Nate Silver, an orthodox D but also a fairly objective observer of strategy, thinks RFK will do less damage to Biden now that he’s running as an independent. I know nothing about political strategy, but I did reach the same conclusion earlier by a historical analogy.
Mashing together two earlier items, first about RFK and then about Yang. The second part now applies to RFK since he’s independent.
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In April 2023 when RFK announced as D:
He’s obviously a pied piper. Remember: Before he started this crap, he was the head lawyer for the Gaian movement. He didn’t switch sides. He piedpipered the antivaxers into the Gaian movement, and now he’s hoping to use their strong support to elect Trump. He may pretend otherwise, but the antivaxers are all for Trump, and the guaranteed effect of his move will be to elect Trump so we can start the lockdowns and strangulations and riots all over again. Just what we fucking need.
Worst of all, this time the “opponents” will be violently supporting the lockdowns and muzzles and riots, as long as Trump doesn’t add the needles. The old bad scam vs good scam trick.
RFK has picked the best strategy. Spoilers inside the party can be effective. Third parties are just physically impossible.
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In August 2022 when Yang was announcing as an independent:
What is Yang trying to do? (And now RFK as well.)
(1) Just pull in more money? (2) Spoiler? (3) Passionate mission to fix the country?
The difference between spoiler and mission was crystal clear in 1948. Both parties had strong alternatives. Harold Stassen was a spoiler. He was hired to break Taft, and every move he made was perfectly calculated to break Taft. Henry Wallace was on a mission. He firmly believed in the New Deal, and he had played a major part in its success as Agriculture Secretary. He absolutely HATED what Truman was doing. Truman was helping Deepstate to rise from its grave, ruining the economy, making unnecessary wars, censoring the remnants of FDR. On the other side, Strom Thurmond hated Truman’s wokeness, which was also contrary to the spirit of FDR.
So Truman faced two passionate mission candidates outside the D party, and Taft faced one expert spoiler inside the R party. The spoiler worked. Unpopular bland Dewey got the R nomination instead of charismatic non-interventionist Taft. Truman won.
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If the same principle works this time, RFK would do less damage to Biden as an independent than as a spoiler inside D.
Polistra's Mill 