(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Not too bright Fox host says RFK Jr. will hurt Trump by "siphoning" votes away [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-04 Fox News sets a low intellectual bar for its hosts. Some of them fail to reach even that standard. This morning, Fox & Friends guest host Joey Jones fretted that presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. might hurt Trump as much as Joe Biden. He has not thought his analysis through. Regular host Rachel Campos-Duffy started the conversation on RFK Jr. while an extended video of a shirtless Kennedy (69) doing push-ups played. She noted that, while Kennedy portrays himself as a champion of the working class, he’s also “the ultimate nepo-baby.” “Many of his issues, including his environmental radicalism, is very much about the elites. It’s very much comes from where he came from in terms of what he cares about, that he’s very anti-fossil fuels and you cannot be a pro-worker, pro-working class candidate and not care about American energy and keeping it as affordable as possible.” It is a silly thought. You do not have to be a member of a group to back improvements for that group. LBJ could promote civil rights despite not being Black. You do not have to be LGBTQ to lobby for the equality of all sexual orientations and support innate gender identification. And many men are feminists. Jones reacted to Campos-Duffy’s remarks by saying, “And you know, what’s really, what’s really interesting is up until this past week, where he starts to show a lot of his left-leaning and in my opinion, radical views, he’s almost as much a threat — and I don’t mean, people are going to say the wrong way — He’s almost siphoning as much from the populist camp of Donald Trump as he is Joe Biden.” “I saw a lot of people on social media and in my life say ‘Hey, you know if it’s RFK or Biden, you know I’m RFK.’ But I also saw a lot of people say, kind move over towards RFK from Trump.” Jones’ logic is shaky. Right now, the only people who are deciding whether or not to vote for Trump are people who are eligible to vote in the Republican primaries. And in the 16 states with open primaries — meaning people do not need to be registered with a party to vote in that party’s primary — registered Republicans voting for RFK would hurt Biden more than they would hurt Trump. Cross-party voting does happen. In 2008, Rush Limbaugh launched Operation Chaos . He encouraged Republican voters in states like Illinois to vote for Hillary over Obama to protract the Democratic race and keep the internecine mud flying. Some Trump voters might look at RFK. His passionate anti-vax crusade is manna to the science deniers. Calling COVID measures worse than Nazi genocide must appeal to the MAGAs. His anti-war, pro-Russia sentiments are equally attractive. And there is plenty on his campaign website that the paranoids will embrace. “But government institutions have betrayed our trust. The intelligence agencies spy on our own people. Government and tech platforms conspire to surveil and censor the public.” However, it will not be until the general election that RFK can take support away from Trump. And that is only if — and as it stands, that is an improbable “if” — he gets the Democratic nomination. However, as this is a speculative piece written seven months before the first Democratic primary, let us imagine that RFK does win the Democratic nomination. And for the sake of argument, as many Democrats vote for him in the general election as would have voted for Biden. That eventuality does raise the question, would RFK be a more formidable opponent for Trump than Biden? Here Jones might be on to something. It is hard to imagine a MAGA switching to Biden. The most the Democrats could hope for is that Trump supporters would lack the enthusiasm they had in 2020 and stay home. On the other hand, RFK is the sort of crazy that fires up the Trump base. I do not know why RFK, as a Democratic hopeful, is sucking up to Steve Bannon, Joe Rogan, Roger Stone, and Fox’s prime-time conservative attack dogs. The obvious answer is that a candidate who thinks he might be assassinated by the CIA (as he thinks his uncle and father were) and says things like “Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain,” feels at home with those people. He must do, as he planned to attend an event by the book-burning fascists, “Moms for Liberty” before he bailed at the last minute. And he has signed up to speak at the Porcupine Freedom Festival , or PORCFEST, an annual far-right libertarian love-in in New Hampshire. RFK has lost the plot. Conservatives are so excited for him to play a spoiler role they are backing his campaign. In turn, Kennedy thinks these people really like him. Sad. Instead, they just want him to keep up the nuttiness by accusing the Chinese of inventing ethnic bioweapons and the like. And pray he hobbles Biden. Bearing all of this in mind, conservative cynics should be careful what they wish for. A conspiracy-addled, irrational Kennedy may — as Jones prematurely predicted — take votes away from Trump. And Trump’s winning path is already so narrow he cannot afford to lose any. Democrats should be equally leary. It is hard to see how RFK wins the nomination. But in 2015, no one would have given much for Trump’s chances. Liberals like to see themselves as rational thinkers with active bullshit monitors. But strange things happen. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/4/2179303/-Not-too-bright-Fox-host-says-RFK-Jr-will-hurt-Trump-by-siphoning-votes-away Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/