Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't have to get on the ballot in many states to cause Biden more than a little heartburn or even a heart attack.
Elections are won state by state, and if Kennedy gets on the ballot in certain key states his appeal to independent voters and some demographics could steal enough votes to hand those states to Donald Trump.
NEW for @POLITICOMag: How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Could Doom Biden With Latinos in Nevada and Arizona https://t.co/IpuTdFtsXJ
— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) April 4, 2024
At the moment, Kennedy is on only one state's ballot: Utah. But that could soon change as signature campaigns have ramped up, with both Arizona and Nevada now likely to allow him on their ballots.
To date, Kennedy is officially on the November ballot in just one state: Utah. But his campaign and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, announced in the last month they have collected more than enough signatures to make the ballot in the critical Southwestern battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada, where roughly one in five voters are Latino.
Those signatures are still subject to challenge, but if Kennedy does appear on the ballot, it could create dire complications for the Biden campaign. Latino Democrats are now taking the threat of Kennedy’s campaign deadly seriously after national and state leaders were briefed on a previously unreported poll in mid-February by Democratic group Equis Research, which showed Kennedy performing surprisingly well among Latino voters in a dozen battleground states, effectively splintering Biden’s Hispanic coalition from 2020, when he garnered 59 percent Hispanic support.
Biden's coalition was fragile in 2020, and much of his appeal was based on the fact that "he's not Trump." The power of that appeal has waned quite a bit, and Latinos--at least citizens--are among the most entrepreneurial members of our society, making the Biden economy a particular problem this year.
The poll of 2,010 registered Latino voters found Kennedy winning one in five young Latino voters, and also reported him capturing a sizable 17 percent Latino support in Arizona and an even more robust 21 percent in Nevada— the highest number among the battleground states polled. The drag on Biden’s Latino support was so great in the survey that Trump was winning among Hispanics overall in 12 battleground states, 41 percent to Biden’s 34 percent.
If those numbers held in November, it would represent a seismic break in the Democratic coalition and a remaking of the electoral map, leading Democrats to likely lose Nevada and Arizona. In the wake of Trump’s 2020 gains with Hispanics from South Florida to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and even in parts of New Jersey and California, Democrats could still rest easy because the entire Southwest held. But if Nevada and Arizona fall to Trump as a result of erosion in the Latino vote, it would mean Biden is likely suffering similar losses across the country, presaging an election loss.
One of the key mistakes the Democrats have made in recent years is assuming that they have a permanent lock on minority voters. Another is, of course, the assumption that open borders would appeal to Latinos.
Neither has turned out to be true. While Democrats are still the choice of most minority voters, their appeal has been waning as the party moved Left and turned into the home of cultural elites with bizarre priorities. As much as the Democrats nod to bread-and-butter issues, their agenda is filled with alphabet ideology and economy-crushing policies.
Transing kids and making energy expensive are not high on the priority list for working-class people.
It’s hard to overstate just how small Biden’s margin for error is in either Arizona or Nevada. In 2020, when Biden became the first Democrat to turn Arizona blue since Bill Clinton in 1996, he won the state by less than 11,000 votes. In neighboring Nevada, his cushion was 34,000 votes, just 2.4 percentage points, and the state has continued to move toward Republicans since.
The Democrats' turnout campaigns depend on a simple calculus: turn out vast numbers of voters in reliable demographics to run up the totals. If those demographics become less reliable, the equation changes.
It's also hard to figure out how many extra votes they can turn out, given that their strategy of collecting votes from low-propensity voters has limits--assuming no voter fraud. The 2020 election saw the highest vote totals ever for both candidates. How many more votes are out there to get?
Who knows? If I were a Republican bigwig, I would be hiring hoards of people to watch for ballot shenanigans. Armed with cameras.
We keep getting mixed signals about how Democrats are looking at the 2024 election. Stories range from "panic in the streets" to "quietly confident."
Kennedy has the potential to be another Ross Perot or John Anderson—a figure who can change the electoral dynamic enough to change the outcome.
If Trump winds up winning a plurality of Latino votes because of Kennedy, that will represent a seismic shift, although not one that should shock anybody. As with earthquakes on the San Andreas Faulty, you could see this one coming. It is a matter of when not if.
That's because the Democrats have abandoned the working class, and minorities are disproportionately members of that class.
This is going to be an interesting campaign to watch.
