The roller-coaster campaign for the presidency could be getting thrown for another loop.
With speculation mounting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering a withdrawal from the race and throwing his support to former President Donald Trump, Kennedy’s running mate doubled down Thursday on an idea she broached publicly earlier this week.
And she outlined an election nightmare for Vice President Kamala Harris and her supporters.
Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr.’s partner in his independent presidential bid, took to social media to highlight how frightened Democrats are — and how it’s showing in their reaction to comments she made Tuesday about the possibility of RFJ Jr. “joining forces” with Trump.
My old Dem buddies have been flooding me with frantic calls, texts, and emails. Unlike Ro, I wouldn’t dream of airing those private conversations publicly, but the message is clear: they’re terrified of the idea of our movement joining forces with Donald Trump. When I point out…
— Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan) August 22, 2024
“My old Dem buddies have been flooding me with frantic calls, texts, and emails …,” Shanahan wrote.
After taking a shot at Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna over a story he planted with CBS News in April, Shanahan drove her point home, declaring that “… the message is clear: they’re terrified of the idea of our movement joining forces with Donald Trump.
Are you voting for Trump?
Yes: 99% (290 Votes)
No: 1% (2 Votes)
“When I point out what the Democratic Party and their super PACs have done to sabotage our campaign, their response is always, ‘but Trump is worse.’ Here’s an idea: stop suing us. Let us debate. Quit rigging the media and the polls. It’s a simple formula, people — get with it.”
To be clear, Shanahan is no conservative — or anyone most conservatives would even consider as an ally, just like RFK Jr. is no conservative’s idea of an ideal political partner.
But her point about the emptiness of the Democratic position is dead on.
Democrats are petrified of the Kennedy campaign and its potential impact on the 2024 vote, and have been from the get-go. No less an authority than Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary and current Democratic mouthpiece on MSNBC, called third-party candidacies — and Kennedy’s especially — a “huge, huge problem” for President Joe Biden’s re-election bid back in April.
Just because Biden has been replaced as Democratic standard-bearer by Vice President Kamala Harris, there’s no reason to think those dynamics have changed.
Besides being terrified by third-party candidacies, Democrats are relying more on scare-mongering about Trump and a potential Trump second term than in pushing their own ideas. As Shanahan wrote, “Trump is worse” is about their only response to any substantive complaint.
Meanwhile, they’ve engaged in barely restrained lawfare against the Kennedy campaign. As CNN reported in June, Democrats are committed to keeping RFK Jr. (and Shanahan with him) off the ballot in as many states as possible).
That’s not the behavior of a political party that’s confident of its own beliefs — or of their resonance with American voters.
This being politics, in a year that’s been marked by unpredictable events, there’s a chance of course that joining of forces between Trump and RFK Jr. might actually hurt Trump.
According to an Associated Press report Thursday, polls now show that Kennedy is more attractive to Republicans than he is to Democrats, meaning Trump might not gain more votes by bringing Kennedy into the fold.
Trump could also alienate some supporters by allying with Kennedy because of RFK Jr.’s basically Democratic political DNA and just plain weirdness (not to mention Shanahan herself).
But there’s a reason for those Democratic friends of Shanahan to be “terrified.”
Kamala Harris might not be a mumbling, stumbling octogenarian like her boss — who’s still the current president of the United States, God help us.
But she’s also an empty vessel, being allowed to float on leftist platitudes, no matter how much establishment media hype tries to cover that up.
An anti-establishment figure, bearing the magical name (to progressives) of “Kennedy” joining up with her rival would be a blow to her image — even among her own voters.
If Shanahan’s Democratic friends are “frantic,” it’s because they know what a nightmare that could be.
