Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced a very interesting, custom-tailored suspension of his presidential campaign on Friday, August 23, and started the talking heads bobbing for the weekend.
Will it help Trump? Will it help Harris? Will it be meaningless?
Donald Trump’s supporters tend to think it helps Trump, while Kamala Harris supporters are saying it’s really meaningless, which gives the impression that they probably think it helps Trump too.
It’s a fascinating situation, because there are three dynamics here:
First, RFK Jr is being selective in how he is conducting his semi-suspension. He is removing his name from many states’ ballots, but he is remaining on some, specifically the ones where he thinks his presence will help President Trump. Now, he may or may not be wrong about that strategy, but it’s fascinating that he’s not only doing it, but saying it out loud, because in endorsing President Trump, he believes the election of President Trump, and in particular, the rejection of Kamala Harris and her brand of Democrats, is so absolutely imperative.
Second, there is the standard question of who will get more of the supporters of the suspended candidates, in the states where he does drop out. Will his voters go to Trump or to Harris? This is what most pundits are concentrating on, because it’s the normal question, and since RFK Jr was so low in the polls anyway, many assume that his share will be so small that, once divided between people who will choose one or the other, or one of the other 3rd parties, or just stay home, the end result may be that it’s too small a number to have a noticeable impact.
But it’s in the third aspect of this puzzle where it all gets interesting. Unlike the normal third party or independent candidate’s presence or drop, RFK Jr’s activity this fall may well have the biggest impact not on the people who were considering voting for him before, but on the people who were never going to vote for him, but who were undecided between Trump and Harris – and maybe even on the very people who were previously committed to Harris.
RFK Jr is not a conservative on any issue. He’s a full-fledged modern left-winger, a believer in big government, confiscatory taxes, and high government spending. He’s certainly to the left of his famous father and his even more famous uncle, both of whom were assassinated in the turbulent 1960s.
And yet, he is endorsing Donald Trump for reelection, and he identifies the need to reelect President Trump with the passion of the converted. Why?
Because this campaign has taught him something about the modern Democratic party, and about the modern Left and its methods, that has shocked him to the core.
RFK Jr has been what some politicians sometimes used to call “a goo-goo” – meaning, a believer in good government. Such people are happy to give the government more power to do things, and more money to do things with, because they trust the nature of the government class; they trust this administrative state to behave in our best interest.
Goo-goos hear President Trump complain about the Deep State, and they think it’s downright heretical; How Dare He cast aspersions on the noble hearts of our civil servants?
We have seen this attitude for several years, enunciated by the denizens of Washington DC and by their partners in the press. To them, the Constitutional design of a severely limited government isn’t the key to American success; to them it’s all about the nobility of the public servant, an angelic entity that cannot be questioned.
To his utter amazement, once he started to campaign, RFK Jr saw firsthand how the modern Democratic Party, the Deep State, the Pundit Class, and especially, the Biden-Harris regime, really treat fellow Americans whom they see as rivals or enemies.
The administration stubbornly and inexplicably refused to give RFK Jr the Secret Service protection traditionally expected for major candidates for the presidency, especially a candidate like him who has seen both his own father and uncle killed by political assassins.
The Democratic Party sicced their surrogates on his campaign, in states where they calculated that he would hurt Harris more than Trump. They successfully knocked him off the ballot in New York state just days before he announced his decision to suspend.
The Democrats refused to let him campaign normally – through traditional primary debates – during the Democrat caucus and primary season. This pushed him into his independent candidacy, which they then fought in other ways, such as refusing to participate in general election debates where third party and independent candidates would be allowed.
Some of these issues are challenging for a conservative; both parties’ partisans are always of mixed mind on how open we should be to independents and third parties. However, from the perspective of the good-government types, these “anti-democratic” tactics are absolutely outlandish.
The withholding of Secret Service protection is most shocking even to the casual observer. The traditional liberal, the regular good-government voter, has been raised with the belief that “at least our elections are fair” – that this is the time that the public gets a chance, every two, four or six years, to change out their congressmen, senators and presidents, in a fair contest.
The public expects regular press conferences, a battery of debates and issue forums, campaign finance restrictions, and even-handed coverage by the newsmedia, all in the service of this noble goal of free and fair elections.
