Dem
51
GOP
49
We are in the portion of the election cycle where third-party candidates are announcing their VP picks. Why now? Part of it is that they don't want to wait until summer, only to get drowned out by the major-party conventions. And part of it is that when your whole campaign is retail politics, it's better to have two candidates running around as opposed to one. But the main reason is that many states won't let third-party candidates on their ballots unless those candidates have a running mate. Ballot deadlines are looming, so choices must be made.
Consequently, Cornel West announced yesterday that his #2 will be Melina Abdullah. She is a Black Lives Matter activist (and co-founder), a big supporter of the "defund the police" movement, and a professor in Cal State LA's Pan-African Studies Department. In other words, West found someone even leftier than he is. All other things being equal, a ticket with two Black candidates might be expected to pick up a few extra votes from Black people here and there. But this ticket is way further left than the majority of Black voters. The target here is definitely the far left, a group that skews very white. And most folks on that part of the political spectrum are all-but-certain to vote third-party anyhow. What we are saying, in other words, is that we don't think the West/Abdullah ticket is going to take many votes away from Joe Biden (and definitely not from Donald Trump). In view of that probable irrelevance, this could well be the last thing we write about West's campaign for weeks or months. Maybe ever.
Meanwhile, when a candidate of any prominence names their running mate, there's usually a bounce in their polling numbers. It may be a dead cat bounce (i.e., temporary), but it usually happens. In the case of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan, however, it has not happened. There are several possible explanations for this. One is that Shanahan simply didn't excite anyone. A second is that her politics or her lack of experience drove as many people FROM the ticket as TO the ticket. But the likeliest explanation is that RFK Jr. has hit his ceiling, and there's nobody else out there he can plausibly win over.
If this is so, that somewhat implies (and the linked article also points this out) that Kennedy/Shanahan isn't really about Kennedy or Shanahan; it's just become the "protest vote" campaign in a year where many people are dissatisfied with both major-party candidates. Had Kennedy not run, someone else would very likely be getting support from the same group of voters—maybe Jill Stein, maybe Chase Oliver (Libertarian), maybe someone else. We also continue to believe, consistent with past presidential cycles, that Kennedy's support will shrink dramatically as November draws closer. This will happen, in part, as more and more low-information voters find out what Kennedy's all about. And it will happen, in part, because people who say they are voting third-party tend to get gun-shy about voting for a candidate they know cannot win once it's time to cast actual ballots.
And as long as we are on the subject of RFK Jr., Donald Trump posted a rambling video about him on "Truth" Social yesterday. The basic point, which takes some work to decipher, is that Kennedy is a far-left nutter (so, Republicans should never consider voting for him) but that he's still better than Joe Biden (so Democrats definitely should vote for him). Here's a chunk of yesterday's word salad:
It's great for MAGA, I hope he continues to run, but the communists will make it very hard on him to get on the ballot, as they did for him as a Democrat. He wanted to get on the ballot. They made it very, very difficult for him. They really went after him viciously, just like they go after me. Welcome to the crowd, RFK Jr. But the fact is that the Democrats are vicious communist fascists, they're horrible people. They really hurt him badly, what they did to him as a Democrat, that's why he's running as an independent, but expect him to be indicted any day now, probably for environmental fraud.
Trump either doesn't know what a communist is, or doesn't know what a fascist is, or doesn't know what either is. And we have no idea at all where the notion that Kennedy is about to be charged with environmental fraud (which is usually a corporate crime) comes from. Presumably Trump only knows two things about Kennedy, namely "environmentalist" and "anti-vaxxer," and The Donald can't exactly tell his base that being an anti-vaxxer is a crime, so we're left with accusing Junior of environmental crimes. In any case, it's another reminder that Trump and the MAGA movement now see Kennedy as a threat, and are going to try to take him down. (Z)