22% is not a "Spoiler"
Let's be clear: a candidate getting 22% is a contender, not a spoiler.
Running with a promise to “spoil” the 2024 presidential contest, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just received a sign that he might be making good on that pitch: A recent poll shows him with 22 percent support in a hypothetical three-way race against President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.Biden, by contrast, would take 39 percent of the vote, and Trump would come away with 36 percent, according to the Quinnipiac University’s survey. In another positive sign for Kennedy, he came away with the backing of a plurality of independents: 36 percent chose him, compared with 31 percent for Trump and 30 percent for Biden.
I won't be voting for RFK. I'll be voting for Cornel West (assuming he makes the ballot).
I personally find RFK's positions on such things as M4A and Israel is as bad as the two main parties.
Nevertheless, if the choices are only Biden, Trump and RFK I'll be supporting RFK.
“If 2024 turns into a Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump rematch with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as an independent, battleground state voters currently say it would be a very close contest, with Trump at 35%, Biden 33% and Kennedy 24%,” Dr. Don Levy, Director, Siena College Research Institute, said. “Trump only retains significant leads in Nevada and Georgia. Arizona and Pennsylvania move from the Trump column to dead even. And Wisconsin and Michigan remain very tight.“It is noteworthy that among voters under 45 in those six states, RFK polls at 32%, Biden at 30% and Trump is at 29%,” Levy said. “Overall, while 18% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans say they would back RFK, 39% of independents would back Kennedy, compared to 28% for Biden and 25% for Trump.
Recall that someone was supposed to qualify for the debates with 15% support. That's when we actually had debates.
Comments
For the first time
in American history we get to choose between the lessor of four evils.
whoo hoo!
Sharpening my pencil now. I think it will come down to Kennedy clearing his throat or West combing his hair, whichever comes first.
Thanks for the post.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I would like to see the Party of Socialism and Liberation
on the ballot. Unfortunately they are not on the ballot, and my efforts to access their webpage have come to nought. My guess is that they are a bunch of "this time we'll do it right" Marxists, so hopefully they can be persuaded to make the transition to actual revolutionary freethinking as once promoted by Cornelius Castoriadis.
As for West, yeah I'd vote for West. West hugged me once, at Occupy Los Angeles. At any rate, West does not seem to have figured out how to make his campaign into anything more than a vanity project.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Well, "vanity project"
is about right. I'm fairly certain this is all about raising CW's profile, getting some pub from tv airtime and some ego-stroking from seeing his name in the news, raising those speaking fees, and similar. He's never had much of an actual campaign that I could see and there is serious doubt he will still be in the race a year from now.
Not much for going deep on the issues either, when he is not dismissing some items (Covid vaccine mandates) as not that important. Rather a day late and a dollar short on calling out Biden for Ukraine. Unlike Jimmy Dore and the Convo Couch guys*, who have since left, I never was in the West camp. Nor the Kanyé West camp, if he runs again. I'm not voting for Adam West either, if he is still around, despite his cool cape and car.
I might consider Jerry West, if he is available.
Unlike the never-satisfied Jimmy Dores of the left, I am not a prog purist who demands that each issue box be fully, boldly, and quickly checked. It's childish to think there will ever be the Perfect Candidate out there. So among the imperfect contenders, I have to give major points to RFK Jr, for his stance on most of the crucial issues, for his mostly solid and so far successful campaign, for his courage in directly challenging the power structure in a number of areas, and for easily being the best prepared candidate on most issues. Substance and intelligence, not perfection.
Major points too for his being clearly the one candidate, excepting perhaps Trump, the power structure most despises and fears. I very much appreciate that he is the enemy of my enemy.
* edit: I might have been thinking of the Due Dissidence guys, once rather pro-Cornel, but not now
Okay, I get it
You don’t like Cornel West and never did, but was it necessary to compare him to Kanye and Jerry West? I find it unnecessarily demeaning.
No dishonor
. in being compared to Jerry West, one of the all-time greats as a player and more recently as a very successful GM and advisor to several teams.
Obviously it was my list of known Wests, all the ones that came to mind, in an attempt to lighten the conversation, not score popularity points. Even progressive black candidates are not off limits to criticism and should be able to take some gentle ribbing. If not, they should not be involved in politics. But, no, generally I don't tiptoe around doing teacup and finger bowl Miss Manners politics.
There is also
Michelle West, brilliant writer of intricate fantasy novels. One of my faves.
Mary Bennett
I never imagined you tiptoeing around,
but the image it creates certainly lightens the mood.
