What if RFK, Jr. wins New Hampshire?
And Cornel West, who will be going the distance as a third party candidate, is not helping matters either.
While RFK, Jr. is not going to get the nomination, a win in NH next year is conceivable and possibly very damaging to Biden's general election prospects. And Cornel West, who will be going the full distance to November 2024 as a third party candidate, is not helping matters any. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the fourth of his line to seek the presidency, is causing eyebrows to arch all over the political world,” is how Mona Charen put it on The Bullwark. So it is probably best to take this question head on early, before the New Hampshire primary on February 13, 2024. Because Kennedy, though highly educated, has some dangerous ideas and is being endorsed with open arms by all the wrong kinds of people.
First, some background on the Granite state. And there are a lot of moving parts involved here. For example, is New Hampshire even going to be the first primary on the 2024 primary calendar? The verdict is still out on that and we are only nine months away until playtime. President Biden and the Democratic Party’s decision to place the South Carolina primary ahead of New Hampshire for diversity reasons (or, by other calculations, a belated thank you to Congressman Clyburn) has been described by strategists as “playing with matches.” And it could conceivably give the potentially incendiary RFK an opening (Is that what he’s been discussing with Steve Bannon and Roger Stone?). Remember, always, that according to Monmouth, 4 in 10 voters would rather Biden step down, despite having such a successful first term. What gives?
Whither New Hampshire? Whither South Carolina? The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted last week to kick the can down the road until September. So, New Hampshire has a couple of months to decide whether or not it is going to comply with the The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which requires the granite state to move their primary behind South Carolina. If New Hampshire decided to not comply with The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, then President Biden would not campaign in the state (at least physically). And New Hampshire’s state motto, we cannot fail to note, is live free or die. So there’s that.
From Charles Mahtesian of Politico:
And so Biden faces a quandary of his own design. If he participates in the primary of a state that’s poised to go rogue, he risks violating party rules — which would likely impose sanctions on candidates or states in violation. (A Biden campaign aide said the president and his team would abide by any sanctions imposed by the DNC, if that were to happen.)
… But the optics surrounding the potential train wreck would be a messy distraction, at precisely the wrong time — the official outset of the presidential primary season. Comparisons would be drawn to two of the most famous and consequential New Hampshire primary challenges of yesteryear — Democrat Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and Republican Pat Buchanan in 1992 — even if the circumstances next year aren’t remotely similar.
“In terms of materially impacting his reelection, it’s probably a minimal effect. But New Hampshire is still an important swing state in the general election that you can’t take for granted and you want positive movement,” said Chris Moyer, a veteran of Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) 2020 presidential campaign in New Hampshire. “You don’t want any negatives along the way as he looks ahead to 2024.”
Biden is at present being urged to do a write-in campaign, without actually placing boots-on-the-ground, which could be messy, and not without some backlash from the people of South Carolina. Again, Kennedy is not going to win the nomination. But he could run an insurgent grassroots campaign against Biden in New Hampshire — the “Live Free or Die” state — as an unconventional maverick, an archetype that lands well in Nashua living rooms and along the Merrimack. New Hampshire, at 9,304 square miles of pretty New England towns and wilderness, is not averse to championing the little guy taking on the giant. Think: John McCain in 2008. Or, going back further, Pat Buchanan in 1996. RFK, Jr., whether you like to admit it or not, fits that mold. And it looks like he is campaigning in New Hampshire exactly along those lines, David against The Biden Goliath, the Democratic Party and all the bigwigs. From The Hill’s article, by Hanna Trudo, titled "How RFK Jr. could win the New Hampshire primary":
“It was President Biden’s decision to deprive New Hampshire of its historic ‘First in the Nation Primary’ status,” said Dennis Kucinich, Kennedy’s campaign manager, who launched long shot bids for the nomination in 2004 and 2008, much to the chagrin of his party’s standard-bearers.
The former Ohio congressman and Cleveland mayor suggested they intend to court voters protective of the state’s sacred early voting slot.
“Our decision is to respect the people of New Hampshire,” Kucinich told The Hill in a Monday statement.
Biden outraged many Democrats in the state when he proposed last year to make South Carolina the first to vote in the primary, citing its diversity, and putting it ahead of New Hampshire and Iowa, which had always gone first. Though the calendar hasn’t been formally settled yet, many New Hampshire Democrats are already suggesting the state could defy the Democratic National Committee and hold their primary ahead of schedule.
Should that happen, Biden allies have indicated the president likely won’t participate — leaving an opening for a candidate like Kennedy to win.
And therein lies the rub. Kennedy — fortunate last name, always remember — is presently polling at fourteen (USA Today/Suffolk) to twenty one points (Emerson) in national polls. His net favorability (again with that fortunate name) is very high. By way of contrast, President Biden’s net favorability is low. He has what is called in polite society an “enthusiasm gap” in the communities of color. And add to all of this the fact that RFK, Jr. is campaigning as a Biden alternative.
And he’s not the only one. There is also Cornel West. West is running as a third party candidate, so he’s in it for the long haul. And Biden will need a high African-American turnout, which, from the looks of the midterms, is going to be a difficult lift. Imagine the worst-case scenario in which an embittered conspiracist like Kennedy decides to endorse West. The Kennedy name is strong in the African-American community. How many African-American homes have pictures of JFK alongside portraits of Jesus and MLK? I mean, Biden is going to win the black vote next November, for sure. But how many votes does a Kennedy-endorsed Cornel West candidacy pull from Biden in crucial states, like Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin? Does Cornel West pull 45,000 votes from Biden in those three states? “But the margins this year were even tighter in the three states that put Biden over the top in the Electoral College,” Dante Chini of NBC News reminded us. “He won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by a total of less than 45,000 votes.” Something to think about.
And that’s not even brining up the great state of New Hampshire. If the Biden-Kennedy race becomes contentious there, is it possible that that state, which Biden won by some 60,000 votes in 2020, flips Republican? New Hampshire’s four electoral college electors are essential in a country this closely divided. President Biden has to take New Hampshire seriously, even if his challenger in the state, RFK, Jr. is not.
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