Trump Allies Have a Plan to Hurt Biden’s Chances: Elevate Outsider Candidates

This works because almost all the US uses first-past-the-post elections for the Presidential general election. So you get outcomes like this:

Scenario 1:

Biden: 10 votes

Trump: 9 votes

Kennedy/Stein/West: 0 votes

Biden wins the state

Scenario 2:

Biden: 9 votes

Trump: 9 votes

Kennedy/Stein/West: 1 vote

Tied vote, decided by game of chance/lawsuit

Scenario 3:

Biden: 8 votes

Trump: 9 votes

Kennedy/Stein/West: 2 votes

Trump wins the state

This is why you see huge financial support from Republican billionaires for third party candidates who have no chance of winning.

newthrowaway20,

Ah. Using Hillary Clinton’s strategy. That famously worked out real well for her.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

To be fair, her husband arguably got into office because a third party candidate disproportionately ate more into his opponent’s votes.

ZoopZeZoop,

Not that I disagree with your point, but implementation is everything.

EatATaco,

This is such a dumb take. The strategy has worked numerous times throughout history. “Well it didn’t work for Clinton. . .so obviously it’s dumb!” is such a narrow-view, mindlessly parroting a talking point.

meep_launcher,

Just gonna note that this is a strategy as old as political parties.

LazyPhilosopher,

This is fucking asinine. How do you possibly think that anyone who would vote for kanye West or RFK would otherwise be Biden voters you dummy. Do you not understand that the Nazis in the vaccine conspiracy heads are all conservatives, who would vote for Trump?

The third party candidates you have to worry about stealing votes from only Biden or Jill Stein Dr. West and Claudia de Lacruz. So congrats you got Jill Stein right. Now compare the share of the vote. RFK is getting compared to Jill Stein and the others. Dumbass.

This insane worldview where anything that’s not a vote for Biden is a vote for Trump is fucking crazy and it’s why no one likes neoliberals.

KairuByte, (edited )
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

You can see the attempts even here on Lemmy to convince people to vote for a third party. Virtually anyone hyper focusing on Gaza and suggesting we should “show Biden what we think” is attempting to convince you to vote against your own interests.

Take a look at the post history of anyone who calls him genocide Joe, and you’ll see “subtle” suggestions to vote for a third party candidate.

FenrirIII,
@FenrirIII@lemmy.world avatar

As much as I would love for there to be more options and the two-party system dismantled, voting third party right now in the presidential election is just stupid. A real third party has to start from the ground up or be a genuine splinter party from one of the two primary parties. Trump almost created a third party, but Republicans chose power over principle and party over country to make him their golden calf.

EatATaco,

Not saying you are saying this, but it’s as good a post as any on which to say it:

You can’t dismantle the 2 party system by voting for a third party. Even in the extremely unlikely situation that that third party wins, it will just quickly, if not immediately, go back to a two party system. It’s the nature of a FPTP voting system.

It’s a process you have to start from the ground up. You can’t just vote for a POTUS and then magically we have multiple parties. You have to focus on your local politics and get people into office who will push to get our voting system changed. And that will have to “trickle up.” It’s not something that will be solved overnight, and people focus too much on the POTUS, when they should be putting their effort in where they have the most influence: locally.

whereisk,

It’s the classic establishment’s pincer maneuver.

All progressive change needs to be attacked from both sides:

All left wing candidates / laws / tax / regulations / proposals are both too left and not left enough.

Only ideals that have no chance are “pure enough” for some on the left.

This is an organised attack from the right / establishment for decades. Yeah, we are finally waking up and seeing through this shit.

Pan_Ziemniak,

Hit the nail on the head. Theres been noticeable push back these last 2 months, but i expect worse as we edge closer to november.

They also completely ignore bringing the Ukrainian genocide when its brought up, even though russia has repeatedly now called them a stepping stone in denazifying Eastern Europe.

For all of Status Quo Joe’s issues (and theres a million) he still doesnt compare to trump (and his billions of issues) in terms of how much damage they can do/are doing to the country and the planet as a whole.

BeautifulMind,
@BeautifulMind@lemmy.world avatar

Consider the possibility that the game here does not depend on Trump winning in the Electoral college- all that needs to happen is Biden not winning 271 or more EC votes for the congress to decide the presidency via the Contingent Election process outlined in article2, sec1 clause3 of the constitution, later modified in the 12th amendment.

