Trump the loser. Really? Um!

Who dares lay a bet on the outcome of the US Presidential election? The gaming odds shifted last week, again!

Just a little over one month ago Donald Trump seemed to be well ahead in the race to win the US Presidential election on 5 November this year. Then ‘wham bam!’—Joe Biden stepped down as the Democrat candidate. Kamala Harris announced her campaign for President on 21 July and was endorsed at the Democrat national convention last week (22 August). A combination of the best of Democrat, Hollywood-style hoopla and pizazz and a seemingly ‘in awe’ of Kamala major media coverage, Harris would now seem a certain winner.

But then, last Friday (23 August), another twist seems to have put the entire election back into the ‘who knows(?)’ category. Robert Kennedy Jr who was standing as an independent candidate announced that he was withdrawing his name from the ‘swing state’ ballots and throwing his support behind Trump. This appears to be momentous. I’ll explain why.

‘College’ votes

For those unfamiliar with the US Presidential election process, the candidate who wins the most votes nationally doesn’t necessarily become President. On a number of occasions the candidate with the highest national vote hasn’t won the election. This is because a Presidential candidate must win a majority of ‘college’ votes from enough states. This map shows how each state in the USA is allocated a certain number of college votes based (primarily) on the population size of each state. The candidate who wins the most college votes become President.

As can be seen from the map, in order to win, Harris or Trump must secure 270 colleges votes from the possible 538 college votes.

‘Known and unknown votes’

US voter intentions have a high degree of ‘predictability’ about them. This results in a high degree of knowledge that the result is ‘unpredictable’, if that’s not too confusing a statement! The ‘predictability’ comes about because voters can register as Democrat or Republican supporters. It’s almost a public declaration of where a person’s political leanings lie. Combine this data with data from highly sophisticated polling companies, the Democrat and Republican parties’ polling, and historical voting and the foregoing picture emerges.

What can be seen is the ‘known knowns’: the Harris Democrats will win the college votes of the states (shown in solid blue), and the Trump Republicans will win the college votes of the states (shown in solid red). The ‘known unknowns’ are the light brown states with some marginal light red and light blue. These are the ‘swing’ states where voters’ intentions are pretty much evenly divided between Republican and Democrat.

The outcome of the ‘known unknowns’ is that the Presidential election is decided by small numbers of ‘swing’ voters in the ‘swing’ states. You can see from this map that there are 77 college votes where no-one can predict the outcome (Harris/Democrat or Trump/Republican). (Note: other analysis includes North Carolina as a ‘swing’ state, making seven ‘swing’ states with 93 college votes. These seven seem to be the consensus of the commentators.)

The most important ‘swing’ state appears to be Pennsylvania. There are a number of commentators/analysts who give scenarios about where the swings states will fall. Most scenarios indicate that the winner will be decided on where the 19 Pennsylvania college votes go. They refer to Pennsylvania as the ‘keystone’ swing state.

Enter Robert Kennedy Jr

Robert Kennedy Jr is the son of assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy. In other words, he is political blue-blood Democrat ‘royalty’ who, by endorsing Trump, has jumped to the other side. It’s legitimate to speculate that Kennedy ‘could tip the balance in swing states.’

Kennedy is portrayed by many media commentators as a nut case. Whether he’s a nutter or not, he was polling in the 10 per cent range in May 2024. In some demographic groups he was polling as high as 18 per cent.

Election calculations in genuinely democratic countries are broadly pretty simple. Each side needs to hold its base, then pick up sufficient swinging voters to get across the line. In this US election recent polls show a national votes for Harris of 49% with Trump on 47%. In ‘swing’ states Harris is in front in some and Trump in front in others, with the ‘swing’ state differences being as tight as the national polling. Given that this ‘tightness’ is within the polling margin of error, analysts conclude that the outcome is entirely unpredictable.

Again, enter Kennedy. Even though some commentators assess the Kennedy factor as negligible, such dismissals seems illogical. The question is: how many of Kennedy’s followers will following him to Trump and how many will ignore his recommendation?

Kennedy is an interesting fellow. He’s an avid environmentalist. He promotes the idea that big pharma and big business are in a ‘conspiracy’ against US democracy. Normally he’d be perceived as a ‘lefty’. But, after an extensive tour of the Mexican border he became a ‘build the wall’ man in October last year. That is, his position on any particular issue doesn’t conform to a Democrat or Republican format. He comes across as genuinely independent.

Kennedy’s speech last Friday (23 August), where he withdrew his candidacy from the ‘swing’ states and endorsed Trump, reflects the mind of an unusual politician (watch on YouTube from 41min 27 sec on). Totally devoid of the hoopla and theatre that typifies both the Democrat and Republican speeches, Kennedy is a plain speaker with a focus on policy, based on facts as he sees them. Agree with him or not, Kennedy gives the impression of a straight-shooter—someone with whom you know what you are getting. With ‘swing’ voters it may well be different—my guess is that such voters may feel that they are not quite sure what they are getting with either Trump or Harris.

