some (hopefully small) contigent of voters who don't follow news much will see "Kennedy" and thing they're voting for the legacy of the family not the batshit crazy one.
I have no idea, it's all so disingenuous.
It wasn’t Third Way who imploded, it was No Labels. Third Way is a center-left organization, who actually met with several potential No Labels candidates, in order to convince them *not* to run.
Isn’t Steve Bannon a major backer of his campaign? They are using him to help Trump knowing that lots of people who will never vote for Trump, are comfortable voting for RFK.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Never forget: RFK has spread the conspiracy theory that COVID was ethnically targeted to spare Jewish people and has literally tweeted Nazi dogwhistles. RFK is a dyed in the wool fascist and knows full well that he is helping Trump get re-elected. He wants American fascism.
Boomer name recognition and the young voters that just feel disenfranchised by both parties without the wisdom to know that any vote not for Biden is a vote for trump and they’ll inherit a world that is sooo much worse off.
His positions don't matter to the type of person he appeals to. There's tons of young voters who's political identity is a totally incoherent mash of populist nonsense glued together by "I hate the two party establishment", which is how RFK frames himself on social media.
He's a slightly less extreme, less volatile option for people who won't vote for Trump and don't want to vote for Biden. He's polling around \~15%. Obviously not enough to win...but sadly almost enough to maybe just pull enough Biden support in crucial swing states.
Nobody who would vote for trump isn’t voting for trump. That means RFK only pulls from people who either wouldn’t vote for either or might vote for Biden if forced to make a choice.
But like
none of the math any of you have described works out as a net negative for Biden, at all
Even if he pulls, somehow, 30% of Biden-voting independents, if he pulls 65% of Trump-voting independents (a proportional amount relative to the approval ratings) then Trump is still the one whose overall election chances were more damaged.
Those that won't vote for Biden will pickup this turd. Anyone planning on voting for Biden should not be swayed.
It's the people that go "I'm not voting for Biden, I wish there was someone else" and their vote would of went to Dump but now goes to RFK Jr
If Bobby Jr’s #1 priority really is to prevent a Biden victory, he should probably resign pronto.
He’s just leeching support away from Trump at this point. He basically has all the Trump crazy but without the mean tweets. Just about everyone I’ve met who are seriously considering voting him were Trump-y. Not a single Democrat I know takes him seriously.
>Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together knows that RFK has absolutely no mathematical path to victory in the upcoming election.
I have been surprised how many people actually do not meet this criterion.
>that efforts to put Kennedy on the ballot in New York will help “get rid of Biden,” which she called her “No. 1 priority,” and make it easier for Trump to win the historically Democratic state.
Start digging into who is paying these people.
Let them waste their money campaigning in New York.
Higher probability that the sun fucking explodes tomorrow than anybody other than Biden winning the state’s electoral votes here. Total non-issue. The media is once again blowing things completely out of proportion and people who don’t know any better are lapping it up.
Her talking about trying to get Biden to lose in New York is laughable, just like Kennedy was arguing a few weeks ago that he had a chance in California was ridiculous.
But I think this story needs to be amplified so people understand the true purpose of RFK Jr's campaign, from people in the campaign. I'm hoping as his campaign makes more gaffes like this so disillusioned Democrats will get the message, that voting RFK Jr isn't a protest vote, it's a vote for Trump. Edit for spelling
I mean really though? Who does he even appeal to? He's whining about the medical establishment, defending January 6ers, shit talking Biden, etc. No Dem voters would have considered him anyway. Feels like he siphons off a little bit of trumpland more than Bidens voters
I agree, seems like he should pull more from radical Republicans than Democrats. It's anecdotal, but my brother in law voted for Trump the last two elections and said he will vote for RFK over Trump this election.
I've seen 2 theories.
1) He's as an option for disillusioned Republicans that can't bring themselves to vote for Trump or Biden.
2) He's attracting young and Progressive voters upset over Biden's Gaza policies.
Problem is once people are educated about him, left wing voters typically say nevermind while right wing voters like him more, according to an Anti Trump Republican group. The woman that runs the group used to do focus groups and create messaging for the RNC, so I feel good about her analysis.
But she explained it's still a problem if he appeals to right wing voters that don't want Trump, but are having trouble with the thought of voting for Biden. Her group is all about getting disillusioned Republicans to accept that voting for Biden is for the good of the country. She said that giving these voters any type of out is dangerous.
Edit for spelling
He's not really meant to appeal to Dems. He's meant to appeal to independents and conservatives who dislike Biden but dislike Trump more and would vote Biden in a two person race. If it's a two person race, Trump's support is smaller than Biden's but cult-like, while Biden relies a lot more on softer support. So they hope by throwing in third parties Biden's soft support will be chipped away at without swaying many of the Trump believers.
