Trump says RFK Jr.’s ‘Great For MAGA’ He Is Dead Wrong

Ah, Donald, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. When Trump’s not busy begging for money or talking about how awful the judges and prosecutors are, he’s crowing over the fact that Joe Biden has an opponent in RFK, Jr., because he’s too stupid and uninformed about his own campaign and his own electorate to see what’s going on. Here’s his tweet from earlier today.

One thing is certain, Trump has no post-politics career in political strategy. He can’t be more wrong. But good! Let him be wrong and let him think that Biden’s the one who is losing votes to RFK, Jr. because the dead opposite is true.

You heard yesterday that Aaron Rodgers was passed over as Kennedy’s VP and Nicole Shanahan chosen in his place. According to Jonathan V. Last, “Shanahan, who isn’t just the least-qualified, most preposterous character ever to appear on a presidential ticket polling above 5 percent.2 She’s also going to be catnip to a particular kind of low-intensity Trump voter.”

Two weeks ago we went through the numbers on RFK. A quick refresher:

• Current polling shows RFK at a relatively high level of support.
• RFK currently takes more voters from Biden than Trump.
• But RFK’s primary issue is vaccine skepticism.
• Polling shows that anti-vax sentiment in America is concentrated in the MAGA wing of the Republican party.

So while the polling says that RFK is bad for Biden now, in the long run the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign will take votes disproportionately from Trump, not Biden.

How does this help Biden?

(1) Putting Shanahan on the ticket signals that the Kennedy campaign is a joke. No serious candidate would have someone with Shanahan’s background as the veep. She knows nothing about legislating, or foreign affairs, or fiscal policy, or defense. She has never held elected office.

I dare you to find a vice presidential nominee anywhere in American history who was less qualified than Shanahan. You can’t do it. Forget Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle and even Ross Perot had the presence of mind to pick a retired admiral and genuine war hero, James Stockdale. Lyndon LaRouche had a more qualified running mate in his 1992 campaign when he tapped civil rights figure James Bevel.

(2) Shanahan will appeal to a certain kind of voter. Just because Nicole Shanahan is thoroughly unfit for the vice presidency doesn’t mean that she isn’t an attractive figure. What kind of voter might look at Shanahan and be interested?

• Loosely right-wing anti-establishment types: If you listen to Candace Owens because you like the style and pop-culture stuff, but you also feel like the traditional media is hiding important truths about the world from you, Nicole Shanahan might be your jam.
• Sad wannabe tech-bros: If you have a picture of a Cybertruck as your lock screen, think Joe Rogan is brilliant, and dream of having your own coterie of founder-hounders, then Nicole Shanahan is your beau idéal.6

No one in either of those categories was ever going to vote for Joe Biden. Most of the people in those categories probably won’t vote, period. But those types of low-propensity, nontraditional voters are Trump’s margin of victory. They’re the people he has to turn out in large numbers and then win by huge margins. And that’s exactly where the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is fishing.

Just on vibes, Kennedy and Shanahan are close to duplicating Trump’s inherent appeal, only without the violence and class hatred. Meaning that if you like Trump’s anti-establishment stuff, but aren’t wild about the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis, Kennedy-Shanahan could be a home for you.

Just for the sake of argument here, if Trump has managed to alienate the Nikki Haley voters plus if there’s now another bloc of voters, the Kennedy/Shanahan voters that he needs and can’t get, this could hurt him.

And yes, I know, traditionally speaking a third-party candidate bleeds away voters from the Democrat. I’m painfully aware of that. But we live in a world where the laws of political physics are suspended and nobody knows how things work anymore.

Trump may lose some far-right vaxxers because of his own ill-advised crowing about developing a vaccine.

All that is known for certain is that next November will be a circus. Let us do everything we can to turn out the vote to make sure that the circus cleans up and four more years of sane governance take place. And hopefully, a bonus to all this, will be that Trump’s legal cases that are now in the process of delay will all be tried after he loses and he’ll end up in prison.

Then our big question will be, “Will Joe Biden pardon him?” and won’t that be a nice change of pace, to be debating that.