As President Biden struggles to improve in the polls, Democrats are increasingly worried that third-party candidates will swing the election to former President Donald Trump.
As of Monday, per RealClearPolitics polling averages, Trump held a popular-vote lead of 1.7% in a hypothetical one-on-one rematch.
Trump’s advantage, however, rose to 2.3% in the current five-way race, which includes Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independents Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy is by far the greatest potential spoiler, drawing an average of 9.9% of the overall vote.
A Harvard/Harris poll released last week found he commanded as much as 15% of the electorate. (Stein and West poll at no more than 2% each.)
Kennedy’s candidacy initially struck a chord with some independents and fringe Republicans drawn to his anti-vax message above his other policies, most of which are indistinguishable from the standard Democratic line.
But as Trump clinched the GOP nomination, Kennedy’s support was already starting to track more from Democrats concerned about Biden’s age and infirmity and the chaos at the southern border.
On Tuesday, Kennedy made himself more lethal to Biden by naming as his running mate the well-divorced California attorney and tech investor Nicole Shanahan.
Shanahan, who calls herself a “progressive through and through,” is the radical-left millennial ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who divorced her after she was rumored to have had an affair with Elon Musk. (Shanahan and Musk deny it.)
Although Shanahan is a little-known political entity, she is a rich one, reportedly having demanded a cool billion in her divorce from Brin, who was worth $95 billion at the time and had a prenuptial agreement that Shanahan claimed she had signed “under duress.”
For most of her adult life, Shanahan has contributed to radical-left causes and candidates that have brought California to utter ruin.
She donated $700,000 to support Measure J, a post-George Floyd Los Angeles County criminal justice initiative that defunded law enforcement and diverted local revenue to “alternatives to incarceration.”
We all know how well that turned out.
She gave $150,000 to support George Gascón’s 2020 bid for LA district attorney despite his disastrous record in the same job in San Francisco.
Gascón, who was also funded by the leftist billionaire George Soros and endorsed by Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, proceeded to gut cash bail, reduce criminal prosecutions, and refuse to seek the death penalty in all eligible cases.
The lamentable results have driven three recall initiatives to remove him.
Lest anyone think Shanahan is truly “independent,” she donated $25,000 to Biden’s 2020 victory fund after having initially supported Pete Buttigieg and Marianne Williamson for that year’s Democratic nomination.
Shanahan donated $4 million this year to RFK Jr.’s super PAC, American Values 2024, which promptly used it to pay most of the cost of the candidate’s cringe Super Bowl ad: Featuring hokey music and images from an ad for uncle John F. Kennedy’s successful 1960 presidential campaign and designed with Shanahan’s creative input, the plug bolstered RFK Jr.’s resolve while outraging Democrats.
If Shanahan’s willing to spend more, it could smooth her ticket’s path to a ballot presence in all 50 states in November, likely costing Biden millions of Democratic votes while driving virtually all potential Republican supporters and many independents into the Trumpian fold.
Her spending could also gain Kennedy sufficient numbers to qualify for presidential debates, which would make him the first third-party candidate to reach that national stage since Ross Perot in 1992.
Democratic strategists ramped up criticism of RFK Jr. even before he named Shanahan to the ticket.
Biden’s re-election campaign reportedly has an entire team devoted to denigrating him.
In February, the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint against Kennedy’s campaign with the Federal Election Commission, alleging it’s illegally coordinated with Kennedy’s super PAC to secure his place on every state’s ballot.
On St. Patrick’s Day, dozens of Kennedys posed for a White House photo with Biden, a symbolic rejection of a relative many of them have criticized for his dissenting views on public health.
Just before Kennedy’s announcement, a pro-Biden super PAC launched a website featuring composite images of RFK Jr. and Trump and alleging the former is racist, homophobic, antisemitic, anti-science and a conspiracy theorist, in addition to a GOP stalking horse.
Now that RFK Jr. has a running mate with enormous personal resources, the Democrats are doubling their efforts to smear him.
A DNC-hosted call of elected Democrats in swing states held just hours after Tuesday’s announcement assailed Kennedy as a Trump tool “drafted into this race by Donald Trump’s top supporters,” as Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis put it.
California Rep. Robert Garcia said he’s “personally offended and just disgusted by his campaign” and urged Kennedy to drop out.
Even with the buzz around his running mate, RFK Jr. doesn’t have a chance of getting elected.
But with Shanahan and her money on his ticket, neither does Joe Biden.
Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
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