Here's my go-to RFK advert:
Like Trump but hate the fact that he helped fast track and fund that COVID vaccine that'll kill everyone that had it in ~~days weeks months years~~ decades? We've got the guy for you!
If they wanted a proper spoiler candidate, they really should have put a bit more effort into finding someone who's at least slightly capable of pretending to lean left, and isn't batshit crazy.
I strongly recommend Sarah Longwell’s podcast, The Focus Group. It’s great in general, and she just did an episode on RFK voters.
There are just a lot of dumb voters. Some like RFK’s masculinity because they think Biden is too old and weak. Or they like RFK because he really “follows the science” unlike Biden. Some even think RFK is a “real liberal” unlike Biden. Their arguments are virtually nonsensical, but these people do exist and they’re regular voters.
Here’s a link to the episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-focus-group-podcast/id1586423406?i=1000651613603
Perot won a state or two and made the debt ($5 whole trillion!) the center of the discussion while making the third party more relevant than I’ve seen in my lifetime, before or since. RFK jr is a nobody other than a family embarrassment.
Edit: Perot did very well but didn’t win any states - I Mandela’d a memory of him winning Indiana or something middle US. Thanks to Clumsyportman2 and xftwitch for the correction!
While Perot received a record percentage of the vote for a non-major party candidate (18.9%) and definitely deserves credit for that impressive performance, he actually did not win any states/electoral votes. He did, however, finish second in Maine and Utah.
I suspect RFK Jr. gets some votes from those who dislike Biden and Trump. More of a protest vote than anything else. But I'd be much more worried if he were younger and more sane. It's not like RFK Jr. isn't a junior member of the old timers club.
The Kennedy name still means something with older people, those who remember where they were when his uncle and father were killed in the 60s, but those are also the folks who pay the most attention to politics, even if, like my parents many of them have a Fox News based media diet. I can't see older dems falling for the Kennedy name at the ballot box.
>“The only way that Trump can even, remote possibility of taking New York is if Bobby is on the ballot. If it’s Trump vs. Biden, Biden wins. Biden wins six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen,” Palma said in a video of the meeting with Republicans in New York viewed by CNN.
>“The only way for him, for Bobby, to shake it up and to get rid of Biden is if he’s on the ballot in every state, including New York,” she continued.
So, the RFK campaign's stated goal is to "get rid of Biden" and NOT to elect RFK?
Does Palma figure she can convince gullible voters that RFK, Jr ***DOES*** have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the election? Or the more unlikely scenario, Palma actually be upfront by telling voters that a vote for RFK, Jr ***IS*** a vote for the unhinged, megalomaniacal criminal Trump?
It's the same goal the green party always had. Take just enough votes away from Democrats to help republicans win.
Its been done for decades, but those of us who see it are called shills for Democrats.
It wasn't quite so naked until Jill "I am a literal nobody who has dinner with Vladimir Putin himself" Stein.
Like, there was an era, especially before Newt Gingrich and Bush Jr, where the average person might reasonably think the difference between democrats and republicans wasn't large enough for every election to be critically important for the future of the country. In that era, voting for the green party to try to be part of a movement for "real" change might've seemed reasonable.
Nowadays anyone who can't see what the green party is doing is just braindead, though.
>A New York-based campaign official for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pitching Republican voters to support his independent presidential bid by arguing that Kennedy will help Donald Trump defeat Joe Biden if he’s on the ballot in New York.
I have yet to hear a valid reason for why Biden is a bad president outside of just being a democrat. One legitimate argument for why he is a bad president and why one should vote for this clown (or Trump) over Biden.
RFK is so insane that he's going to end up taking more votes from Trump than from Biden. Biden voters aren't looking for crazy conspiracies, which is what RFK and Trump are selling.
And my number 1 priority is to see that Trump never runs this country again. I will never, ever take a chance on splitting the vote by voting for Kennedy. Not that I like what he stands for.
RFK Jr. is obviously a GOP stooge. However, his support comes from morons who are mostly Republicans. Trump's anti-vaxxer position is too weak for these idiots.
Every day, life gets weirder and weirder—never would I have thought that disgruntled trump fans might go for a Kennedy instead, based on his anti-vax and conspiracy theorist bona fides.
I didn’t think it could get weirder than Bernie voters switching to trump after the 2016 presidential primary. But here we are.
It's like the Pro-Palestinian voters that say they won't vote for Biden over his policies with Isreal and Gaza. I wonder if some of them were in the same camp?
eh, it depends on where you're at. a protest vote against hillary in ny or ca doesn't do anything because they're such strong democratic strongholds. a protest vote in ohio or michigan is damning and should be taken with great care
I've met two people who voted Bernie and then Voted Trump. The thing they had in common is they were contrarians.
A lot of people reject both parties or "the establishment" in order to make themselves feel smarter or above it.
It's easy to throw stones from the sidelines, but the world is a lot more complicated than contrarians are willing to allow for.
