this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
86 points (95.7% liked)

politics

19097 readers
2951 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 months ago (2 children)

He wasn't ever going to get elected; the big question was whether he could serve as a spoiler and help elect Trump.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Funny thing is, he was so closely aligned with Trump's ideas, the only people I ever heard say they planned on voting for him were my MAGA relatives.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

My wife is lefter than democrat and she was contemplating voting for him.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I don't get how it would help trump, RFK Jr is such a right-wing nutjob, I don't think anyone who would vote for Biden would vote for him instead. Its much more likely to pull votes from Trump instead since he's just the right kind of nutjob to appeal to the extreme Q-Anon supporting far right who would otherwise vote for Trump.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's psychology.

The most common reason people keep giving for voting Biden is "not trump". And lots of people don't like trump, but will never vote for any Dem.

If there's literally any other options, it's easier for someone to pick one rather than leave it blank or write in a name.

2020 was insanely close and decided by a handful of states.

It's a weird situation where for most people their state is decided before the first vote is cast, where other states it could come down to 4 digit votes.

So things that seem like they'd have no effect, can actually be huge.

Like, RFK can cost Biden 10% in Cali, and it doesn't matter at all. But if he costs 0.1% in Michigan it could change the election.

We need to switch to popular vote for president, but it'll probably never happen. Until then random stupid shit like rfk can decide elections

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I can't see a world where RFK costs Biden a higher percentage than Trump in any state, that seems like FUD being spread by bad actors. I am not saying anyone here is a bad actor, I am just thinking that people are fearing the worst possible outcome and bad actors are praying on that to push an agenda and because of Wizard's First Rule ("People are Stupid. People will believe anything because they want to believe it or because they are afraid it might be true." [Amusingly that quote comes from an Author that if he were still alive would probably vote for Trump]) it spreads, just like most other misinformation.

You can't just say he'll cost Biden 0.1% in Michigan without also considering how much he would affect trump, if he costs Biden 0.1% and Trump 0.9% he still only gets 1% of the vote, but it hurt Trump 90% more than it hurts Biden, which in the end will actually improve Biden's position. And the newly (within the last 4 years) never-Trumper republicans who would never-Biden as well who votes for RFK Jr can't be counted as a "biden" vote since they would never vote for him to begin with, if anything its a vast majority of 2020 Trump votes that are shifted to RFK Jr.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://elections2024.thehill.com/national/biden-trump-rfk-general/

RFK makes the race much closer, if he's going down in flames, that's good for Biden.

You can’t just say he’ll cost Biden 0.1% in Michigan without also considering how much he would affect trump

I didn't, I said it doesn't take much in one of the handful of states where votes matter. Because someone was saying they didn't understand how RFK could effect the race.

Everything is hypothetical until the election. But if there's only Biden and trump on people's ballots, it's likely to help Biden more than trump. This isn't just some idea I came up with.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/30/biden-leads-trump-marist-poll-election/73906380007/

Unless this is one of those things where you're gonna say polls aren't real, if that's the case this isn't gonna be productive

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

From your own usa today article:

according to the poll of 1,261 adults surveyed May 21 through May 23. It found third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein — not Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are making the difference, pulling support away from Biden.

Emphasis added by me. And I agree, with the article, other 3rd party candidates are likely to pull more from Biden than Trump, but also in agreement with your article, not RFK Jr. And it goes back to people pushing RFK Jr as a threat to Biden, when in reality he's not at all a threat to Biden. Its FUD being pushed by bad actors and people are falling for it and is distracting people from the real threats to Biden, which is Cornel West and Jill Stein.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Like I said it's all hypothetical until the election.

My whole point was something that's negligible on a national level, can still change the election in the few states that will decide the election.

But Trump voters are trump voters because they want trump. Biden voters are Biden voters... Because they don't want trump.

The less options on a ballot the more "not trump" translates to "Biden"

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (4 children)

The idea was basically that having the name Kennedy and touting his environmental work (from before when a worm ate part of his brain) would suddenly induce a bunch of Democrats to vote for him. So he got to dine with billionaires and they tossed him money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Don’t underestimate the otherwise liberal voters who have been part of the anti (measles) vaccine movement for decades.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

I think it was also to capture the crowd who maybe disliked Trump, but didn't feel like they could go Biden. His running gives these people someone other than Biden to vote for. It's the reason Trump's backers have been funneling money into his campaign (his "supporters" haven't). And and vote not for Biden helps Trump either win, or with building support for his next insurrection upon losing.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, every single other living Kennedy denounced him and endorsed Biden.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Yeah, but there is a significant portion of the voting public that are willfully ignorant.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

He's not running on a platform of pre-brain-worm or environmental work, he's running on an extremist platform, and anyone who votes thinking he'd be an alternative to Biden, probably also has a brain-worm, and will be a very small minority compared to the people voting for him because he's an alternative to Trump.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

He's not now but I think that was the pitch to the billionaires.