In that scenario, each state delegation has 1 vote- and the GOP has enough state-level gerrymanders to control enough state delegations that if it comes to pass that the 12th Amendment process decides the presidency, they are very likely going to be able to install whoever they want.

If the smart money in the GOP has decided Trump won’t win but it still wants him in the oval, anything that prevents Biden from getting 270+ gets them better odds than any other pathway

Nightwingdragon,

In that scenario, each state delegation has 1 vote- and the GOP has enough state-level gerrymanders to control enough state delegations that if it comes to pass that the 12th Amendment process decides the presidency, they are very likely going to be able to install whoever they want.

I’m not so sure of this. On paper, the split is 27-23 in favor of Republicans. However, there are 3 Republican governors in Democrat states that voted for Biden: Nevada, Vermont, and New Hampshire. The question becomes whether those 3 Republican governors would override the votes of the people in their state and install Trump even though the voters voted for Biden? I’m not so sure any of them would want to go down in history as having effectively ignored the election and installing a dictator. I mean…they could. Anything’s possible. But if you’re a Republican governor in a Democrat state that voted for the Democrat nominee, do you really want to be the one to ignore that, essentially tell the public that their votes don’t matter, and install Trump as a dictator?

If all 3 Republican governors in Dem states honor the will of the people, it would essentially be a 26-24 split in favor of Democrats. Even if only two of the 3 states do, we’d end up in a tie. Either way, I don’t think that sending it to the governors would be a guaranteed win for Trump. Significantly more likely, yes. But a slam-dunk win? No. There would be absolutely enormous pressure on those 3 governors who would basically be deciding the election.

xmunk,

Trump Allies Russia has a Plan to Hurt Biden’s Chances: Elevate Outsider Candidates.

silence7, (edited )

A lot of it is US billionaires:

One thing we should expect is for all of the “major” third party candidates — Kennedy, Stein, West — to be funded in part by ultra-high-net-worth Republicans. That’s already happening to some degree.

Pan_Ziemniak,

Well yeah, project 2025 is backed by the heritage foundation.

anticolonialist,

This goes on the false narrative that 3rd party voters would support a duopoly candidate if there were no 3rd party options. If Biden wanted to earn our votes he should have started about 30 years ago.

xmunk,

There are hundreds of women that will die needlessly if Trump is elected due to withdrawn healthcare. It fucking sucks but it’s important to vote.

LazyPhilosopher,

Are these different than the hundreds of women who are dying because of abortion law changes that happened while Biden was President because he failed to stack the supreme Court like he said he would?

silence7,

Doesn’t matter if he wanted to pack the Supreme Court; there weren’t enough Senators on board. Manchin and Sinema in particular were not, along with each and every Republican. That left Biden with at most 48/100 votes for expanding the Supreme Court.

LazyPhilosopher,

Wait, are you telling me the Democrats don’t actually do the things they say they’re going to do and always find some way to f*** it up?? Oh my God I had no idea. Maybe we should vote for actual left-wing people instead of you know Democrats.

silence7,

The Democrats are a coalition, and not every part of the coalition is on board with everything proposed by everybody else in the coalition.

More and better Democrats would be better for sure, but tough. Manchin represents a state which went 68% for Trump; Sinema basically pretended to be left-wing (having even been a Green Party candidate at one point) and flipped once in power.

LazyPhilosopher,

Coalition: an alliance for combined action, a temporary alliance of political parties(plural) forming a government or of states.

So you’re incorrect there.

By the definition you seem to be implying than every political party is a coalition because there are multiple people in them and people don’t have hive minds… So that’s kind of irrelevant and worthless.

Moving on, let’s focus on the Sinema thing. Pretending to be left-wing is the thing I’m talking about! Democrat or Republican all of these politicians do what they’re paid to do. When team dumb, looks like they’re finally about to score a point, we’re always going to lose just enough people that we don’t quite have the vote. Because that’s what the people that pay them to do their job tell them to do.

This idea that we have to back the Democrats because otherwise the Republicans will get in. I get it. Republicans are blatantly fascist instead of secretly fascist . They do horrible s*** and make stuff worse all the time. I hate them too.

But it’s also what the Democrats want. Have you heard of the pied Piper strategy? If not, I implore you to stop arguing with my asshole self and Google it. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll summarize it briefly for you. The Democrats literally send money to the most far-Right candidates in order to scare people into voting for them. They know about this trap and they want us constantly caught in it so nothing can get better.