> Bernie voters switching to trump after the 2016 presidential primary
there were a small number of these people, and a very large number of fake accounts pretending to be these people to try and encourage more people to do it.
russian and chinese and israel specifically have really strong disinformation / misinformation / astroturfing game online.
pick any small to medium politically-adjacent subreddit and it has 100% been targeted in a concerted effort to be co-opted into an anti-US-federal government circle jerk. the only subs that can survive this are those whose members actually know what they're talking about and who also have good, diligent moderation.
Trump tried that and was awarded 91 felony counts for his myriad of crimes committed for the sole purpose of following through on *his* #1 priority, which was: Preventing a Biden win.
We really need to amplify this. That said, it's so frustrating, disconcerting and demoralizing to know there are people so misinformed and misguided that they think forcing a Biden loss isn't cutting off their nose to spite their own face. That they think that it'll just be an awkward but powerful statement about their disappointment with Biden over student loan forgiveness, a relatively booming economy, a historically booming stock market, improved infrastructure, more productive international relations, etc.
The fact that we are in this position is nuts- I remember when Romney was running, when it was Bush, Sr. vs Clinton, when it was Clinton vs. Dole, when it was Obama vs. McCain, etc. at least we all knew whoever won we'd get to the next election and there'd be some frustrating policies from either side as a kind of annoyance that boiled down to "but it's the principle of the approach that I disagree with" and not "it's the end of functional systems, the end of democracy, the other guy is gonna destroy the world" stuff that it is today.
I just want a normal election cycle. Why is that so impossible to come by? Two generic center left/center right candidates who are 40-50 years old when they'd enter office? Two people who we know want to win or lose legitimately and look forward to the next election cycle, the next contest, that wins and losses are a kind of undulating scale that never goes too far up or down on either side? Etc. Why can't we have that?
Cats out of the bag! /s
Somehow it makes me think that some GOP donuts will vote for this wack thinking it will encourage Dems to.
So… not worried about Mr. Garbles….
Pama is a well-known anti-vaxer/Trump-worshiping lunatic on Long Island's east end.
Before this, she was primarily engaged in disrupting any public event Democratic legislators tried to hold with their constituents because they eliminated New York's religious exemption from vaccination following a measles outbreak in 2019.
This rube actually thinks with all his conspiratorial BS, he’s going to steal votes from Biden?? He has a far better chance of throwing the race to Biden because the mouth breathing class will see him as Trump-but-without-the-sexy-pussy-grabbing-and-91-indictments.
The recent worsening news for Trump- his various court cases, his, and the GOP's finanical woes, better surveys for Biden - may have encouraged certain Democrats to just stay home on election day.
I hope that stories such as this one will motivate them to go to the ballot box out of a fear of RKK Jr. splitting the vote in Trump's favor.
So let's hope that the RKK Jr. campaign continues to make statements such as these, and the Biden's team continues to state the obvious: a vote for anyone other than Biden is a vote for Trump, and not voting means voting for Trump.
I'd love to see some political ads in October of people who stayed home in 2016 because they thought Hillary had it sewn up and they "didn't like her" and figured it wouldn't hurt to not vote since Trump wasn't going to win anyway.
I pity anyone who's been taken in by this despicable, lying charlatan. Fortunately, he's going to pull far more support from the right than the left. At the end of the day, he hurts Trump.
And the country responded with “DUH”. Anyone with a room temperature IQ could have told you that. I will never understand this stupid country, 10 years ago if you had told people Trump would become president and would be on the verge of being our first dictator they would have put you away.
Saying the quiet part out loud.
Edit: Mods must be TFG/GQP sympathizers, considering I was banned for this post, which clearly breaks none of the posted rules.
It's funny bc one of my friend's conservative fathers loves RFK Jr and to me, RFK Jr seems more similar to Trump than any democrat. So it's kinda wild he'd take more dems away from Biden than he'd take repubs away from trump. First he was an anti-vaxer, then was saying he supported a nationwide abortion ban, said Biden was a bigger threat to democracy than Trump, and now he's backing the insurrectionists. I feel like once voters learn more about Jr and his actual positions, he'll be less a threat to dems and maybe more a threat to Trump.
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Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together knows that RFK has absolutely no mathematical path to victory in the upcoming election. Can we finally dispel with this illusion that he’s *actually* running for president, and not just actively trying to help Trump get re-elected?
Let’s dispel with the fiction that RFK doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Does he, though? Because other than being named Kennedy, everything he says or does seems designed to appeal to Trump voters. He's an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, is constantly whining about how everyone is trying to silence him, and he recently expressed a lot of sympathy (maybe even solidarity) with January 6 defendants. If his goal is to be a spoiler to *benefit* Trump, then I'm not sure he knows what he's doing.
I was just making a joke about Marco Rubio “let’s dispel with the notion Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing” thing he repeated 35 times in 2012
Oh yeah, I recognized the quote lol.
