RFK’s Appeal to Cranks Undercuts a Key Trump Constituency (Cranks)
How RFK Jr.’s candidacy is a threat to Trump.
Tonight on the livestream we’re going to try something different: I’m going to talk with The Youths (pronounced “Yutes”) about their political lives. It’ll be suss and they’ll bring the rizz with their vibes? I don’t know what most of those words mean.
8 p.m. in the East.
1. The Crazy
In the main, I agree with Sarah Longwell that we are building an anti-Trump coalition, and not a pro-Biden coalition. As such, adding options to the presidential ballot will, on balance, hurt Biden.
The theory is that there is a whole universe of people who dislike Trump for different reasons.1 Any third-party option which gives a member of any of these groups a way to vote against Trump that isn’t Biden ultimately weakens Biden’s chance of victory.
But I think RFK Jr. might be the exception to the rule?
First we should understand that current polling says I’m wrong. Trump has a consistent lead over Biden with RFK on the ballot.
The RealClearPolitics average in the two-way race has Trump +2.1; the three-way average with RFK has Trump at +4.3.
I think this is a mirage, for two reasons.