Three Immediate Takeaways on the Trump-Kennedy Alliance

Topic: Perspective

In true Trump fashion, Kamala Harris finished the last word of a teleprompter speech someone else put together, and within 24 hours, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., joined the GOP presidential nominee on stage in Arizona – a move that must have been in the works for a considerable period of time.  I must admit, I was perplexed earlier this month when Trump admitted he was laying low under after Harris has her high points – I just didn’t realize she was going to get cut off at the knees within a day of the DNC ending.

Kennedy’s unification with Trump, which manifests as an endorsement to vote for him in the battleground states, means I am proven correct on my very first prediction of the 2024 Year, that Kennedy would underwhelm as a presidential candidate.  Underwhelming, in this sense, doesn’t mean that I think he wasn’t, or isn’t still, a potent force; a year ago, people were worried he would flat out win states, and this belief was compounded by his internal head-to-head polling suggesting he would beat one or both of Trump or Biden in various states in a two-man race.  Richard Baris mentioned two days ago that over 60% of RFK’s voters would go to Trump, while the remainer either wouldn’t vote or would split to Harris.

The polling suggesting those numbers may be off a bit, but nevertheless, given RFK’s positions on some of the dearest issues impacting the grassroots left, I remain surprised that his presence on the ticket doesn’t hurt the left more than it hurts Trump, especially as far as environmentalism, gun rights, and other left-wing ideas like reparations are concerned.  As it stands, it appears the two have made a deal to insert Kennedy, much to the pleasure of his supporters, in a key position that plays to Trump’s agenda so long as the electoral (and electoral fraud) equation can be solved in a satisfactory manner in less than three months.

Without further ado, here are my top three takeaways from the RFK-Trump alliance announced on August 23, 2024:

I.                             Modern Day Perot?

We will never know exactly what RFK’s electoral impact would have been had he remained in the hunt for the White House, and now that he’s aligned with Trump for the singular purpose of defeating Harris-Walz, even solid red and solid blue states retaining his name on the ballot will report deflated Kennedy-Shanahan totals.  The last serious force as a third-party candidate, though not necessarily the last spoiler, was H. Ross Perot in 1992, who received nearly 20 million votes and 18.9% of the presidential vote share.  He cost George H.W. Bush many states, but I still believe Clinton would have narrowly won in a two-man race sans Perot with a recession looming and Bush presiding over the rare third straight GOP term in the White House.

Below is a map of the 1992 presidential election at the county level.  It remains the last election in which a candidate from outside the two major parties carried counties, and if one examines the decisive states of 2024, he will find very pale shades of red and blue throughout, representing counties won by Clinton (blue) or Bush (red) with less than 40% of the vote.

I’ve been hard on conservatism and its uselessness in an increasingly post-ideological world, and constantly have to remind my fellow right-wingers that not everyone is political, and populism comes in both left and right wing variants.  The Trump belt, the Industrial and Upper Midwestern states that put him in office in 2016, is full of economic populists who could care less about conservatism.  If you look at the 2012 electoral map, you’ll catch my drift.  They may stop voting Democrat, but the cities won’t, and if the voters in outlying counties are not enthused by an alternative, they’ll just stay home.  My guess is that Kennedy probably would pull plenty of left-wingers, but he’d get them in states they aren’t desperately needed for Harris like California, New York, Colorado, and Washington.

Trump, on the other hand, needs to sustain and improve overwhelming margins in northern Wisconsin, western Pennsylvania, and central Michigan to get over the massive electioneering that will take place in and around Madison, Milwaukee, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tucson, and Phoenix.  Polls tend to put Kennedy at 5-7% of the national vote, and in every election, there is still usually at least a 2% other-party vote share (which is my go-to for forecasting).  Let’s say 5% of the national vote share, thanks to Kennedy’s endorsement, now splits 3:2 favoring Trump equally over Harris in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which would push 1% of the margin toward Trump.  Here is roughly how many votes move with a 1% margin shift in each:

·      Arizona 35,000

·      Wisconsin 35,000

·      Michigan 60,000

·      Pennsylvania 75,000

II.                         The Remaining Left is Lost