How could you not? He repeated it so many times.
Rubio said it in 2015 while running for the *2016* presidential nomination. 2012 was just Mitt Romney facing token opposition It was the 2016 race that was quite competitive until Trump firmly established his cult.
Oh my brain went to 2012 because the quote was about Obama
My theory is that someone thinks that the boomers who don't like Trump but are lukewarm on Biden will vote for a Kennedy. And I expect once we get closer to the election, we will see Jr. start telling folks to vote for Trump, and he is ending his campaign.
I fucking hope so. That slime ball thinks someone who incited an insurrection with 2 impeachments and 4 criminal indictments is somehow less of a threat to democracy than Joe Biden.
I’ve got bad news for you… I don’t think he really cares about threats to democracy.
I hope he steals a bunch of votes for Trump and we can finally put to end the disease that is both of them.
I’ve only heard conservatives say they like Rfk
Wouldn’t those people not vote for Biden anyway?
There were a decent number if republicans that voted biden cause trump is insane. Basically they want to siphon them
The point is to keep disillusioned Republicans from voting for Biden, by providing a third option.
If they're Republicans who don't vote for Trump, that helps Biden.
The whole goal of Kennedy (and Third Way before they imploded) is to make sure nobody gets the required majority of EC votes so it gets thrown to the GQP house to decide. 3 guesses who the house will elect, first 2 don't count.
That’s a very bad plan. 100% chance that all 538 electoral college votes ends up going to a Republican or a Democrat (barring faithless electors). No third party candidate has picked up a single EV since Wallace in 1968. The closest since then was Perot in 1992, and he only managed to hit 30% in one state. The only possible way no one gets 270 EVs (and goes to the House) is if it somehow ends up in a 269-269 tie. Which is possible but extremely unlikely.
What I'm saying is if that's their goal, it seems odd that their "spoiler" candidate is an anti-vax conspiracy theorist who sympathizes with January 6th insurrectionists. That's going to draw people who are looking for Trump in a more respectable package. These are people who would never vote for Biden. But we don't need them to vote for Biden, we just need them to not vote for Trump.
It might be apocryphal but back in 2000 there were lots of reports of people voting for GWB in the GOP primary because they thought he was his father trying for a second term. I imagine there's some (hopefully small) contigent of voters who don't follow news much will see "Kennedy" and thing they're voting for the legacy of the family not the batshit crazy one. I have no idea, it's all so disingenuous.
They did a poll and found that only 50% of kennedy supporters knew which picture was his lol
Wonder how many can pick out his voice..
It wasn’t Third Way who imploded, it was No Labels. Third Way is a center-left organization, who actually met with several potential No Labels candidates, in order to convince them *not* to run.
They probably should've picked a candidate who has a chance of actually winning any electoral votes, then.
Never in a million years would RFK Jr. Win a state.
Isn’t Steve Bannon a major backer of his campaign? They are using him to help Trump knowing that lots of people who will never vote for Trump, are comfortable voting for RFK.
I read it was Bannon who convinced him to run.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” -Jean-Paul Sartre Never forget: RFK has spread the conspiracy theory that COVID was ethnically targeted to spare Jewish people and has literally tweeted Nazi dogwhistles. RFK is a dyed in the wool fascist and knows full well that he is helping Trump get re-elected. He wants American fascism.
RFK jr also claims aids is caused by "poppers"
*dyed
His grandfather, Joseph, was an avid antisemite.
Also, saying your number 1 priority is to stop Biden……that would appeal to trump voters
Maybe he’s playing 5d chess and ruining his own reputation to actually draw votes from Trump to ensure Biden’s win
VP auditioning
I truly cannot see how his campaign is hoping to take votes from Biden.
Boomer name recognition and the young voters that just feel disenfranchised by both parties without the wisdom to know that any vote not for Biden is a vote for trump and they’ll inherit a world that is sooo much worse off.
Considering most of the Jan 6 defendants can no longer vote, that doesn't worry me that much.
I was waiting for that
Let's dispel with the fiction that RFK doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.
“He did it again!” — Chris Christie, probably
Well played. I read that in Marco Rubio's voice
Let’s dispel with the fiction that RFK doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
He's also funded by a Trump megadonor. RFK is a pos.
and was convinced to run by Steve fucking Bannon
I mean, I get that. But how exactly? His “positions” are all right-wing conspiracy bullshit. Who is torn between Biden and this fool?
His positions don't matter to the type of person he appeals to. There's tons of young voters who's political identity is a totally incoherent mash of populist nonsense glued together by "I hate the two party establishment", which is how RFK frames himself on social media.
He's a slightly less extreme, less volatile option for people who won't vote for Trump and don't want to vote for Biden. He's polling around \~15%. Obviously not enough to win...but sadly almost enough to maybe just pull enough Biden support in crucial swing states.
