This is a bit of a follow up to my post from a week ago, in which I made the not terribly difficult prediction that RFK Jr. would drop out and Trump would promise him a role in his administration.
It’s not good news for the Harris campaign, but I’m going to look on the bright side and suggest it’s not the great news that the Trumpers will make of it.
Let’s reflect a bit. Who were the RFK voters? At the very first, when he was really an unknown quantity, some of his backers may have been Democrats or Democrat leaning voters who wanted Biden to step aside. He is, after all, Bobby Kennedy’s son. Once those folks learned that he was in fact a total nutcase, most of them deserted him, and as the polls have shown, he has drawn from Trump.
So think about this. Why were those people ready to vote for someone other than Trump? There’s a host of possible reasons. They may think it’s not a good idea to put a criminal in the White House. They may think it’s not a good thing to try to overthrow the government. I’ll stop the list there as there are almost an infinite number of reasons why one would not want to vote for Trump, even if one were inclined to vote for a “conservative”.
So, now these folks have to make a decision. Do they vote for Trump just because the guy they were going to vote for because they didn’t want to vote for Trump tells them to vote for Trump? A guy for whom they never really felt much enthusiasm, but he wasn’t Trump or Biden. Or do they either not vote or vote for some third party candidate, assuming there are any left on the ballot.
Of course they won’t all do the same thing, but my guess is that a substantial number simply won’t vote, will write someone in, or vote for any available third party candidate. They were prepared to throw their vote away before he dropped out, so there’s no reason to think they won’t be willing to throw their votes away now.