I am cautiously optimistic about this.
First, the reasons not to be:
- The Kennedy name might conceivably attract some confused Democratic votes.
- His spoiler candidacy will obviously be targeted at Biden supporters and intended to siphon them away.
But I’m still cautiously optimistic because:
- We already have a well-known guy with the last name “Kennedy” in the Senate: This absolute tool, a Louisiana Republican and all-around douchebag that Democrats universally despise. So name recognition effects may be blunted a bit.
- RFK’s poll numbers in the Democratic primary as a hypothetical alternative to Biden have stayed consistently 45-50 points below Biden. Most Democrats aren’t going to jump ship to a hopeless independent candidacy and cede the race to Trump.
- RFK is immensely popular… with deranged wingnuts who still believe the COVID vaccines have microchips in them and are the sign of the Beast. These people weren’t gonna vote Biden in the first place, and there might be enough of them in the Republican party for RFK’s candidacy to be a Trump spoiler instead.
I’m going to be paying really close attention to see which side he siphons from more, but like I said… I’m cautiously optimistic RFK will have a more damaging effect on Trump than on Biden.
If Trump goes after him hard, I’ll take that as confirmation that Trump is worried about that.
Can we convince the Q people that he’s the other dead Kennedy they are waiting for in disguise?
That’s it! JFK is secretly immortal! He faked his own death and assumed the identity of his son! The real RFK is off investigating pizzeria basements to rescue children on behalf of his father!
Rejoice, Q! Your savior has actually already emerged! Vote RFK to support the true Trump, not the holographic impostor he’s been replaced with, and the Great Awakening will arrive with the Storm and… fuck, I can’t keep this up.
I got you.
The Great Awakening is upon us. The lizard-people will be exposed. All our enemies will be rounded up and sent to gitmo. All the people who laughed at you for believing “ridiculous” things will realize that you are super smart and apologize. We will be vindicated.
Oh, wait. Not rejoice Q. Rejoice Anons! RFK Jr is actually JFK, but better. He will become president and Trump will become God-Emperor of the world. Those Iraqi Dinars that you invested in will finally make you super rich! No more babies will ever be eaten by democrats and the cabal shall be no more.
Ok, I’m tapping out.
You did great. It almost made me throw up a little in my mouth, so… Job well done.
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Such an obvious spoiler. Who is going to vote for him?
Old, confused Democrats? He’s not really leftist at all. Everything I’ve heard about him makes me feel like he’s a Republican.
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Conservativism isn’t a set of policies or ideologies, it’s the notion that you are good so therefore whatever you want is also good. It is narcissism wraped in a flimsy coat of stoic resistance to change. The facade falls away the very moment any conservative is affected personally by any particular issue.
Pick any ostensibly conservative issue, and you’ll find conservatives flipping on that issue whenever it is convenient. And that’s not because all conservatives are hypocrites, it’s because all conservatives believe that they, as individuals, are the final arbiters of right and wrong. They believe that they can determine what is good and what is evil with absolute certainty at any level of nuance.
That’s why they will oppose abortion rights, and then have their own abortions without a hint of self-awareness. That’s how they can spin yarns of their hardworking immigrant parents or surviving with the help of social safety nets, and then pull up the ladder behind them for the next generation. It’s how fiscal conservatives increase spending and raise taxes for most people while decrying spending on critical infrastructure and foreign aid.
That’s why a nutjob like RFK Jr. sounds like a conservative, even though he wouldn’t use the term to describe himself. The man doesn’t have principles, he has a list of conspiracy theories that he uses to drum up attention.
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And yet they’re right. What policy have conservatives been consistent on?
Cutting taxes, removing regulation and oversight of the private sector, revoking civil rights for “others”, disenfranchisement, white ethnonationalism mixed with Christofascism, enforcement of social hierarchies with white rich men at the top, suicide via global climate change…
So you see, you’re wrong. Conservatives have plenty of policy they’re consistent about.
Had me going for a second.
I’m trying to not get on either side because I felt meatbridge made some well reasoned points. I do tend to lean with no1riven on the hypocrisy of suggesting conservatives think the are good therefore they are right. I’ve observed people on the left with the same hyper charged conviction so I don’t see how it’s a strong point.
