Googling, I see estimates of her wealth ranging $5 million to her being a billionaire.
If on that low end, she cannot help much with ballot access.
But if she has hundreds of millions she is willing to burn, I think her ticket stands a good chance of deciding the election. And, unlike with Biden and Trump, who almost all voters already have strong opinions about, the Kennedy campaign, if it has enough money, wil matter. If they campaign as environmentalists, they will peel off Biden voters. But if they campaign mostly as advocates of heath care quackery, they will peel off Trump voters, allowing Biden to win.
It could be as simple as ambition. Figure the calculation is that
A) Trump is going to win anyway so by running in 2024, she and RFK Jr run again in 2028 (assuming Trump allows such a thing in a worst case worldline) and they campaign on being what the (D) should have been running in 2024 all along
B) Biden is going to win anyway so by running in 2024, she and RFK Jr running doesn’t make a difference in 2024, but positions them to be more of a loyal opposition or compromise in 2028 - Republican Lite or Conservative Democrat depending on your POV.
C) Utter indifference because her focus in on being VP in 2028 (and is assuming her ongoing financial support will mean RFK Jr can’t dump her) and that the short term losses are justified by her long term interests, whether they be in honest support of (D) goals, or a more pragmatic push for a political career for herself.
D) True believer - she believes in RFK Jr more than she believes in the more balanced mainstream Democrat views - per her reported extreme disappointment in RFK withdrawing from the running in the Democratic Primary. As a true believer, realpolitik (IE de facto helping of Trump) isn’t a factor, just supporting and running her preferred candidate.
Take your pick. A&B are slightly cynical, C is more so, and D is IMHO stupidly idealistic, and it could be any of them. Or something else entirely. I would expect that we’ll get an official answer sometime during the next few months, because interviews on both sides are going to bring said scenarios up, especially if Trump continues to blab out loud about why he thinks their running is good for him.
She wants her ticket to win and probably dreams that it can.
I don’t know if she has read any, but there are a bunch of pundit articles out there saying that issues raised by third party candidates sometimes later become mainstream. And in this case, it is realistic. If Trump wins, her anti-mainstream health views are more likely to get a hearing in the FDA and CDC than if Biden wins.
For more, see her announcement speech in the second half here:
Reading her stated priorities, it is hard to see why Trump is worse. She says the word climate a lot, but nothing about fossil fuels. To give you an idea:
Going by her statement, a lot of this comes from her daughter having been diagnosed on the autism spectrum. She blames “chronic disease in children” on “various chemicals,” cell phone-linked “electrical interference,” and “medications that we rely on for our healthcare system.”
She favors a social safety net. But on the issues she’s most passionate about, I think her views are more often found among Trump supporters than Democrats.
So – no problem. If voters focus on the issues, Bobby and Nicole will take votes away from Trump. That’s what I thought last month, but this has me worried:
The worry comes down to there being a lot of low-info voters who do not pay attention to issues. They hear the name Kenneday and think – liberal Democrat. I’m hoping that when the wacky Kennedy-Shanahan priorities are well-publicized, this will change.
But I really don’t see Shanahan moving the needle much. And the more attention she brings to RFK Jr and his views, the fewer of those “kneejerk Kennedy voters” there will be.
I was waiting for someone else to update the thread with this bit, but I didn’t do it last night because, well, it’s hard enough to sleep when I’m not fuming:
His argument made on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” centered around being blocked on social media platforms during the Biden administration, which he labeled as an effort to “censor political speech” and undermine the First Amendment.
“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history – the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent,” he said.
Cannot make this up. I will refrain from any other commentary on this as outside the scope of P&E, but if this is his honest feeling, rather than a performance for donors (Trump and Republicans) or do generate outrage clicks, I am terrified of his equivalence of the actions of the two leading candidates.
I read his books and realized he has no logic behind his whole life, let alone censorship. I couldn’t believe people agree with what he wrote or what he’s saying.
What very little respect I had for Bobby Jr. just went into the toilet. To compare Biden to Trump as a threat to democracy, and say he’s even worse than Trump, is sheer lunacy. Trump said he wanted to be a dictator (if only on the first day… yeah, right).
There’s likely an element of “we must destroy the village in order to save it”.
Some “progressives” think that if Biden loses and there’s an even worse Trump disaster than before, a far-left phoenix will rise from the ashes, or at least a Triumph of the Loons, RFK Jr.-style.
It wouldn’t matter. Any vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump, and any vote not cast at all is also a vote for Trump, all because of the fucked up system we have for electing the POTUS.
Always remember: In 2020 Biden was 7M votes ahead in the national popular vote, but he only barely won the Electoral College by a measly 315K votes in six key states.
Given our current population distribution, if the national popular vote is tied, then Trump almost certainly wins. Biden has to win harder to win at all.
The more he praises Trump (or at least compares Biden unfavorably to him) and echoes his sentiments, the more likely it will be that he takes away Trump votes than Biden votes. At least that’s my assumption.
The guy who peddles assassination conspiracy theories, spreads virulent antivax nonsense, claims that Ashkenazi Jews have special resistance to Covid, thinks the “gay lifestyle” and not HIV causes AIDS, and whose Children’s Health Defense organization spread a rumor that the COVID pandemic lockdown was used as cover for installation of 5G masts on schools (5G is "dangerous radiation, doncha know), and that "the pandemic provides cover for a sinister “global agenda” trying to make us all “subjects of a techno-communist global government” - he’s now concerned that CNN is trying to make him “look crazy to liberals”?
Sorry, Junior, any sentient human has long known that you’re nutso bongo.
Hannity: “NO, you’re our crazies, don’t listen to him! Wait, that came out wrong, let me rephrase, uh, just because we say the same thing doesn’t mean he’s one of us, he’s just a lunatic, oh wait, that doesn’t work either. Ummm. He doesn’t believe in Trump, and we all believe in Trump, right, oh crap he just said Biden is worse than Trump, what’s left… um… He’s coming for your guns, like all the liberals (gets handed paper) HE SAID THAT GUN CONTROL CANNOT MEANINGFULLY REDUCE GUN VIOLENCE? WAS THIS GUY WAS ALWAYS A SECRET REPUBLICAN?!!??! Screw this, I’m out!”