The Democrat and Republican parties are Siamese twins. They are attached at the hip. One cannot survive without the other.

That’s my best attempt to get through to you dude. I’m not going to respond after this✌️

silence7,

You’re using a very narrow definition of coalition — the Democratic party is a coalition of groups within the US.

Despite what you say, there are very real differences between the parties, and ones which make the Democrats a group where it is possible, at least some of the time, to get good policy. It’s happened before, and it will happen again if we give them the power to act.

silence7,

That doesn’t just mean “think about voting” either — it means checking your registration to make sure it hasn’t been purged, talking to people you know about how you’re voting and why, volunteering if you’re able, and financially supporting the campaign in an amount that’s within your budget

CaptDust,

What makes these financers so sure their spoiler candidates will only take votes from Biden?

silence7, (edited )

They don’t need that. All they need is to take more votes from Biden than they do from Trump. And the the polling makes it very clear that the 3rd party candidates as a group do exactly that. The benefit is something around a 3 percentage point advantage for Trump with the 3rd party candidates on the ballot vs not.

anticolonialist,

This is ‘splitting the vote’ nonsense. We wouldn’t support your candidate if they were the only person on the ballot.

anticolonialist,

This is ‘splitting the vote’ nonsense. We wouldn’t support your candidate if they were the only person on the ballot.

CaptDust,

Yeah idk, I haven’t heard any Dems say they’re going to break from Biden for someone like RFK, the dude is an anti science nut job and at least my circles see right through it. I have heard trumpists say they’d consider him if trump ended up in jail or whatever though. 🤷

Hopefully this strategy backfires spectacularly.

xmunk,

Honestly, the bigger issue for dems has always been low enthusiasm leading to a lot of voters just refusing to vote.

Asafum,

It’s almost as if more people need to vote in the primaries

Yeah it’s more difficult with an incumbent because the Smarter Than You DNC decides a primary is bad, but if we actually voted in numbers then instead of just allowing the old people who actually vote in primaries to decide who is the one running, we’d actually have a candidate people can be excited for.

silence7,

So far the polls don’t show that kind of backfire. Would take a bunch more people hearing about why he’s actually running to create it.

thefartographer,

“Shit, Rita, that’s what we’re getting paid to do, not what we’re getting paid to say!”

lennybird,
@lennybird@lemmy.world avatar

Republicans have done this for decades to great success. Usually they’ll push a wedge-driving issue with online operatives sometimes posing as grandstanding leftists who will vote 3rd party, independent, etc.

It rarely works for Dems, but Libertarians did screw over Trump to some extent last election thanks to Jojo

Ghostalmedia, (edited )
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Polling. Right now the polls show RFK and West pulling from Biden more than Trump, which is why right wing strategists want to promote those candidates more.

Edit:

thehill.com/homenews/campaign/…/amp/

Atyno, (edited )
@Atyno@dmv.social avatar

It kinda makes them look even more short sighted tbh. Like yeah, you can look at “there’s a few polls where he takes from Biden” and call it a day, but it’s kinda missing the fact he’s lost a lot of relevance already with no signs of stopping.

It’s kind of a catch 22: he’s stealing votes from the low-info pool, but at the same time if he’s not defined at all he’ll make no impact by election day. Elevating him can fix that, but that risks those low info voters realizing what they’re getting into and then start biting into Trump’s numbers as expected.

lurch,

Ah, the old russian tactic

ronmaide,

So, Kanye for President 2.0?

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Probably more like Perot.

silence7, (edited )

He’d probably be at least as awful a president as Trump, though it’s a different West who is on the ballot in some states this year.

ronmaide,

Sorry—my comment was in reference to this not being a new playbook since that’s exactly what the GOP did with hawking Kanye as a candidate. He would never win but maybe he would steal votes from the democrats.

silence7,

Definitely the same playbook. It’s been used for decades at this point.

Rapidcreek,

Junior is not going to get that many Dem votes. He’s clearly MAGA, or at least MAGA adjacent

silence7,

His campaign is built around on attracting low-information voters, and he has a ton of money to do just that — Kennedy’s vice-presidential pick is the former wife of a Google founder who broke up with him after allegedly sleeping with Musk.