Kennedy says that his endorsement of Trump will puzzle many of his supporters and this includes upsetting his wife. But he lays out his reasons clearly. He explains where he stands on the war in Ukraine. He has an extraordinary take on the health crisis in the USA, laying blame on the political power of the food processing industry. He says that the Democrat Party has abandoned democracy and has “…become the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag, and Big Money”. He has a common bond with Trump in that he says that the Democrat machine has used the same endless legal attacks against his candidacy as they have against Trump. Seen through Kennedy’s eyes the Democrats have driven him into Trump’s camp.

The election outcome?

The point of this article is not to suggest that Kennedy’s shift to Trump heralds a Trump victory. Instead the point is that Kennedy has been the leader of the ‘swing’ voters until now. Many of his supporters will not follow him to Trump, but many could, nonetheless. In short, the Kennedy move means the election is entirely unpredictable. Take with a grain of salt the major media commentary that’s been swept up in the Harris euphoria.

Below I’ve included some extracts from Kennedy’s 23 August withdrawal speech taken directly from his Substack article. The extracts are under topic headings.

The Democrat Party

I left that party last October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag, and Big Money.

But I’m sorry to say that while democracy may still be alive at the grass roots, it has become little more than a slogan for our political institutions, our media, and our government, and most sadly of all, for the Democratic Party. 

…the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Each time our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us into court…

How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answer. They did it by weaponizing the government and agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising voters. 

The Media

— the duty of a free press to safeguard democracy and challenge the party in power. Instead of maintaining a posture of fierce skepticism toward authority, you have made yourselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power. You did not alone cause the devolution of America’s democracy, but you could have prevented it.

The mainstream media, once the guardian of the First Amendment and democratic principles, has joined a systematic attack on democracy. It always justifies its censorship on the grounds of “combating misinformation,” but oppressors don’t fear lies. They fear the truth.

Ukraine War

The military-industrial complex has provided us with the familiar comic-book justification that this war is a noble effort to stop supervillain Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and to thwart his Hitler-like march across Europe. 

In fact, tiny Ukraine is a proxy in a geopolitical struggle initiated by the ambitions of the U.S. Neocons for U.S. global hegemony. I’m not excusing Putin for invading Ukraine. He had other options. But the war is Russia’s predictable response to the reckless Neocon project of extending NATO to encircle Russia.

The Ukraine war began in 2014, when US agencies overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installed a handpicked pro-West government that launched a civil war against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

In April 2022, President Biden sent Boris Johnson to Ukraine to force President Zelensky to tear up a peace treaty with President Putin that would have brought peace and left Donbass and Ukraine as part of Ukraine.

President Trump says that he will reopen negotiations with Putin and end the war overnight. This alone would justify my support for his campaign. 

Discussions with Trump

… I met again with President Trump and his family members and closest advisors in Florida. In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues.

But we are aligned with each other on key issues like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting our freedom of speech, unraveling corporate capture of the regulatory agencies, and getting U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing, censoring, and surveilling Americans, and interfering in our elections.

The health of Americans

Today, two-thirds of American adults and half of children suffer chronic health issues. Fifty years ago, the number for children was less than one percent. 

In America, 74% of adults are now overweight or obese, and close to 50% of children. … In Japan, the childhood obesity rate is 3%. … Half of Americans now have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

There’s been an explosion of neurological diseases that I never saw as a child. ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, Tourette’s, narcolepsy, ASD, and Asperger’s. In the year 2000, the autism rate was one in 1,500. Now, autism rates in kids are one in 36 nationally, and 1 in 22 in California. The screening has not changed. Nor has the definition. The incidence has changed. 

One in four American women is on an antidepressant medication. 40% of teens have a mental health diagnosis. Today, 15% of high schoolers are on Adderall and half a million children are on SSRIs. 

So what’s causing all this suffering? I’ll name two culprits. First is ultra-processed foods. About 70% of American children’s diet is ultra-processed — industrially manufactured in a factory.

The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food, medicine, and environment. …Poor and minority communities suffer disproportionately. Industry lobbyists make sure that most of the food stamp and school lunch program dollars are funding processed foods.

Eighty percent of NIH grants go to people who have conflicts of interest. These agencies, the FDA, the USDA, the CDC, all of them are controlled by huge for-profit corporations. 75% of the FDA’s funding doesn’t come from taxpayers. It comes from pharma. And pharma executives and consultants and lobbyists cycle in and out of these agencies. 

With President Trump’s backing, I am going to change that. We are going to staff these agencies with honest scientists and doctors free from industry funding.

…we need new leadership in Washington, because unfortunately, both the Democratic and Republican Parties are in cahoots with the food producers, Big Pharma, and Big Ag, which are among their major donors