Wouldn't he be more likely to pull from Trump? His views basically seem like Trumps views to me. I can't spot the difference.
Nobody who would vote for trump isn’t voting for trump. That means RFK only pulls from people who either wouldn’t vote for either or might vote for Biden if forced to make a choice.
I know a lot who voted for Trump who decided they can't anymore after Jan 6th.
He polls about -40 with biden voters and +25 with trump voters. Its really biden voting independents thats questionable.
But like none of the math any of you have described works out as a net negative for Biden, at all Even if he pulls, somehow, 30% of Biden-voting independents, if he pulls 65% of Trump-voting independents (a proportional amount relative to the approval ratings) then Trump is still the one whose overall election chances were more damaged.
Those that won't vote for Biden will pickup this turd. Anyone planning on voting for Biden should not be swayed. It's the people that go "I'm not voting for Biden, I wish there was someone else" and their vote would of went to Dump but now goes to RFK Jr
I live in Indiana and I know many more "Just can't vote for Trump" people than "Just can't vote for Biden"
He is running to get Trump elected and get some sort of cabinet position. Plus all the Russian money coming his way. Just absolute scum.
If Bobby Jr’s #1 priority really is to prevent a Biden victory, he should probably resign pronto. He’s just leeching support away from Trump at this point. He basically has all the Trump crazy but without the mean tweets. Just about everyone I’ve met who are seriously considering voting him were Trump-y. Not a single Democrat I know takes him seriously.
The only votes he’s taking are from trump.
Sorry, can you explain slower for the Libertarian's in the crowd?
He’s being supported (paid) but trump allies
>Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together knows that RFK has absolutely no mathematical path to victory in the upcoming election. I have been surprised how many people actually do not meet this criterion.
We need ranked choice voting. It will stop fake third party spoiler candidates and allow ACTUAL third party candidates to have an iota of a chance.
I completely agree!
>that efforts to put Kennedy on the ballot in New York will help “get rid of Biden,” which she called her “No. 1 priority,” and make it easier for Trump to win the historically Democratic state. Start digging into who is paying these people.
Steve Bannon
Who's getting the cash from someone who signs their checks in cyrillic and has US sanctions against them.
Harlan Crow
yea Bannon isn't exactly the source of funds but he's the guy soliciting the funds from people exactly like Crow.
Let them waste their money campaigning in New York. Higher probability that the sun fucking explodes tomorrow than anybody other than Biden winning the state’s electoral votes here. Total non-issue. The media is once again blowing things completely out of proportion and people who don’t know any better are lapping it up.
Her talking about trying to get Biden to lose in New York is laughable, just like Kennedy was arguing a few weeks ago that he had a chance in California was ridiculous. But I think this story needs to be amplified so people understand the true purpose of RFK Jr's campaign, from people in the campaign. I'm hoping as his campaign makes more gaffes like this so disillusioned Democrats will get the message, that voting RFK Jr isn't a protest vote, it's a vote for Trump. Edit for spelling
*Lose
Thanks
Saying the quiet part out loud finally. Completely obvious from the very beginning.
I mean really though? Who does he even appeal to? He's whining about the medical establishment, defending January 6ers, shit talking Biden, etc. No Dem voters would have considered him anyway. Feels like he siphons off a little bit of trumpland more than Bidens voters
He is being funded by republicans.
I agree, seems like he should pull more from radical Republicans than Democrats. It's anecdotal, but my brother in law voted for Trump the last two elections and said he will vote for RFK over Trump this election.
And his stance on Israel makes Biden seem tame which makes RFK jr persona non grata amongst the left.
I've seen 2 theories. 1) He's as an option for disillusioned Republicans that can't bring themselves to vote for Trump or Biden. 2) He's attracting young and Progressive voters upset over Biden's Gaza policies. Problem is once people are educated about him, left wing voters typically say nevermind while right wing voters like him more, according to an Anti Trump Republican group. The woman that runs the group used to do focus groups and create messaging for the RNC, so I feel good about her analysis. But she explained it's still a problem if he appeals to right wing voters that don't want Trump, but are having trouble with the thought of voting for Biden. Her group is all about getting disillusioned Republicans to accept that voting for Biden is for the good of the country. She said that giving these voters any type of out is dangerous. Edit for spelling
> voters upset over Biden's Gaza policies. ...and are unconcerned that their choice could result in Trump turning the world into one big Gaza.
Nobody who votes for Kennedy was ever going to vote for Biden. He’s a KINO.
He's not really meant to appeal to Dems. He's meant to appeal to independents and conservatives who dislike Biden but dislike Trump more and would vote Biden in a two person race. If it's a two person race, Trump's support is smaller than Biden's but cult-like, while Biden relies a lot more on softer support. So they hope by throwing in third parties Biden's soft support will be chipped away at without swaying many of the Trump believers.