It would be nice --
if the Cornel West for President campaign were NOT a vanity project.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
And this field
doesn't need yet another vanity project candidate. We already have Marianne and Cenk, and that's depressing enough.
Btw, I'd comment less on CW and more on Marianne, but she doesn't appear to have any supporters here, her name is not brought up, so I don't comment. Are even her friends Krystal and Kyle still pushing her?
I happen to know a little something about the
movement Williamson came out of. Not enough to be able to give a good account of it, but enough to recognize her for a carpet bagging opportunist and dilletantet.
Mary Bennett
What are the chances of RFKJr carrying even one state?
The last third party to do that was George Wallace'a "American Independent" party back in 1968, and he took five states in the deepest of the Deep South.
Best results ever for a third party were in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive or "Bull Moose" Party took six states scattered in the North and West (including most of California, which split 11-2, which has never been allowed to happen again).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
A full year out
and already at 22% in the polls as an indy candidate? I'd say pretty good chances. Too many months ahead to make accurate predictions. It will be a wild year. Trump on trial and Biden maybe out of the game.
There is a lack of seriousness about the West campaign
which I find disturbing. For some of us, this election is important. I do not want to live through four years of Trump taking revenge for everyone who opposed him and of local MAGA types thinking "Now we get to run things."
Someone over at the Orange Menace was saying comments about Biden's age and mental state are "racist" because what those critics are REALLY talking about is the VP. IDK about anyone else, but if I want to criticize Harris, I will criticize Harris.
Back when Doau was still with the West campaign--I neither know nor care why he left--he was telling Sabby all about what a great man West is and going on about philosophers West has read and recommended. I have no reason or need to denigrate the man's scholarship; if Mittle European phil is his field, good for him for being an expert in it, but not one American thinker, not even William James or W.E.B. Dubois, was mentioned. What I got out of that interview, besides that Doau is a foreign mercenary who hadn't ought to be allowed near our elections, was a distinct impression of West as one more American intellectual who, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, continues to believe that the USA is part of Europe.
RFK, Jr. may be all in for Israel, but he is not on board with other Zionist pet obsessions, like open doors immigration and hate! hate! hate! on Russia. Israel has had only 2 executions in its history and, I believe, the peculiar institution is illegal there just as it is here. Most "Islamic Republics" seem to resort to judicial murder as a matter of course, and slavery is legal and openly practiced in at least some of them.
Mary Bennett
Some good points.
With another 4 yrs of Trump, as he trashes the annoying parts of the Constitution he doesn't like, I sometimes think with his attempt at dictatorship we'll get Civil War 2.0, the country becoming the Disunited States of America, broken up into several regions Red and Blue. However, with Biden the fear is that we will get WW3 as the stubborn elderly man seems to have gladly given over FP to the neocon warmongers at State. My view is that RFK Jr is the best person to help us avoid both evil outcomes.
Re CW, the lack of seriousness was signaled early on when he said he was in the race merely to "be a moment in a movement" which I interpret as being satisfied to occasionally get permission to have his voice heard in the media landscape while hopefully, magically, some larger movement develops around him. The indecisiveness and inconsistency of his alleged campaign has been apparent all along. Mostly it's been barely a campaign. And all too black- and IDPol-centric.
Academics and intellectuals also don't tend to do well as pols. The history is not promising for success. Bill Buckley and Norman Mailer, both NYC Mayoral candidates, failed. Gore Vidal's run for the senate 40 yrs ago fell well short. The intellectual Adlai Stevenson of course, two failed attempts at the presidency. They mostly tend to speak narrowly to their elite class rather than the larger less-educated body politic. Adlai spent far more time writing and revising his impressive speeches, rather than thinking about and discussing policy and effective ways to reach and persuade the public. Well, at least Vidal and Mailer were witty and interesting.
Response
Uh...
The "moment in a movement" comment is in fact the most serious thing Cornel West has said about his campaign. That comment marked his campaign off as something more serious than what one sees with Marianne Williamson or Cenk Uygur, who merely wish to become team players in the monolith while displaying a little shake-and-bake nonconformity to look good on stage. And if RFK Jr., a clear team player from his stand on Palestine, really wanted to start a new party, we'd see evidence of it already. RFK Jr. was forced out of the Democratic Party race, and so Williamson and Uygur still think we're going to see a real primary? I don't think so.
(This is not to say that none of those people would make a better President than Joe Biden, because it's clear at this point that Frank Caliendo would make a better President than Joe Biden.)
At any rate, Cornel West would be the serious candidate if he could actually put forth the institutional basis for the movement of which his candidacy is a moment. But it doesn't seem he can do that, at least not yet. The Civil Rights Movement famously had its basis in SNCC and SCLC. West once had the Green Party on his side back in the day, but apparently no longer.
