Robert F. Kennedy is a political puzzle. Most people believe him to be "anti-vaccination." As with many things about RFK, that's a gross exaggeration. He supports more rigorous research and more clinical trials before allowing vaccinations to be marketed to the public. It's more accurate to say he opposes the current regimen that makes vaccinations mandatory.
Kennedy is an unabashed supporter of Israel, a Ukraine-funding skeptic, a strong proponent of border security, and, at one time, advocated for a 15-week abortion ban, although that proved to be a bridge too far for many of his supporters. That's why many believed that he would draw as many supporters from Donald Trump as he would from Joe Biden.
Until recently, he has been toying with running as a Libertarian. He wouldn't be a perfect fit but the libertarians would kill for that kind of name recognition at the top of their ticket. And for Kennedy, the fact that the Libertarians will be on all 50 state ballots is the reason he looked long and hard at the Libertarian nomination.
In the end, he abandoned the Libertarian Party and cast his lot with the radical left by choosing Nicole Shanahan as his running mate.
Shanahan falls in the "left-wing wacko" category.
“I think that a lot of Libertarians are a little bit confused over why he chose Nicole Shanahan,” Libertarian National Committee Chairwoman Angela McArdle said in a recent interview with NewsNation. “I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but she doesn’t necessarily fit into alignment with any of our views.”
That's an understatement. She opposes IVF but not because of any pro-life agenda. "Between 2020 and 2021, Shanahan gave $7 million to the Buck Institute, a biomedical research group, for 'reproductive longevity and equality' and a 'healthy and livable planet'" according to financial disclosure forms obtained by Politico.
The only logical reason that RFK chose Shanahan is that so she can bankroll an effort to get on the ballot in all 50 states. She was married to one of the founders of Google and could probably put $30 million into the ballot access effort. It will cost that much not only in staffing a nationwide ballot access effort but also to fight the legal battles necessary to override the opposition from Democrats.
A sure sign that Kennedy is going to cost Biden dearly, especially in battleground states, is polling that shows RFK getting between 20-25% of voters under 30.
The conventional wisdom among Democrats has been that Kennedy might do well among some older voters because of the longtime attachment to his family’s famous name. But some new polling suggests that’s not the big problem for the blue team.
In the latest Quinnipiac poll, among voters ages 18 to 34, Kennedy got 21 percent of their support in a three-way race with Trump and Biden, compared to 13 percent overall.
That’s echoed by a new poll from Split Ticket that found 23 percent of voters under 30 backing Kennedy, 25 percent backing Trump, and 35 percent backing Biden. Biden won 60 percent of that age group in 2020.
"He’s got a long way to go to get enough ballot access," writes Chris Stirewalt. "But the chance that Kennedy could play Ross Perot to Biden’s George H.W. Bush looks more and more like reality,"
Perot, as later studies showed, did not cost Bush the 1992 election. He drew almost equally from both parties.
That won't happen this time. RFK will clearly take a generous slice of Biden's votes and, in close battleground states where the youth vote is critical, could easily make the difference.