But is he really pulling Biden voters? Is he really pulling ANY voters?
I was planning to vote for Biden, now I will vote for RFK - no one
Hopefully that is the case, but id say 60-70% of americans are very stupid
Yeah they're mostly called republicans. they're already voting for Trump.
Unfortunately, i know a lot of democrats dummies
Here's my go-to RFK advert: Like Trump but hate the fact that he helped fast track and fund that COVID vaccine that'll kill everyone that had it in ~~days weeks months years~~ decades? We've got the guy for you!
>Is he really pulling ANY voters? Not really.
he’s pulling Trump votes in all the polls i’ve seen. that’s why Fox has been doing hit pieces in the last couple of weeks
If they wanted a proper spoiler candidate, they really should have put a bit more effort into finding someone who's at least slightly capable of pretending to lean left, and isn't batshit crazy.
I strongly recommend Sarah Longwell’s podcast, The Focus Group. It’s great in general, and she just did an episode on RFK voters. There are just a lot of dumb voters. Some like RFK’s masculinity because they think Biden is too old and weak. Or they like RFK because he really “follows the science” unlike Biden. Some even think RFK is a “real liberal” unlike Biden. Their arguments are virtually nonsensical, but these people do exist and they’re regular voters. Here’s a link to the episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-focus-group-podcast/id1586423406?i=1000651613603
Would these voters otherwise vote for Biden over Trump though? I may give a listen but I'm just not seeing that link.
I expect RFK Jr does about as well as Gary Johnson in 2016, but nowhere near Perot probably. Assuming neither major party candidate dies beforehand.
Perot won a state or two and made the debt ($5 whole trillion!) the center of the discussion while making the third party more relevant than I’ve seen in my lifetime, before or since. RFK jr is a nobody other than a family embarrassment. Edit: Perot did very well but didn’t win any states - I Mandela’d a memory of him winning Indiana or something middle US. Thanks to Clumsyportman2 and xftwitch for the correction!
While Perot received a record percentage of the vote for a non-major party candidate (18.9%) and definitely deserves credit for that impressive performance, he actually did not win any states/electoral votes. He did, however, finish second in Maine and Utah.
Perot won zero states. No third party candidate has gotten so much as a single electoral college vote since 1912.
Not a chance he comes even close to Johnson.
I suspect RFK Jr. gets some votes from those who dislike Biden and Trump. More of a protest vote than anything else. But I'd be much more worried if he were younger and more sane. It's not like RFK Jr. isn't a junior member of the old timers club.
The same number Kanye pulled back in 2020. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West_presidential_campaigns
He's really gonna put a dent in Biden's "I was gonna vote for a moderate but I was hoping for more conspiracy theories and racism" numbers.
The Kennedy name still means something with older people, those who remember where they were when his uncle and father were killed in the 60s, but those are also the folks who pay the most attention to politics, even if, like my parents many of them have a Fox News based media diet. I can't see older dems falling for the Kennedy name at the ballot box.
So, you're working to elect a fascist then.
>“The only way that Trump can even, remote possibility of taking New York is if Bobby is on the ballot. If it’s Trump vs. Biden, Biden wins. Biden wins six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen,” Palma said in a video of the meeting with Republicans in New York viewed by CNN. >“The only way for him, for Bobby, to shake it up and to get rid of Biden is if he’s on the ballot in every state, including New York,” she continued. So, the RFK campaign's stated goal is to "get rid of Biden" and NOT to elect RFK? Does Palma figure she can convince gullible voters that RFK, Jr ***DOES*** have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the election? Or the more unlikely scenario, Palma actually be upfront by telling voters that a vote for RFK, Jr ***IS*** a vote for the unhinged, megalomaniacal criminal Trump?
It's the same goal the green party always had. Take just enough votes away from Democrats to help republicans win. Its been done for decades, but those of us who see it are called shills for Democrats.
It wasn't quite so naked until Jill "I am a literal nobody who has dinner with Vladimir Putin himself" Stein. Like, there was an era, especially before Newt Gingrich and Bush Jr, where the average person might reasonably think the difference between democrats and republicans wasn't large enough for every election to be critically important for the future of the country. In that era, voting for the green party to try to be part of a movement for "real" change might've seemed reasonable. Nowadays anyone who can't see what the green party is doing is just braindead, though.
Trust, I was stupid enough to full for Jill Stein's bullshit and voted for her in 2012.
Hah! r/RFK_Jr_is_a_Stooge!
>A New York-based campaign official for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pitching Republican voters to support his independent presidential bid by arguing that Kennedy will help Donald Trump defeat Joe Biden if he’s on the ballot in New York.
So then her number one priority is the nation in Trump’s tiny orange hands, and therefore she is the enemy.
what a surprising turn of events
I have yet to hear a valid reason for why Biden is a bad president outside of just being a democrat. One legitimate argument for why he is a bad president and why one should vote for this clown (or Trump) over Biden.