More than any other American politicians in generations, President Trump has been outspoken on the concept that the system is rigged.
Contrary to media claims, he hasn’t just said that the system is rigged against him; he’s been making the case that the system is rigged against traditional families, against American manufacturing, against hard working people trying to save for retirement, against girls and women competing in school athletics, in beauty pageants, against Christians and Jews in an increasingly secular and anti-Judeo-Christian society, AND against political candidates who oppose the powerful, progressive modern Left.
All these claims used to sound outrageous to most observers. It’s so contrary to the American experience; maybe this Trump guy just has a persecution complex?
But over the past few years, especially during this Biden-Harris regime, there have been more and more undeniable examples, proving the truth of this general concept:
The Biden-Harris regime has welcomed millions of illegal aliens into the country ahead of the law-abiding foreigners waiting in line to immigrate properly. The Biden-Harris regime has issued regulations suppressing American oil drilling while supporting and funding the rise of Iranian oil sales. The Biden-Harris regime has continued to make domestic manufacturing harder, opening that many more doors for the importation of goods from abroad instead. The Biden-Harris regime has attempted to revise Title IX, the very program designed to give female athletes their own path to success, by authorizing biological males to defeat girls in the girls’ events and take their medals (and scholarships) from them. The Biden-Harris team illegally mandated a rushed and barely-tested drug (improperly labeled a vaccine), then fired government employees who refused it, and encourages the private sector to do the same.
The list of this regime’s affronts against the American system is almost endless.
The public sees it. Slowly, gradually, it’s been sinking in.
And now RFK Jr and his runningmate, the equally left-wing California attorney Nicole Shanahan, have had an epiphany. As they’ve seen the Democrat ruling class put them in their crosshairs, this team has had to acknowledge that Donald Trump, and his MAGA movement, are right about this overarching issue.
Even if RFK Jr and Ms. Shanahan are still big-time liberals, who disagree with the American Right on matters of taxation and government regulations, they have been forced to acknowledge that the Right is correct that if we have a big government (and we do), if we have critical elections (and we do), if we have momentous, definitive years in our nation’s history (and this is certainly one), then there is simply no doubt about it:
Kamala Harris and the modern Democrat Party, from their cabinet and their leaders in Congress on down, are indeed exactly the wrong people to trust to run such a government.
What RFK Jr and Nicole Shanahan have discovered is that the system IS rigged, not only in this election but across the board, by a deep state, self-appointed power elite that uses absolutely autocratic tactics against their every enemy, no matter whether that enemy belongs to another party, another philosophy, or another social class.
Public opinion polls are hard to trust, especially a month or two before an election. Most have indicated that only about 2% were likely to vote for RFK Jr and Nicole Shanahan.
But as they spend the next two months detailing their experience, using the airwaves to tell the story of the unfair tactics of Kamala Harris and her team, how they exposed rival candidates to personal risk by denying Secret Service protection, how they tried their best to deny the voters an opportunity to vote for a ticket that followed the rules and properly filed for ballot access, and how they used every trick and power of incumbency to unfairly ensure the election of a woman who never even won a single primary but got her nomination through an intra-party coup in the dead of night, long after the primary season was over – it is likely that the effects will ripple far beyond the RFK Jr partisans of a week ago.
This is a message that reinforces the resolve of the supporters of President Trump.
This is a message that should touch the heartstrings of the ethical lifelong Democrat.
And most importantly, this is a message that could make the difference for the independents who’ve been on the fence until now.
If you’re in the middle, particularly if you don’t really like either Harris or Trump, then RFK Jr’s personal story – and his undeniable case of the Stalinist behavior of the Biden-Harris crowd – may well be the deciding factor that finally puts you in the Trump column.
Ultimately, the RFK Jr effect isn’t about the two to five percent that might have planned to vote for him, it’s about the 10 to 20 percent that were still considering Harris, and that just might now lock in on Donald Trump – the real reformer.
Lots of Americans may well find themselves saying, “We can find middle paths on tax rates and spending plans, we can find compromises on military funding and regulatory policy… but we have no chance of either compromise or good government if we let these Stalinists get another four years to consolidate their power.”
RFK Jr and Nicole Shanahan are having their moment on the Road to Damascus, and it may well be that millions of voters will join them on this autumn ride.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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