In case you missed it, the anti-vaxxer, conspiracy-theorist scion of the totally embarrassed Kennedy family was in town the other day to launch his bid to appear on the Colorado ballot for president.
It should be said that neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump is likely to be losing any sleep over Kennedy’s independent run, at least as far as winning or losing Colorado goes.
In fact, inside-the-courtroom reports from the book-fixing, hush-money Trump trial in New York confirm that Shut-Eye Don is getting all the sleep he needs.
And if you believe Trump and/or his red-tie sycophants, Biden is too hopped up on drugs to sleep at all. This is one of the crazier conspiracy theories that has emerged from Biden’s well-received State of the Union address — that since Biden, as Trump claims, can’t put together two sentences in a row, he must have been “high as a kite.”
Which is why Trump is demanding that Biden be drug tested before next month’s debate. Although the medical community and Big Pharma seem to have missed it, Trump apparently believes that getting high as a kite is at least a temporary cure for dementia. I wonder if he thinks injecting disinfectant would work, too.
But, back here on planet Earth, the reason no one is too concerned about RFK and his chances in Colorado is that, thanks to the anachronistic Electoral College, whatever happens in Colorado won’t matter on Election Day.
That isn’t to say that Kennedy’s run for president wouldn’t matter elsewhere. If he gets on the ballot in the six or eight swing states that do matter, he could turn the election by winning as little as 5% of the vote.
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You may remember a guy named Ralph Nader, whose presence on the ballot was critical to George W. Bush’s election in 2000. Kennedy remembers him. In 2000, he called Nader a “spoiler.” So, who’s the spoiler now?
According to the polling averages at 538.com, Kennedy is polling at around 10% nationally — a number which, if history can be trusted, probably wouldn’t be that high by Election Day. But who can trust history these days? In some states, it’s barely legal to teach it.
Look, if we could trust history, that would mean that Trump — whose political life, I think we can all agree, is unprecedented — would never have been elected in the first place.
But let’s consider Kennedy. He is running. He did get a nice turnout in Aurora. And let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that Kennedy could get 10% of the Colorado vote. That may be a high number, but we know Trump is very unpopular in Colorado — he has lost to Hillary Clinton and Biden here — and Biden, it seems, is not so popular anywhere these days.
And Kennedy is, to the regret of most of his family, still a Kennedy, which means he starts out with a certain appeal, particularly for those many voters who aren’t yet — and may never be — paying attention.
There is much disagreement among analysts about which candidate, Trump or Biden, would be hurt more by Kennedy. Big-money Trump supporters have invested in Kennedy’s campaign, but if conspiracy theory is the basis for your vote, that would likely mean a choice between unhinged Trump and maybe-just-as-unhinged RFK Jr.
Anyway, if Kennedy got 10% in Colorado — maybe taking 60% of his vote from Biden and the rest from Trump — that still wouldn’t mean much. That would amount to a two-percentage-point swing. And if the race is that close in bright-blue Colorado, that would mean Trump is winning the national race in a landslide. After all, Biden beat Trump by nearly 14 percentage points in Colorado in 2020.
The best way for Kennedy to have a real impact on the race is to find a way to qualify for either of the two presidential debates that Trump and Biden recently, to nearly everyone’s surprise, agreed to hold.
Biden’s campaign has said their agreement is only for a one-on-one debate. And Trump’s campaign has said it has been told that Kennedy could not qualify for the June 27 debate on CNN.
But Kennedy says he could qualify. Of course, he also has said the COVID vaccines were designed so that people could be controlled by microchips. So, maybe he shouldn’t be taken all that seriously.
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To qualify, he’d have to have hit 15% on four approved national polls between March and June. Apparently, he already has two qualifying polls, but it may be harder to make the numbers again. The other major qualification is that he’d have to be on enough state ballots to win 270 electoral votes — which is just enough to win the presidency.
That’s where states, red or blue, like Colorado come in. To get on the ballot in Colorado, Kennedy mustsecure 1,500 valid signatures in each of the state’s eight congressional districts. There’s no question he can do that eventually. But can he do it in a hurry while his campaign is busily collecting signatures and meeting other requirements in states across the country?
To get on the June 27 debate stage, Kennedy must meet all qualifications by June 20. It will be a sprint, and you can depend on the Biden campaign to do all it can to slow down any Kennedy surge.
What would Biden and Trump do if Kennedy somehow managed to qualify?
The Trump theory is that he’d smash Biden in a debate because, well, the Biden-can’t-put-together-two-sentences theory, because Biden is old, because no one seems to believe the economy is working, and because Trump, as you might have noticed, is an unabashed narcissist who always assumes he’ll win.
Meanwhile, Biden needs to shake up the race. Some are even suggesting that Democrats could use such an early debate because if Biden bombs, there’s still a chance to have an open convention. I doubt that will happen. But if you’ve watched any of Trump’s recent rallies, they are more deranged than they’ve ever been.
It is the Biden theory that Trump will implode on the debate stage. Of course, the notion of a Trump implosion hasn’t held up well, no matter what Trump says or does. He won in 2016 and came uncomfortably close in 2020 despite his terrible debate performances.
So, how does Kennedy fit into that?
He doesn’t.
There’s serious business at hand, like possibly the saving of American democracy. Kennedy would be nothing more than a distraction on the stage. That’s not the real problem, though. The question is, what if he’s more than a distraction come November?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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