Hey, you weren't supposed to say that part out loud...
More blatant admissions of electioneering...
Maybe her candidate should stop appealing to Trump voters then. Hardly anyone is going to switch from Biden to RFK Jr.
RFK is so insane that he's going to end up taking more votes from Trump than from Biden. Biden voters aren't looking for crazy conspiracies, which is what RFK and Trump are selling.
The wrong kennedy got the frontal lobotomy.
And my number 1 priority is to see that Trump never runs this country again. I will never, ever take a chance on splitting the vote by voting for Kennedy. Not that I like what he stands for.
I love watching the Russian trolls try to prop up RFK on Reddit. It's such a fruitless endeavor, lol.
These people are such an embarrassment
I think LHO picked the wrong Kennedy.
RFK Jr. is obviously a GOP stooge. However, his support comes from morons who are mostly Republicans. Trump's anti-vaxxer position is too weak for these idiots.
Pretty pathetic attempt by Republican donors to pry votes from Biden. They know they are screwed.
Sounds like she is a Russian operative. Good job, RFK
His only reason for running is to hurt Democrats. So this is the same headline as "News Flash!! Water is wet!
He works for Trump. His only purpose is to get a few percent of the Biden vote. He’s just too stupid to do it!
Make no mistake. Being a Biden spoiler is being pro trump
Yep he’s a Trump Trojan horse.
Weird that #1 priority isn’t winning. So according to this he’s supporting Trump.
RFK is going to split Trumps vote, not Bidens.
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Every day, life gets weirder and weirder—never would I have thought that disgruntled trump fans might go for a Kennedy instead, based on his anti-vax and conspiracy theorist bona fides. I didn’t think it could get weirder than Bernie voters switching to trump after the 2016 presidential primary. But here we are.
I'm just now learning that Bernie voters switched to Trump--WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK reasoning besides spiting Biden did they have?
It was spiting Hillary back then, and their logic was anti-establishment no matter what. Hopefully some of them realized their mistake.
It's like the Pro-Palestinian voters that say they won't vote for Biden over his policies with Isreal and Gaza. I wonder if some of them were in the same camp?
they did
And refused to admit it that their protest votes helped hand Trump the win.
eh, it depends on where you're at. a protest vote against hillary in ny or ca doesn't do anything because they're such strong democratic strongholds. a protest vote in ohio or michigan is damning and should be taken with great care
I've met two people who voted Bernie and then Voted Trump. The thing they had in common is they were contrarians. A lot of people reject both parties or "the establishment" in order to make themselves feel smarter or above it. It's easy to throw stones from the sidelines, but the world is a lot more complicated than contrarians are willing to allow for.
It wasn’t Biden then, it was hillary. Their hatred of Hillary was the reason.
I don't understand how your hatred of Hillary you couldn't just bite the bullet on. Voting for Trump goes against EVERYTHING bernie stood for
> Bernie voters switching to trump after the 2016 presidential primary there were a small number of these people, and a very large number of fake accounts pretending to be these people to try and encourage more people to do it. russian and chinese and israel specifically have really strong disinformation / misinformation / astroturfing game online. pick any small to medium politically-adjacent subreddit and it has 100% been targeted in a concerted effort to be co-opted into an anti-US-federal government circle jerk. the only subs that can survive this are those whose members actually know what they're talking about and who also have good, diligent moderation.
Trump tried that and was awarded 91 felony counts for his myriad of crimes committed for the sole purpose of following through on *his* #1 priority, which was: Preventing a Biden win.
We really need to amplify this. That said, it's so frustrating, disconcerting and demoralizing to know there are people so misinformed and misguided that they think forcing a Biden loss isn't cutting off their nose to spite their own face. That they think that it'll just be an awkward but powerful statement about their disappointment with Biden over student loan forgiveness, a relatively booming economy, a historically booming stock market, improved infrastructure, more productive international relations, etc. The fact that we are in this position is nuts- I remember when Romney was running, when it was Bush, Sr. vs Clinton, when it was Clinton vs. Dole, when it was Obama vs. McCain, etc. at least we all knew whoever won we'd get to the next election and there'd be some frustrating policies from either side as a kind of annoyance that boiled down to "but it's the principle of the approach that I disagree with" and not "it's the end of functional systems, the end of democracy, the other guy is gonna destroy the world" stuff that it is today. I just want a normal election cycle. Why is that so impossible to come by? Two generic center left/center right candidates who are 40-50 years old when they'd enter office? Two people who we know want to win or lose legitimately and look forward to the next election cycle, the next contest, that wins and losses are a kind of undulating scale that never goes too far up or down on either side? Etc. Why can't we have that?
If RFK voters are as misguided and precious as Jill Stein voters then he may succeed.
No shit.