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In other words, you can’t actually name a single policy.
Wow, I just upvoted you and your vote went down, could be a lag in votes while I typed but concerning
Single-issue anti-vaxxer voters might trust him more than they trust Trump. (and none of them were going to vote for Biden anyway, so probably at worst a wash for Biden)
This is my dad. He doesn’t like trump but still suffers from all kinds of other anti-progrsssive brainwashing.
He thinks RFK is a brave outsider.
He also voted for Perot, so take that for what it’s worth.
Well, the D’s know the name of the game is beat Trump, that’s how biden got nominated, nobody actually liked him. They’ll vote for Biden no matter what just to make sure Trump doesn’t win.
The target demographic for this guy are Trump independents, that is, the people that won him the election in the rust belt in 2016, people who lean Democrat but were sick of the politicians and their constant bullshitting. So it’s likely RFK is a way to spoil Trump, not the D’s.
Hopefully Republicants.
He has massive support among the wingnut right. The Ben Garrison/Kill Fauci/J6 is a Hoax crowd.
Morons.
“But aren’t all the morons already voting for Trump?” I hear you say.
No. There are always more morons.
He will vote for himself, and his mother is still around and will probably vote for him.
So I am expecting him to get exactly 2 votes.
An unfortunately significant number of people.
The guy is crazy, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.
Really? I have not seen any evidence of that.
I think it might be hard to predict exactly but I I am bit with you. Those right leaning independents that don’t like Trump are quite unlikely to vote for him regardless. But that known name may put Biden as their second choice.
All of Kennedy’s platform positions are firmly right-wing… and so is all of his support. He should have been part of the Republican debate, he’d have fit right in.
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Except the two of the largest issues of the decade?
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Which is like what Trump supporters care?
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Democrats who don’t think Biden is far enough to the right. They’ll still blame progressives if Biden loses to Trump, though.
How do you do fellow ensign?
It’s the only move he has, he’d never get the Dem nomination. Too many see right through his conspiracy nonsense.
Dude is a stain on the Kennedy name. Dude thinks wifi gives cancer.
Sadly still more coherent than Trump, who said that the noise from windmillls causes cancer.
Good luck. Get all the Roswell and COVID conspiracy theorists in a pile, and baby…you got A STEW GOIN
Good. The lunatic vote will split between him and Trump.
At least he has given up the farce of pretending to be a Democrat
For now at least, polls show about 25% of Democrats would vote for him over Biden vs 13% of Republicans. This is bad.
It’s over a year from the election. Polls right now mean nothing.
It’s more the lopsidedness than the numbers themselves that concerns me. It would only take an extraordinarily small difference to hand the election to Trump with how close it was last time and is now. But I’ll try to use the optimism from this thread to smother my cynicism for now.
41 percent of Democrats have an at least somewhat favorable view of Kennedy
Yeah, no. I’d guess that only a single-digit % of Democrats - mostly Extremely Online ones - have any idea who he is; this is a survey where they pressed for lukewarm responses from mostly-uninformed voters and then pretended that it actually reflected public opinion in a meaningful way.
These debates are going to be wild. Trump and Kennedy just screaming gibberish at each other while Biden stands between them with the quietly desperate look of a pensioner trying to remember his PIN number at the supermarket checkout.
Fucking hell.
Nah. Biden’s still sharp. He’s gonna turn to the cameras, give a sparkling smile, and say, “Get a load of these guys, right?”
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Get a load of Mr. Pizza Cutter here!
As a pedantic mathematician, I can’t endorse that, but as someone who thinks the person you replied to is an idiot I’m delighted.
Would you just shut up man
I doubt Kennedy (or Cornell West) will be included in any debates.
We need to make this guy the poster child for ranked choice voting. With it he’d only be wasting donor money, not endangering our future as a spoiler candidate.
He knows he has no chance of being the Democrat nominee. Not too shocking.
his grift is going the LLC route
Hey!
The only “both sides” I entertain is the fact that both sides have a glutton’s appetite for bad nominees.
