Gods I hope so. The amount of damage he did convincing people that vaccines cause autism is incalculable. Especially to people on the spectrum.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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He wasn't ever going to get elected; the big question was whether he could serve as a spoiler and help elect Trump.
I don't get how it would help trump, RFK Jr is such a right-wing nutjob, I don't think anyone who would vote for Biden would vote for him instead. Its much more likely to pull votes from Trump instead since he's just the right kind of nutjob to appeal to the extreme Q-Anon supporting far right who would otherwise vote for Trump.
The idea was basically that having the name Kennedy and touting his environmental work (from before when a worm ate part of his brain) would suddenly induce a bunch of Democrats to vote for him. So he got to dine with billionaires and they tossed him money.
Don’t underestimate the otherwise liberal voters who have been part of the anti (measles) vaccine movement for decades.
I think it was also to capture the crowd who maybe disliked Trump, but didn't feel like they could go Biden. His running gives these people someone other than Biden to vote for. It's the reason Trump's backers have been funneling money into his campaign (his "supporters" haven't). And and vote not for Biden helps Trump either win, or with building support for his next insurrection upon losing.
Meanwhile, every single other living Kennedy denounced him and endorsed Biden.
Yeah, but there is a significant portion of the voting public that are willfully ignorant.
It's psychology.
The most common reason people keep giving for voting Biden is "not trump". And lots of people don't like trump, but will never vote for any Dem.
If there's literally any other options, it's easier for someone to pick one rather than leave it blank or write in a name.
2020 was insanely close and decided by a handful of states.
It's a weird situation where for most people their state is decided before the first vote is cast, where other states it could come down to 4 digit votes.
So things that seem like they'd have no effect, can actually be huge.
Like, RFK can cost Biden 10% in Cali, and it doesn't matter at all. But if he costs 0.1% in Michigan it could change the election.
We need to switch to popular vote for president, but it'll probably never happen. Until then random stupid shit like rfk can decide elections
I can't see a world where RFK costs Biden a higher percentage than Trump in any state, that seems like FUD being spread by bad actors. I am not saying anyone here is a bad actor, I am just thinking that people are fearing the worst possible outcome and bad actors are praying on that to push an agenda and because of Wizard's First Rule ("People are Stupid. People will believe anything because they want to believe it or because they are afraid it might be true." [Amusingly that quote comes from an Author that if he were still alive would probably vote for Trump]) it spreads, just like most other misinformation.
You can't just say he'll cost Biden 0.1% in Michigan without also considering how much he would affect trump, if he costs Biden 0.1% and Trump 0.9% he still only gets 1% of the vote, but it hurt Trump 90% more than it hurts Biden, which in the end will actually improve Biden's position. And the newly (within the last 4 years) never-Trumper republicans who would never-Biden as well who votes for RFK Jr can't be counted as a "biden" vote since they would never vote for him to begin with, if anything its a vast majority of 2020 Trump votes that are shifted to RFK Jr.
https://elections2024.thehill.com/national/biden-trump-rfk-general/
RFK makes the race much closer, if he's going down in flames, that's good for Biden.
You can’t just say he’ll cost Biden 0.1% in Michigan without also considering how much he would affect trump
I didn't, I said it doesn't take much in one of the handful of states where votes matter. Because someone was saying they didn't understand how RFK could effect the race.
Everything is hypothetical until the election. But if there's only Biden and trump on people's ballots, it's likely to help Biden more than trump. This isn't just some idea I came up with.
Unless this is one of those things where you're gonna say polls aren't real, if that's the case this isn't gonna be productive
From your own usa today article:
according to the poll of 1,261 adults surveyed May 21 through May 23. It found third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein — not Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are making the difference, pulling support away from Biden.
Emphasis added by me. And I agree, with the article, other 3rd party candidates are likely to pull more from Biden than Trump, but also in agreement with your article, not RFK Jr. And it goes back to people pushing RFK Jr as a threat to Biden, when in reality he's not at all a threat to Biden. Its FUD being pushed by bad actors and people are falling for it and is distracting people from the real threats to Biden, which is Cornel West and Jill Stein.
Like I said it's all hypothetical until the election.
My whole point was something that's negligible on a national level, can still change the election in the few states that will decide the election.
But Trump voters are trump voters because they want trump. Biden voters are Biden voters... Because they don't want trump.
The less options on a ballot the more "not trump" translates to "Biden"
His chances were essentially nil to begin with. The only reason he's even being discussed at all instead of being lumped in like the other no-hopers is because he has juuuuuust enough support to be able to make either Trump or Biden's math slightly more difficult.
Was announcing that he (literally) had the brain worms supposed to be good for his campaign? This seems like the sanest trend in politics for at least a decade.
Are you claiming he announced this as part of his campaign? The misinformation around this brain worm stuff is pretty astounding, as are people’s glee in dogpiling over it.
Because facts do matter:
- RFK Jr found and removed the brain worm 15 years ago.
- It’s an incredibly common parasite which most often is contracted in large scale livestock farms, the kind of which he was litigating in the 2000s.
- Almost 2 Billion people have or have had this same parasite in their lifetimes.
- The story was resurfaced earlier this year in May once it became apparent he was a threat to the Trump campaign, by the New York Post (owned by Fox News Corp).
Did you write this or was it written by your brain worm?
Brain worm
Worm found (dead) but not removed.
Also the deposition where he revealed the dead brain worm was using its damage as an excuse to pay his divorced wife less alimony because he had reduced mental capacity to earn with.
Thanks for the correction!
NYT also used it and I believe they're the ones who broke the story first.
Couldn’t tell who was first, made a best guess on the article dates I dug up. Thanks!
It seems the editors weren’t able to reach his worm for comment
Wait "essentially nil"? Is it actually possible to become president if your name is only on ballots in 9 states?