Can the Kennedy/Shanahan ticket actually win the U.S. presidency? All the experts are quick to say no way. They are certain of this.
I’m not so sure. These are very strange times. The disgruntlement of the public is wildly underestimated by the corporate media. There is a hard core of the public that is seething in fury at what the power elites have done to this country. Many others on the sidelines might be ready to do what they can.
The word existential keeps coming up: can this country survive after this prolonged parasitical attack on our core institutions and prosperity? This is the question. To make it so, something truly dramatic needs to happen. That something might not be merely replaying what happened in 2020.
Before making the case, a proviso: I’ve always been wrong in the past when I thought a third-party or independent candidate could prevail. Several times over the course of my adult life, I’ve been seduced by the idea. Back when Ross Perot ran in 1992, he actually received 18.9 percent of the popular vote, which is amazing. But I had bet a friend that he would win so I lost that one.
What was I even thinking?
Then in 2016, I had some crazy sense that it was the year for the Libertarian Party to make a huge impact. I deduced this because of Hillary Clinton’s obvious lack of appeal but also Donald Trump’s seeming lack of interest in fiscal responsibility and limited government generally, two pillars of Republican theory.
Of course, the LP flaked completely as usual.
So, yes, I have a terrible track record regarding third parties and independents.
And yet I once again find myself enticed into believing it is possible for one to score. The case in question here is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. His campaign so far has made huge advances already, to the point that the mainstream media can no longer ignore him.
His remarkable work ethic has kept him traveling and doing interviews all day, in addition to writing a marvelous new book and managing a major nonprofit organization. His energy is an incredible inspiration. He doesn’t need to be doing this. It’s all driven by a heartfelt passion to right this ship, which he says has been nonfunctioning in a true sense since the murders of his uncle and father.
There is a point here. Also, I truly do appreciate how his campaign is rooted in nostalgia for what postwar America was. He has a burning desire to restore honest government, good health, fiscal integrity, and to uproot the corruption that has swept through vast elements of all American institutions: government, media, and industry. I don’t always agree with his solutions—how I wish he would drop the “renewable energy” nonsense—but his heart is in the right place.
Maybe it is his destiny to do his part to save the America that has been ruined by the ruling class.
As for the vice presidential choice of tech/philanthropist Nicole Shanahan, it is not the wisest pick, at least if the goal is to peel off Republicans or anyone not solidly in the elite and belonging to highly rarefied tech/academic clubs. That said, it might be a brilliant pick to triangulate the Biden vote—there are many estranged from the DNC today—and perhaps that will work. Indeed, among some of his supporters, there is some concern that he has drifted too far right. It’s not true but the criticism stings, given the political divisions of our time. The VP choice puts that to rest.
To be sure, Shanahan is wonderful on the issues that are nearest and dearest to RFK’s heart, which is about the pharma/food poisoning of the public and the reining in of Big Tech. On a deeper level, this pick is about a traditional guard of the old DNC attempting an overthrow of the new guard in bed with industry and extremist ideology.
No question that right now, the Biden/Obama/Clinton crowd is in a meltdown about RFK.
That’s a very entertaining thing to watch.
It’s not complicated. This law states that any election in which the winner takes all (like U.S. elections) always reduces to two main choices. This is true for any such election, whether in politics or a simple vote concerning what color of curtains to put in your home.
The reason for this peculiar outcome is the following: people vote strategically. Their main motivation is to keep the choice they favor the least from winning the whole. For this reason, people will make a choice that is not their ideal solely in the interest of preventing a worse outcome.
Think about the following. Do you know anyone personally who is completely indifferent as to whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump wins? I personally do not know many. I know people who hate Biden but prefer him to Trump and people who can’t stand Trump but prefer him to Biden. I don’t know many people who care not either way.
The trouble is that such voters are the ones that RFK can count on. That’s not many people. At least not for now.
This could change. Under what conditions? If the polls as we approach the November election gradually start to show some dramatic momentum such that RFK actually begins to outpoll Biden or Trump, that’s when voter psychology shifts. No longer will people feel like they are wasting a chance to zing the candidate they despise and therefore use their vote to back someone they like.
That is an extremely high bar. It seems nearly impossible. The choice of Nicole Shanahan as VP brings no new constituency into the fold, so far as I can tell.
But think about the choice of the VP this way. It thrills MAGA, which will now lose none of the Republican base to RFK. It frustrates any Republican-leaning voter who wanted an alternative to Trump. It intrigues Democratic voters who are estranged from the woke corporatism of the Biden regime. And it sends the Bidenites (including the leftovers from Obama/Clinton) into apoplectic fits of rage, simply because it assures RFK’s ballot access and might end up throwing the election to Trump.
That said, these are rather impossible times. Dramatic and crazy things are happening daily. This election really is the main act of our time. Could something like an RFK victory take place in a way that would be massively disruptive of all history and all electoral logic?
Maybe. Unlikely but maybe. Regardless, I would only suggest that RFK’s candidacy is not a waste even if he cannot win. He has highlighted hugely important issues over the power of pharma, the danger of food monopolies, the corruption of regulatory capture, and the horrible actions of the public health authorities. In that sense, he has already made a massive mark. That by itself is worth all the effort.
Is there more to the story? We will just have to wait and see. We’ll have to wait all the way until November to know for sure.