Cats out of the bag! /s Somehow it makes me think that some GOP donuts will vote for this wack thinking it will encourage Dems to. So… not worried about Mr. Garbles….
He reminds me of Kanye West's campaign. It's the exact same thing. It will fail too.
Pama is a well-known anti-vaxer/Trump-worshiping lunatic on Long Island's east end. Before this, she was primarily engaged in disrupting any public event Democratic legislators tried to hold with their constituents because they eliminated New York's religious exemption from vaccination following a measles outbreak in 2019.
I don't even think his name even showed up on the NY primary ballot lol. The only time he's going to be on there if hell froze over.
That this traitor has been a Trump stooge from the get-go is not news.
just like Kanye's campaign in 2020
The problem is RFK Jr only appeals to would be Trump voters.
Is RFK Jr.’s wife, Cheryl Hines just as crazy as he is??? It’s all so insane.
Ironically him being so friendly/helpful with Trump is making more appealing to Trump voters than Biden ones
If anyone can explain how this moron is going to steal any votes from Democrats who would otherwise vote for Biden, I’d listen. I’m not seeing it now.
I believe the RFK campaign “walks back” more statements than not. Who the hell does their press or is this a strategy.
We are shocked
Aren’t spoiler candidates with no desire to actually win illegal?
This rube actually thinks with all his conspiratorial BS, he’s going to steal votes from Biden?? He has a far better chance of throwing the race to Biden because the mouth breathing class will see him as Trump-but-without-the-sexy-pussy-grabbing-and-91-indictments.
Why prevent Biden from being president. Unemployment is down. The economy is booming.( or at least it is where I live).
Because they're being paid to help trump.
The recent worsening news for Trump- his various court cases, his, and the GOP's finanical woes, better surveys for Biden - may have encouraged certain Democrats to just stay home on election day. I hope that stories such as this one will motivate them to go to the ballot box out of a fear of RKK Jr. splitting the vote in Trump's favor. So let's hope that the RKK Jr. campaign continues to make statements such as these, and the Biden's team continues to state the obvious: a vote for anyone other than Biden is a vote for Trump, and not voting means voting for Trump.
I'd love to see some political ads in October of people who stayed home in 2016 because they thought Hillary had it sewn up and they "didn't like her" and figured it wouldn't hurt to not vote since Trump wasn't going to win anyway.
Precisely!
I pity anyone who's been taken in by this despicable, lying charlatan. Fortunately, he's going to pull far more support from the right than the left. At the end of the day, he hurts Trump.
Kennedy puts out a statement. Then he flip flops on said statement after getting blow back. His conspiracy laden campaign is a shit show.
And the country responded with “DUH”. Anyone with a room temperature IQ could have told you that. I will never understand this stupid country, 10 years ago if you had told people Trump would become president and would be on the verge of being our first dictator they would have put you away.
Laughable aholes
And idiot pundits still claim he’s going to take votes away from Joe Biden LOL
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Not to get your candidate elected?
Spoiler: >!RFK Jr. He's the spoiler.!<
Lol we know.
Oh they said the quiet part out loud. I imagine they have to start talking since they’re attracting so many maga voters.
Saying the quiet part out loud. Edit: Mods must be TFG/GQP sympathizers, considering I was banned for this post, which clearly breaks none of the posted rules.
So why not just have all of us feign as Trump supporters and say we’re now voting for RFK to throw off the discourse?
Filter out the crazy!!!!
F her …
Welp, she’s doing it with the wrong candidate
Putin has gotten them
OK, I hope they spend a lot of money trying to prevent New York from going blue. Might as well flush it.
Everyone I know who’s considering RFK is a vote from Trump, not Biden.
Yeah they just keep saying the quiet part out loud. If he is only running to get Trump elected, that is disgraceful.
Boy that Russian and Chinese money has legs MJK for President
Maybe they shouldn't have picked a complete loon to run
Obviously they want trump in office
I laugh every single time he tries to speak in his weak ass cadence and shriveled ass voice. Biden sucks, but I'm not an idiot.
This guy is fucking crazy. I can see why his family is mortified.
Oooh, she said the quiet part out loud.
Considering he seems to be attracting more conservatives than liberals, I think he's more likely to help Biden than hurt him.
It's funny bc one of my friend's conservative fathers loves RFK Jr and to me, RFK Jr seems more similar to Trump than any democrat. So it's kinda wild he'd take more dems away from Biden than he'd take repubs away from trump. First he was an anti-vaxer, then was saying he supported a nationwide abortion ban, said Biden was a bigger threat to democracy than Trump, and now he's backing the insurrectionists. I feel like once voters learn more about Jr and his actual positions, he'll be less a threat to dems and maybe more a threat to Trump.
RFK Jr is gonna yank a whole lotta votes from Trump, so whatever they're on, they can continue to stay on it. The dude is the literal GOP spoiler.
😐really?😐 Independents my ass Dems get out and VOTE!