(As for West's choice of philosophers -- so how are you going to critique capitalism while citing Americans? The best critiques of capitalism I know are from foreigners who visited America back in the day and who had backgrounds which prepared them to recognize American capitalism for what it was when they made those critiques. Asking Americans to critique capitalism is often like asking fish to assess water quality.)
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
I want a president who understands this country,
and does not see him or her self as emissary from some other and better planet.
Mary Bennett
That would be a critique of a Jill Stein candidacy.
Very recently:
Jill Stein launches 2024 bid as Green Party candidate
My essential point: the essence of the Green Party is encapsulated in the Ten Key Values proclaimed at its founding. There's nothing wrong with the Ten Key Values in themselves. The problem is that a political party/ movement behind such values would, in fact, be a voice from another planet. And I say this as a member of a Green Party.
The real problem with "Ten Key Values" thinking -- and you see plenty of this stuff among Democrats/ Liberals// Independents as well as Greens, all the way down to Greta Thunberg -- is that it hopes to build a movement around "environment". But nobody really gives two poops about "environment," as George Carlin pointed out some time ago, and so a phony movement has been constructed around "net zero" and "climate-friendly" to attract the well-off as a fig-leaf for oppression. In reality, any real force driving pushback against the existing juggernaut WOULD HAVE TO INVOLVE class struggle. This is the point of Matthew Huber's book Climate Change as Class War. The Greens, however, are not positioned to wage class struggle. They could be, but they aren't.
A resident of our planet, then, must be positioned to wage class struggle. Such a resident would fight for the remnants of Detroit and Cleveland and Binghamton New York, for the poor of Baltimore, for the burned-out suburbs of St. Louis, for Blacks in the KKK South, for the Cop City protesters, for those fighting for clean water in Flint, Michigan, for Appalachia, for the homeless of Oakland, and so on. I think Cornel West is currently the best option in that regard. He needs some institutional grounding -- he's needed institutional grounding for some time now -- and the fact of the matter is that he's currently looking for a campaign staff, something he seemingly shares in this regard with RFK Jr.. So one must ask if the efforts of all of the non-Republican anti-Biden teams will amount to nothing.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Careful getting
news reports from a nightclub comedian. Here, the increasingly anti-Kennedy Dore cites to an already fully anti-Kennedy twitter/X poster who seems interested in spreading misinformation about the campaign.
In this brief clip, Lori Spencer, Bobby's friend and co-host of the Strange Bedfellows podcast, clarifies with specifics that only 5 staffers left, most of whom had been brought in by Kucinich, most left with no ill will and probably not over I-P, and most continue to support RFK Jr and even plan to return. I find this detailed report, which names the 5 staffers who left, far more credible and honest than the wildly overblown headline delivered by Dore and the poster. https://lorispencer.wordpress.com
Interesting to hear about Jill Stein. She can at least credibly and substantively talk about the environmental challenges as the GP nominee. CW seemed out of his depth or a fish out of water in talking environment. The GP will at least have a better chance with Stein to put these issues back on the front burner, if she and the party really go all out to get their voices out there.
Problem for the Greens isn't that they failed to take the class warfare route, a sure party stopper, but that up to now, they have only been heard from every 4 yrs when the election rolls around. That party should be much more established, growing and thriving by now, 23 yrs after Nader. I've heard that inside that party tent, it's just too many overly sensitive balkanized groups protecting their turf and sensitive personal feelings. So not much opportunity or energy left to grow the party or make media inroads.
Hopefully this post will help you confront --
-- the matter of "environmental issues" as I've laid it out.
Maybe it was my fault to tiptoe around it the first time around. THERE ARE NO "ENVIRONMENTAL" ISSUES. What there is, is a sham that pretends that we can block a pipeline or a development or buy a couple of solar panels or we can advertise a business or two as "net zero" and this counts according to some sort of magical reckoning as "environmentalism." Sure, there are lawyers fighting to preserve forests. If the mega-corporations need the wood, they will find a way around the lawyers. Or maybe climate change will make it impossible for the forests themselves to survive. Sure, there are "Green New Deals" that can be good things. But they can be good things to the extent to which they HELP THE WORKING CLASS.
The PREREQUISITE of any serious environmental reckoning for planet Earth is that we put an end to what Riley and Brenner call "political capitalism."
