This is getting positively labyrinthine, following all the roads and detours of the RFK, Jr. campaign, as it relates to Donald Trump. As of this morning Kennedy said he was suspending his campaign, political parlance for That’s All Folks! But now Kennedy is saying that he’s “suspending but not ending” the campaign. And it gets stranger still. He proposes to remain on the ballot in some 40 states but not in “ten battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler.” That leads one pundit to say, “So RFK Jr is staying on the ballot in up to 40 states hoping Trump and Harris are denied enough electoral votes for a win opening up a potential path for himself. Trump got played today.” Personally, I don’t recall a situation where a spoiler candidate picks and chooses which ballots to stay on at the same time endorsing another candidate. (?!) If anybody else knows, please share.
This will backfire. The country will not fall for this manipulation
— Kevin Sheppard 🥥🌴🏈🇺🇸 (@climatetechkev) August 23, 2024
Here’s a list of states where Kennedy’s name was set to appear on the ballots.
- Alaska
- California
- Colorado
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Nebraska
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Washington
- West Virginia
He’s not on the ballot in Nevada. He doesn’t have enough signatures to qualify. He’s not on in Pennsylvania, so there are two swing states. Wisconsin is a third. I’ll tell you what has occurred to me and that’s that Kennedy is lying about deliberately staying off certain ballots because he simply can’t get on them in the first place.
Keep this list nearby and see what happens in the next week or two. We are getting down to the wire on who and what can be on all the ballots. That’s ready to lock in place pretty much right after Labor Day. Meanwhile, Kennedy is talking one epic line of shit, which is completely on point for him.
I wrote about a different aspect of this and forgot to include something. Since lots more people read your work than mine I’ll mention it here. Kennedy remarked at one point that he still sees a chance of him becoming President because he thinks maybe neither Trump or Harris will get 270 electoral votes. Talk about delusions of grandeur thinking if that happens the states will turn to HIM!
Oh, and one other thing. I saw earlier this evening that the Kennedy FAMILY put out a statement denouncing him for endorsing Trump, calling it a betrayal of everything the family has stood for. If Trump thinks having RFK Jr. on his side (and you’re right – he’s conning Trump) will help him with seniors nostalgic for the days when the Kennedy family ruled the Democratic Party I think he’s mistaken. If anything I think this will hurt Trump with seniors, especially if there’s another big Kennedy family gathering like they had with Biden at the WH only this time they do so with Harris! Not to mention we didn’t see Caroline at the convention speaking. I thought she might be the rumored surprise guest. Maybe they are saving her for later. Say next month, doing an appearance with Harris (and maybe Walz too given all those touch football games we see from way back when at the Kennedy family compound in MA) and in her own elegant way doing a reprise of the remarks she gave at Obama’s first convention. Get AOC there to blow it up on social media with young people and they’ll be showing it to their grandparents and asking questions. Get the old folks thinking about not just JFK but Bobby Kennedy and comparing THOSE memories to all the stuff out there about his P.O.S. son who shares his name. Then look at him and Trump slobbering over each other.
Everything Trump touches dies and this moron is there to toss the bodies into Central Park. Maybe the family will get up with grandpa’s old Irish mobster friends in the north end, and take him out for a scenic boat ride in Boston Harbor! If he washes up in Sandwich, who’s to say he didn’t just fall off? It would help save the family name.
Well, there could be a legitimate concern in two of those states.
Remember that both Maine and Nebraska (while combining for a whopping 9 electoral votes) assign their electoral votes based on winners of individual congressional districts as well as the statewide vote. While it’s unlikely that RFK would cause too much issue in Nebraska (I think the last redistricting has made sure there won’t be a repeat of 2008–when Obama actually picked up an EV from Nebraska), it could create some problems with Maine which has seen one EV go to Donald Trump in the last two elections. If RFK should pull enough votes away from the Dems, then the state as a whole could actually go to the GOP in the Electoral College. (I don’t really expect it but, when you consider that Gary Johnson was essentially running as the “GOP alternative to Trump,” and the Wiki article on the 2016 election in Maine doesn’t split out the Libertarian and Green Party votes by county level, there are a few counties that just squeaked out in Clinton’s favor–literally, one county’s margin between Clinton and Trump was a mere 62 votes with nearly 1900 votes going to someone other than Clinton or Trump–and a couple more, including some vote-rich counties, where the “winning” margin was less than the number of votes that went to neither Clinton nor Trump.)