As Democrats continue to downplay the significance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse former President Donald Trump, CNN host Erin Burnett admitted the truth: “It is huge, it is everything.”
Looking at the latest New York Times/Siena College polls of battleground states, Burnett told viewers, “The latest swing state polls show Kennedy with 5 or 6 percent of the vote. And so, when you think about it overall, you may say ‘Well, that’s not a big deal.’ Actually, if that is the case in swing states, it is huge, it is everything. It is more than the margin between Harris and Trump in some of those states.”
In the clip below from Friday morning, presidential historian Tim Naftali’s take on the implications of Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump clearly disappointed CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield.
“His [Kennedy] pulling out is significant because he was taking more votes – potential votes – from Trump than he was from Harris,” Naftali said. “But, we don’t know how many people who said they were going to vote for him will actually turn up on Nov. 5.
He noted, “What is clear, however, is that these races at the moment in the seven battleground states are close. So, a couple of thousand votes [in] this direction or that direction matter. . . . This is such a close election.”
In the tweet below, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller posts an internal memo from the Trump campaign’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, that shows why he believes Kennedy’s endorsement will help Trump.
[Note: The Trump campaign’s estimations of Kennedy’s share of the vote in the seven battleground states are slightly lower than the results from the New York Times/Siena College that Burnett had featured. This makes their position even stronger.]
Fabrizio tells colleagues that “the data speaks for itself. … As you can clearly see, in every single state RFK Jr.’s vote breaks for President Trump.”
Using data from their “most recent round of battleground state surveys,” Fabrizio begins with Kennedy’s current level of support in each of the seven swing states. He then provides his expectations of how Kennedy’s share of the vote will be divided between Trump, Harris, and undecided voters.
[Please click on Miller’s post to view all of the data.]
Each state shows a net advantage for Trump. These range from a paltry 2% in Michigan to a whopping 50% in Nevada. Results for the other states are as follows: Arizona, +25%; Georgia, +13%; North Carolina, +36%; Pennsylvania, +13%; and Wisconsin, +30%.
Fabrizio explains, “To put these numbers into perspective, the net vote gained in a state like Arizona based on just a 2020 turnout model, would be over 41,000 votes [or] nearly 4 times Biden’s winning margin, or in Georgia, the net gain would be 19,000 votes, nearly twice Biden’s margin.”
In what’s shaping up to be another close race decided by razor thin margins in a few swing states, Kennedy’s endorsement could make all the difference.
Moreover, the timing of Kennedy’s decision was perfect. Coming as it did the day after the end of the Democratic National Convention, the news stole the thunder from Harris’s well-received Thursday night speech. Kennedy’s announcement dominated the news cycle on Friday and, at the very least, will reduce the size of Harris’s expected convention bounce.
I’ve never been a fan of the Kennedy family. But in March 2021, I watched a podcast of a conversation between Kennedy and liberal author Naomi Wolf, a one-time adviser to former President Bill Clinton, and he won me over.
[Kennedy’s podcast, called “Truth: Fighting for Our Constitutional Rights,” can be viewed here.]
Recounting an experience he’d had at a then-recent political rally in Berlin, Kennedy said, “I was shaking hands and I wasn’t wearing a mask. Nobody was. There were a million people there and no one was wearing a mask. An NBC crew came up and said, ‘Aren’t you scared of getting the coronavirus?’ I said, ‘There’s something I’m more fearful of.’ They asked, ‘Like what?’ ‘Like losing my constitutional rights.’”
He continued, “The American Revolution took place because you had people who were willing to die for the Constitution. Not lose their rights. The Constitution was not written for easy times or popular speech. … It was built for emergencies and to protect the speech that was unpopular, that was dissenting government policies. … For hundreds of years, our government protected that right religiously. You get to say things that offend other people.”
Kennedy is an old-school Democrat, and as we look around at the current political landscape, we see that very few of them still exist. He is a man of integrity who was terribly wronged by the Democratic Party over the course of the last 18 months, as Trump was.
Hopefully, by working together, they can settle the score in November.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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