Theprogressivist,
@Theprogressivist@lemmy.world avatar

Which still only appeals to MAGA supporters.

silence7, (edited )

The Kennedy family name is something that has meaningful appeal to people who aren’t like that and who don’t know anything else. Put a bunch of money into ad campaigns emphasizing that over any actual policy position, and he may well peel off some votes from people like that.

stanleytweedle, (edited )

They’re going after formerly reliable Republican votes that have had enough of Trump but don’t really want to vote for Biden.

Those are very reliable voters and they don’t want them staying home or voting for Biden. So they give them a shitty third-party candidate so they won’t vote for Biden and still show up for the down ballot Republicans. Might take a few potential votes from Biden but that’s only half the goal.

almar_quigley,

Yeah but he’s as fringe as trump just in different ways. Plus it’s the opposite of what they think will happen with the dem vote. Republicans who would otherwise vote Biden or stay home will hear Kennedy and think liberal. But near 0 dems will fall for the same trick.

silence7,

But near 0 dems will fall for the same trick.

People who are paying attention to the news, sure. But a lot of people don’t. And that’s who they’re trying to reach. So it’s important to tell people what’s going on.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

People need to start looking at the polling around this. RFK is more of a threat than people realize.

thehill.com/homenews/campaign/…/amp/

originalfrozenbanana,

“Only the other side will vote for this third party” is the constant refrain of someone about to lose because of a spoiler

stanleytweedle, (edited )

I think it’s more that the Republican party recognizes what an albatross Trump has become and are trying to mitigate the damage to down ballot Republicans by old-school Republicans staying home because they’re fed up with Trump.

originalfrozenbanana,

They do? He’s their candidate and they sure seem to be embracing almost everything he does. I don’t really think there’s much that supports this viewpoint

stanleytweedle,

k- then what’s your theory on why Republican donors would support a third-party candidate?

originalfrozenbanana,

Because it will pull Biden voters away more than it will pull Trump voters away

stanleytweedle,

What third party candidate do you think would pull more voters from Biden than Trump?

originalfrozenbanana,

I mean yeah I’ll bite fivethirtyeight.com/…/third-party-candidate-spoil…

stanleytweedle,

Please re-read my question.

originalfrozenbanana,

Please re-read my answer since you clearly didn’t read it at all.

stanleytweedle,

What third party candidate do you think would pull more voters from Biden than Trump?

I’ll give you another chance to prove your functionally literate.

originalfrozenbanana,

*you’re

The article directly addresses that and you could google it anyway. Why don’t we skip to the part where you make the point you were going to make and stop pretending like you care about my answer?

stanleytweedle,

So you can’t name even one candidate that fits your little theory?

originalfrozenbanana,

Yeah you got it bucko, I can’t name any candidates I just link to 538 articles that you don’t read. Seriously just make your point already, stop edging me.

stanleytweedle,

My point is you can’t name a single candidate that fits your theory.

originalfrozenbanana,

No, I can. I can point to the data in the article that shows that Manchin and west would benefit Trump when polled in 2023. I can point to data for progress showing that an “independent” candidate like Hogan would swing things for Trump. I can point to 2016 when fewer than 100k votes decided the election. I can use that to extrapolate out that the third party slate tends to benefit republicans. But my BROADER point is that you don’t actually give a shit, you could have googled this if you did, and you’ve been waiting for me to drop a name so you could determine precisely which bad faith, misguided, or incomplete argument against precisely that candidate you can pull out of your Rolodex of talking points.

So please get to your fucking point already because if it’s what you said in your comment then the answer was for you to READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE AND USE GOOGLE all along. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you were just a lazy troll who wanted me to say a name instead of reading a name in an article, but maybe it’s simpler than that: did you actually think I couldn’t name a third party candidate?

Can…can you not name one? Are you trying to get me to name one because you don’t know any? Is this a cry for help?

pjwestin, (edited )

That’s not entirely true. There is one proven left-leaning group that can be drawn in by MAGA talking points, and that’s the Antivax moms. During the height of the pandemic, QAnon influencers were pretty effective at getting the cruchy-granola-crystal-healing-antivax moms into Trump. The guys at the QAA Podcast covered it really well, but the indoctrination path was basically: The Vaccine is Bad-> The Pandemic is Fake/Overblown-> Face Masks Actually Help Child Traffickers ->You Know Who’s Fighting Traffickers?Trump! Anyway, if an Antivax message can get these folks to support Trump, it can get them to support RFK.

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