If the level of upset is an indication, Team Dem is seriously worried about Nichole Shanahan joining RFK, Jr.’s ticket as his vice president. For sake of convenience, we’ll mine a new comment, which is Financial Times’ speak for op-ed, by Edward Luce. Luce was Larry Summer’s speechwriter and a regular Democratic party water-carrier. He does write the occasional insightful and even independent-minded piece to make up for his scrivener’s work.
In “the dog that did not bark” manner, what Luce does not say is more telling than what he says. He does whinge, as many do, that Shanahan’s enormous personal balance sheet can and likely will go a long way in funding the RFK, Jr. campaign but focuses on ballot access and his legal expenses, meaning cleverly depicting RFK, Jr. as wounded and viable only with a very large cash injection.
Oddly I have yet to see any pundit consider that Shanahan joining RFK, Jr.’s ticket will serve to elicit more money from other Silicon Valley heavy-hitters. So far, they are depicting her involvement as a form of vanity project.
Luce offers only a passing treatment of the the trope than many Shanahan critics are serving up, that she’s not qualified to be Vice President. With Kamala Harris arguably having credentials and having demonstrated that incapable of even reading a Teleprompter well, the Vice Presidential bar has been so lowered that Shanahan can more than fill the role. We will learn more about Shanahan’s professional life in due course. She was a lawyer and started up and sold a company, so she is not devoid of accomplishment of her own, even if her big bucks come from marriage.
Luce refuses to consider that RFK, Jr. and Shanahan might be running out of principle (even if many would consider those principles to be misguided and naive) and think they have a shot, albeit a long one of winning. As we will discuss later, the views that Luce pooh-poohs, particularly aversion to vaccines and concerns about health risks from food and environmental toxins, is extremely popular among the super and somewhat wealthy in California. It’s mainstream in that cohort, and not fringe, as Luce tries to depict it.
If Joe Biden were to die before the election, which is well above a 0% probability, the RFK, Jr.-Shanahan ticker goes from “quixotic” to a contender. Instead, Luce acts as if his arguments could persuade Shanahan to drop her candidacy, which is a peculiar narrative position to take: that she risks going down in history and is enabling a Trump victory, and that she’s a newbie to politics and is not prepared for the roughing up she is about to get.
Instead, Luce hammers on the idea that the only thing the RFK, Jr. can do is damage the worthy Biden team. He invokes “aiding evil Trump” in the opening paragrapH:
RFK’s third-party candidacy could split the vote in key swing states. That makes him 2024’s potential Ralph Nader, the Green party candidate who in 2000 siphoned support from Al Gore. The winner was George W Bush. This time it would be Donald Trump.
The “oh no Nader” contention ignores that Florida, where Nader received over 90,000 voters, versus Gore’s margin of loss of 537, did not allow felons to vote. As Greg Palast recounted, Florida hired the highest bidder on its “scrub the voter rolls program, and the contractor proceeded to nix obviously black names that dimly resembled those of felons. Due to the state of search, I can’t readily find Palast’s work, but my recollection is that he found that a bare minimum of 90,000 valid black voters were removed. Take 30% propensity to vote and 90% propensity of black to vote Democrat, and you get 24.300 more votes for Gore.
And let us not forget that Bill Clinton did not strongly support Gore’s candidacy, and his lukewarm backing not doubt had a cost too.
Luce again insists the ticket has no hope but concedes it could prove to be harmless…in terms of Biden:
There can only be two end points to the path they are on. Either the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket will be another quixotic entry in America’s colourful history of third-party bids; or they will go down as the pair that helped return the White House to Trump.
The “you may push Trump over the top” is interwoven with what amounts to personal threats: You will be subjected to lots of oppo (presumably Shanahan is enough of a grown-up to have worked that out) and insinuations that she might suffer for the rest of her life:
Brace yourself, Nicole Shanahan. Most Americans have not heard of the ex-wife of Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin…. Shanahan’s life will now be turned inside out….
The latter [helping Trump win] might complicate the remainder of Shanahan’s life. Nothing could prepare her for what she is about to go through….
The Democrats have every incentive to make life as hard as possible for Kennedy and Shanahan.
But all Luce can serve up is the rumor that Shanahan had an affair with Elon Musk when she was still married to Sergey Brin. Both Musk and Shanahan have denied that.
Ahd Shanahan is extremely attractive. If she is well-spoken too and either natively or with professional coaching is good under fire, attempts to attack her could backfire. Beating up on pretty young-looking women is frowned on in many circles.
Luce also depicts Kennedy’s long-standing big issues, the environment and vaccines, as populist without using that word:
But he appeals to swaths of America that are hostile to the pharmaceutical industry. Most Americans have a close family member who suffers from a chronic disease, such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension or addiction. Millions feel ripped off by the big drugs companies. On Tuesday, Shanahan vowed to fix chronic disease within “weeks, not years” of being elected. Many Americans are also affected by pollution — another of RFK’s themes and one of Shanahan’s philanthropic causes. If their names appear on the ballot, they will get some votes. The question is whether the trade off will be worth it.
Your humble blogger has commented on the the extent of concern about food quality and orthodox medical treatment among those who have the time and money to address it, and there are plenty of vendors who will stoke and serve that hobby. It goes way beyond organic foods to super-foods, de-toxing, specialized supplementation and injections, often accompanied by at least fitness enthusiast-level exercising. Many are vaccine averse. And that’s before you get to treatments that only the super-rich can afford, like buying blood from the young to use to regenerate theirs.
In other words, Luce might want to get out more before dismissing RFK, Jr. as the candidate for niche issues voters. Consider this sighting in February from a contact who managed to be invited to a big Hollywood pre-Oscars screening in a super wealthy resort area:
There was a large after party. The donors are getting ready to write checks.
They use straw polls as horse race indices. How much they need to donate? Who is the cool kid?
The results – among the ultra rich ultra Hollywood Liberal blue billionaire hive?
RFK JR – 58%
Trump – 27% – (I was about spit out my gin and tonic when that was read off)
Biden 4%
Newsom 2%
Various others less than 2% each.
There were multiple people there talking about Biden’s dementia. And the startling lack of enthusiasm among the Calif elite for Newsom also blew me away.
Mind you, I am not saying this to endorse RFK, Jr. He seems only to be running on Camelot hopium with no concrete ideas how to get there. I am simply saying that dismissing him before Shanahan joined his ticket, was premature and looks even more so now.