‘Deranged’ move that could lose Kamala Harris the election
In hours, Kamala Harris is due to give her most important speech ever. Yet, one day later, a move by a minor politician could ruin her chances.
For some at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week it’s the name that they refuse to utter out loud.
The Macbeth of the Midwest, if you like.
No, not Donald Trump. Supporters of Kamala Harris bring his name up on any occasion. They hope by reminding voters of Mr Trump as much as possible that will gift them the keys to the White House.
The name that delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) prefer to not say is that of a far less influential politician. And yet a move he is expected to make this week could gift Mr Trump the White House keys instead.
“We don’t need to give energy to bad folks,” Derren Cook, from Laplace, west of New Orleans, said about Robert F Kennedy Jr, the maverick independent presidential candidate from a storied Democrat family.
On Thursday, US time, Vice President Harris is due to give perhaps the most important speech of her career at the DNC. She will try and persuade a deeply divided America to elect her as their president.
That momentum could be stolen the very next day as Mr Kennedy, also known as RFK, has hinted he will withdraw from the race and throw his weight behind not the Democrats, but the Republicans.
‘Deranged’
“It sounds like the kind of deranged thing that RFK would do,” Cindy Hohman of Indianapolis said.
Although she has no qualms about speaking Mr Kennedy’s name.
“I don’t know how annoyed people must be to not mention his name, since we’ve all been saying Donald J Trump’s name for the last 10 years.”
It’s been rumoured that Mr Kennedy had been seeking meetings with both the Trump and Harris campaigns with the price of his fealty the promise of a cabinet position in a future administration.
Mr Trump told Fox News that Mr Kennedy, who has been accused of being a conspiracy theorist and has long said vaccines cause autism, was “a very good person” and he would be “honoured if he endorsed me”.
He also claimed Mr Kennedy would have beaten Mr Biden to be the Democrat nominee if he had run against him.
Mr Kennedy has stated his policies as “reversing the chronic disease epidemic, ending the war machine, protecting freedom of speech, and ending politicisation of enforcement agencies,” among others.
‘Blow it up’
Mr Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr has chimed in and said Mr Kennedy should be appointed to a “three letter agency” so he can “blow it up”.
One of those “three letter” agencies is the CIA. Mr Kennedy has said he is “aware” of the possibility that the CIA could try to assassinate him.
This week Mr Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said that if they remained in the race it ran “the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency”.
‘Naive’
The prospect of Mr Kennedy’s voters giving a boost to Mr Trump is jangling nerves at the DNC.
“I think every single vote makes a difference, and for us to pretend like it doesn’t, it’s naive,” Michelle Drake, a Chicago native at the DNC told news.com.au.
And in this incredibly tight, sliver thin, race, Ms Drake may be right.
On the one hand, Mr Kennedy’s polling is derisory. While in some individual polls he’s at 5 per cent of the electorate, in political website The Hill’s poll of polls he’s now not even at 3 per cent.
But Ms Harris’ national lead over Mr Trump is so narrow that 3 per cent may be all the former president needs to become the next president.
Some pollsters have also suggested that much of Ms Harris’ current positive polling is due to former Kennedy voters swinging back to the Democrats after Mr Biden dropped out.
That means the rump of Mr Kennedy’s current voters could be far more conducive to the idea of voting for Mr Trump.
“He’s a known entity, and he’s as just as vilified and disliked as Trump,” said Ms Hohman.
She didn’t feel that independent voters who were backing Mr Kennedy would slide over to Mr Trump simply because of his say so.
Mr Cook agreed and said the “blue wave” of Ms Harris would negate any Kennedy voters who might now opt for the Republicans.
But Blair Janis, from Chicago, was less confident RFK endorsing Mr Trump wouldn’t have an effect.
“Everyone’s votes matters. So I wouldn’t say (Mr Kennedy backing Mr Trump) doesn’t matter whatsoever,” she told news.com.au.
“It just makes me believe even more wholeheartedly that we have to be talking to every single person and knocking on every single door.”
As for Mr Kennedy’s motivations, Ms Janis said: “I think that really shows you what his values are”.
“I genuinely believe, people enter public service because they want to make a difference in people’s lives.
“It’s not particularly high paying at the vast majority of levels, and it’s not prestigious at the vast majority of levels.
“For someone like that, who is just chasing the media spotlight – chasing a position at the Capitol I think – tells you what their personal politics is, which, to me, is not very strong and certainly not rooted in representing the American people”.
Ms Drake noted that while RFK might be a Kennedy, he doesn’t have the backing of most of JFK’s descendants.
“(Mr Kennedy’s) own family is suggesting that we all do something very different besides voting for him and voting for Trump.
“And I trust that his family.
“If they thought he was in the best interest of the country, that they would support (Mr Kennedy).”
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