THE RFK JR. RATFUCK IS FAILING BECAUSE THE RATFUCKERS DON'T UNDERSTAND DEMOCRATIC VOTERS

I'm back. Thank you, Yas and Tom, for some great posts while I was away from the blog (and the end-of-days New York rain).

I'm amused by this news:

2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce he will run as an independent on October 9 in Pennsylvania, Mediaite has learned.

Kennedy, whose admirers include Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Roger Stone, was in the race to damage President Biden, but Biden has led him by 50 points or more for months. The right-wing ratfuckers who thought he could hurt Biden appear to believe that Democrats are just as skeptical of vaccines as Republicans, because they think everybody is just like Republicans. They live in a bubble where vaccine skepticism is normal and trust in science is something only weirdos and freaks have. But Democrats aren't like Republicans:

As the National Review’s Jim Geraghty pointed out in July, when a survey asked New Hampshire Democrats to describe Kennedy in one word, the top responses were “crazy,” “dangerous,” “insane,” “conspiracy,” and “unknown.”

On the vaccines, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds:

Seven in ten Democrats say they will get the latest COVID-19 vaccine compared to about a quarter of Republicans. Confidence in safety of the new vaccine is also largely partisan. More than eight in ten Democrats (84%) say they are confident in the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to one in three (36%) Republicans.

And as a result:

If this does happen (and it's a big if!) it could easily backfire on the GOP nominee. Kennedy is significantly more popular among Republican voters than among Democrats. QPac poll found him +30 among GOP, -43 among Dems. Siena had him +36 among Trump voters, -35 among Biden. https://t.co/yc3RoxaoKr pic.twitter.com/Xf3IXf6Qs4

— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) September 29, 2023

Some liberals worry that a minor-party run by Kennedy could help Donald Trump, but on the right there's some recognition that Republican voters are more likely to vote for Kennedy than Democrats:

RFK cant win but he can deny Trump the White House and hand it to Dems https://t.co/GSC3Tu2EAV

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 29, 2023

The new strategy is to try to turn Kennedy into Bernie Sanders, in the hope that he can appeal to Democratic voters:

Kennedy’s campaign ... plans to launch “attack ads” against the Democrat National Committee (DNC) to “pave the way” for his announcement.

A Kennedy campaign insider told [Mediaite] that Kennedy “feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy, so an independent run is the only way to go.”

The insider’s comments align with remarks Kennedy made publicly earlier this month. Kennedy claimed the DNC is “trying to make sure that I can’t participate at all in the political process, and so I’m going to keep all my options open,” when a South Carolina voter questioned him about the possibility of a third-party run as an independent.

But if you want to play the Bernie card, you first have to be popular with a large segment of the Democratic coalition. Kennedy isn't. No actual Democrat or Democrat-leaner thinks he's being denied the opportunity to participate in the political process -- he's in the media every day, which is all there is to the Democratic race so far. He hasn't landed a debate with Biden, but neither has anyone else. No one's voted yet, so there's no voting process to critique.

Cornel West's likiely Green Party run makes it impossible for Kennedy to claim that he's the genuine progressive who's being marginalized -- and if West runs as a Green while Kennedy runs as a Libertarian, which appears quite possible, Kennedy will have even less appeal to Bernie voters.

So I don't see why he continues to run. It's a failing ratfuck, and it looks as if it will continue to fail -- and maybe help Biden.