He has long trafficked in unproven theories — from being anti-vaccine, to his claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci per- petuated the COVID-19 pandemic to promote vaccines (Kennedy wrote a book on this), to his belief that the CIA was behind the assassination of his uncle JFK in 1963. “Overall, I think RFK Jr. hurts Biden
more,” Chapman University professor Luke Nichter, author of the critically acclaimed The Year That Broke Politics, tells Newsmax. “But he siphons sup- port from Trump, too.” The number of state ballots to
which Kennedy gains access is any- one’s guess. In mid-April, he secured the critical battleground of Michigan, in addition to Utah, and his campaign has claimed enough signatures for at least seven more, including California. “If RFK Jr. is on the ballot in all 50
states, it is not at all clear that any votes he receives would have gone to Trump or Biden,” Arizona State University professor Donald Critchlow, author of three much-praised books on political parties, tells Newsmax. Critchlow says that early polls tend
to suggest more votes for third-party candidates than are actually cast on Election Day. “Early polling suggests that RFK
will benefit Trump, but this should not be counted on Election Day, when voters are confronted with a clear choice between Trump and Biden,” Critchlow says. “RFK will be an option for a protest
vote, but when push comes to shove, voters who told early pollsters that they were voting third party will decide to go with either Biden or Trump.” RFK Jr. might be important for
younger voters, who appear not to be wild about either Biden or Trump, but their vote won’t matter in a deep red or deep blue state, he explains. “Of all the swing states, the youth vote
might matter most in Wisconsin, where Biden just barely defeated Trump in 2020 by a little more than 20,000 votes.” Gerard Kassar, chairman of the New York Conservative Party, thinks RFK Jr.
8% 1% 0% TRUMP BIDEN RFK WEST STEIN TRUMP BIDEN
. . . But when the 3 third-party hopefuls were factored in:
44% 40%
hurts Biden more than Trump. “I would say of every six votes cast,
four come off of Biden and two off of Trump,” he says. “In New York, if RFK makes the ballot, the state will be competitive.”
BACK TO THE FOLD Throughout history, third parties have just not caught on, and their leaders quickly went back to the pro- verbial fold — that is, one of the two major parties from which they emerged as insurgents. In 1912, former President Theo-
dore Roosevelt came in second as the Progressive Party candidate against Democrat Woodrow Wilson and ahead of incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft. Four years later, Roosevelt was
EMERSON POLL:
Trump defeats Biden head to head . . .
46% 43%
back in the Republican home because, he concluded, “You cannot hold a party like the Progressive Party togeth- er. There are no loaves and fishes . . . no financial support.” Both Strom Thurmond, after his
1948 presidential run on the States’ Rights Party ticket, and George Wal- lace, following his 1968 bid on the American Independent Party ticket, abandoned the third-party endeavor to return to the Democratic Party in which their careers began (although Thurmond, by then a senator and sensing where the wind was blowing in his native South Carolina, became a Republican in 1964). After making the most successful third-party bid for president in 1992, H. Ross Perot made a less-successful bid in 1996, and then eventually went back to his old habit of backing candi- dates of both parties. Before his death, in 2016, Perot supported longtime friend and fellow political outsider Trump for president. No one expects a Kennedy or a
West to devote themselves to a third party, although Stein now twice will have borne the banner of the Green Party initially carried by Ralph Nader. In fact, Nader in 2000 drew enough
votes in Florida (97,488) to have enabled George W. Bush’s 437-vote victory over Al Gore (with more than 6 million votes cast statewide), changing the outcome of the election. Will RFK Jr. be the Nader of 2024,
tipping the scales in a neck-and-neck race between Biden and Trump? West and Stein could also be impact players. For instance: The more than
100,000 voters of Arab heritage in Michigan’s Dearborn area, many of them furious at Biden’s unyielding support of Israel, could easily vote for West, who calls for an immediate ceasefire with Hamas — and all but guaranteeing the Wolverine State’s 16 electoral votes for Trump. Stein’s left-of-center agenda could
peel liberal Democrats away from Biden in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.
JUNE 2024 | NEWSMAX 9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