The formula is simple. Anyone who wants "profit" and has sufficient money can rent politicians, and the end-result will be that the government will 1) do what they want and 2) create more billionaires to tighten the noose a little. The current disregard for the First Amendment should smash any illusions you may have that the Constitution will protect you from political capitalism. The current genocide against Gaza continues because it is being funded by Zionist billionaires. The only opposition to this sort of thing will have to involve class struggle: a movement against the society ruled by billionaires.
If you want an "environmental" reckoning, therefore, you must put an end to capitalism. And the first step toward such an end is to end political capitalism. Jill Stein? Cornel West? RFK Jr.? Marianne Williamson? Cenk Uygur? Right now it's "whatever."
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Heard you
the first time, no need to shout. We just disagree that there are "no environmental issues." Contra your cite to the rather ignorant Carlin (assuming he's being serious and not doing 7 minutes of sarcastic comedy; I didn't make it to the end), these issues are very real, and need our immediate attention on a crisis basis.
What is clearly lacking is strong leadership on the issue where climate change and resource scarcity are discussed in simple but existential terms in ways the public can grasp. Talking about tax and emissions credits just puts the public to sleep and keeps the issue on the back burner. Dr Stein might be one of those strong voices, maybe, we'll see. She definitely has a longer and deeper familiarity with the issue than CW, who goes about as deep in talking about the environment as I do talking about quantum physics or jazz.
And what won't fly at all in the public sphere is some 60s New Left class struggle approach. Capitalism is too firmly entrenched in this country. It could only be possible to achieve socialist nirvana with a start over in a region or two in a split-up country as I discussed earlier. And even that would be a tough sell.
Get back to me though if Cornel -- who recently had to be pressured to return a big contribution from a curious RW billionaire of his acquaintance -- should ever publicly advocate getting rid of capitalism in the middle of a presidential campaign. He will be sure to get about 0.7% of the vote.
if RFK Jr., a clear team player from his stand on Palestine, re
if RFK Jr., a clear team player from his stand on Palestine, really wanted to start a new party, we'd see evidence of it already.
No, I don't think we would. Remember, the guy is a lawyer with years of courtroom experience. He understands timing. I could wish for better foreign policy understanding, just like I wished that Bernie had had a strong peace plank in his platform. I think he would now be president if he had had such a policy.
Mary Bennett
Just a guess
Don't think he'll carry 1 state, but for both r and d parties he's a spoiler. I can see both parties funnelling money, in the shadows, some how, to make sure he spoils it for the other guy.
I doubt he expects to be elected
although he won't say as much. I do suspect that what his campaign is really about is prelude to foundation of a new party, a for real one that, he surely hopes, will be a factor in American politics for decades to come. Notice Kennedy refuses to cater to MAGA or far left obsessions. Among other things, I see that refusal as a message to the financial supporters of both their factions that he won't be bought by either side.
Mary Bennett
I'm confidant
Bobby is in this to win, not just show or establish a beginning for a new party. I don't recall him talking about the idea of starting one. It's hard enough, expensive and very time consuming, just for him to run for president as an indy. He is out there actually campaigning in a number of states nationwide, he's constantly communicating substantively with his readers on twitter/X and other social media, the always necessary fundraising, and as we know he's had a few security scares to have to deal with.
All that, and also start a new party? I don't think it's remotely been on his radar.
Fair enough.
Howsomever, someone has the wind up about 3rd parties. Our favorite senator, Manchin of West Virginia, is retiring and making 3rd. party "of the center" noises. Now, there can be no doubt about our boy Manchin, being bought and paid for by corporate interests. Cooptation time again. How often have we seen this movie?
Mary Bennett
Manchin
isn't retiring but merely not running for senate reelection. He might be positioning himself, clearing the deck, to accept an offer from the No Labels Party for their 2024 ticket. There are still two openings. Would be right up his alley -- a collection of corporate-friendly centrist Rs and conservaDems straight from the Morning Joe green room who believe in the adage that what's good for General Motors is good for America.
"I won't be voting for RFK."
Me neither. I won't be voting again in 2024, because the same people will continue the absurd policies of the Federal Government that are not set by whichever TV performer is living in the White House. The ship of State is sinking and whoever is pulling the strings has their own agenda which is not open for debate or vote.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Kennedy thinks
there is some kind of competition for the Darwin Awards and he doesn't realize it's a posthumus kind of thing.
Maybe if Ilan Omar could run with Boebert, I'd vote for Kennedy. I'd take Manchin first. Between Kennedy and Trump would be tough. I don't think there has been an election where people voted for someone since 12, it's always against the more cockadoodle one. Clinton and Trump had to take the cake, people thinking "well Trump is some kind of cray cray A-hole but at least he isn't Clinton"