US Presidential Election: A Dead Bear Bounce for Kennedy?

A “dead cat bounce” is defined as a temporary, short-lived recovery of asset prices from a prolonged decline or a bear market that is followed by the continuation of the downward trend. Frequently, downtrends are interrupted by brief periods of recovery—or small rallies—during which prices temporarily rise.

The phrase came to mind when Robert Kennedy Jnr, the independent US Presidential admitted dumping a dead baby bear in New York’s Central Park and sparking a major security incident ten years ago. Why US voters who wanted neither Biden nor Trump to win the Presidency would turn to another septuagenarian of very limited achievement was never quite clear to me, but he had been polling as high as 15% earlier in 2024, when Biden was still in the race. That has now dropped to less than 6% in recent polling since Kamala Harris replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

The incident doesn’t cast him in an entirely favourable light, but any publicity is better than no publicity when your campaign ratings are dropping like a stone. His campaign has been largely funded by Trump supporting Republican donors who hoped the Kennedy name would split the Democratic vote, but denounced as a vanity project by his own family, thirty two of whom gathered in the White House for a photo-op to endorse Biden’s candidacy.

From Wiki: “Four of Kennedy’s siblings wrote a letter together which read “The decision of our brother Bobby to run as a third-party candidate against Joe Biden is dangerous to our country…Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment…We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.” His cousin, Stephen Kennedy Smith, also stated “This is a mistake we cannot afford as a country…when RFK Jr. decided to run he didn’t call me to ask for help because he knew I would oppose his candidacy due to his misguided stands on issues, his poor judgement, and tenuous relationship with the truth.”

His policy positions ranged from an eclectic mix of far right libertarian views, far left (by US standards) condemnations of US militarism abroad, to conspiracy theories against COVID Vaccines, anti-Invitro fertilisation, Trump prosecutions, January 6^th. rioter criminalisation, and he has blamed school shootings on the prevalence of psychiatrically prescribed drugs. He has flip-flopped on many issues, but at least he injected an element of policy debate into an election largely dominated by the competing personalities of Biden and Trump, and now with the identity politics associated with Kamala Harris.

According to 538.com, Kamala’s favourability/unfavourability rating is still underwater by 7% but has improved markedly since Biden stepped down from the candidacy. Trumps has also improved marginally and is now at – 9%.

In head to head match-ups, Kamala Harris is now marginally ahead of Trump but there are some important caveats that have to be entered when interpreting these results.

Firstly, I have used 538.com averages of all polls to discern trends. There can be, and often are, huge variations between polls funded by different groups and carried out by different pollsters. In theory, aggregating huge numbers of polls should reduce the margin of error but there can still be systematic biases depending on the methodology used.

Secondly all polls can only gauge opinion at a particular point in time and cannot predict exactly how voters will actually vote in November when different circumstances and considerations may apply. People can change their minds and turnout will depend on enthusiasm as much as opinion.

Thirdly, the President is elected by an electoral college, not the popular vote and so it is the polls in individual swing states that are by far the most important. Hillary Clinton got three million more votes than Trump and yet lost the electoral college. Joe Biden got seven million more votes than Trump, and yet the result was disputed and decided by small majorities in Georgia and Arizona.

Much less polling is conducted in individual swing states, and it will take some time for a clear trend to emerge following Kamala Harris’ accession to the top of the Democratic ticket. Trump had been leading in most (which may be why Biden was persuaded to step down) and the early trends appear to indicate that Harris has regained the lead in some.

Other indicators of a relatively good year for Democrats is polling which indicates that Democrats are marginally ahead in the race to win the House of Representatives and huge majorities have unfavourable opinions on the performance of the Republican appointee dominated Supreme Court and Trump’s Vice Presidential pick, JD Vance.

Arnold Carton has written a perceptive review of JD Vance’s book “Hillbilly Elegy” on Slugger, and it seems Trump picked him to appeal to the “white thrash” voters of middle America who despise the coastal liberal elites who dominate the US economy, if not the polity. I took the trouble to read JD Vance’s long essay on his conversion to Catholicism in the Lamp magazine and can see why his candidacy could get the Trump campaign into trouble. He may have come from a poor Appalachian background, but all his life he has tried to escape it by joining the coastal elites in college, as a lawyer and then in business and politics as a protégé of Peter Thiel, the conservative libertarian Silicon Valley tech billionaire. It is hard to imagine someone now further removed from his poor boy roots and difficult to see how “white thrash” rural middle America could identify with him. He does, however, appear to have a detailed knowledge of Augustinian theology which may help to reconcile him to his fate.

Kamala Harris is due to announce her VP pick shortly and that could give her a bounce or a dip in the polls depending on how well her choice is received. The sheer media attention that that decision and the forthcoming Democratic Party Convention in Chicago will garner could also give her a bounce. That said, the Anti-Vietnam war riots associated with the last Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 did the Humphries/Muskie ticket no favours in the subsequent election and Vice Presidential picks rarely have much influence on voting behaviour in November.

I would expect the Israel/Gaza conflict to be a major issue on the streets, of not in the convention centre, this time around, and a lot of ugly scenes could derail Kamala Harris’ campaign, as the issue seems to divide not just America, but the Democratic party itself. Her political skill in surmounting these divisions and her performance in the forthcoming debate with Trump will go a long way towards determining her fate. Many potential swing voters have yet to make up their minds about her, and she too, has a thin resumé of actual achievement to date.

That said, Trump had zero track record in politics when he won the Presidency and Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize merely for being President while black. Perhaps American voters are finally ready to accept the possibility of a female President. When you reduce politics to developing competing brands, the quality of the packaging and imagery is often more important than inspecting what’s actually inside the box.

Exactly how do American’s see themselves and their country in 2024, and how do they want the rest of the world to see them? The majority, I suspect, couldn’t care less how others see them, but the result of this election could affect all of us in many ways, as I attempted to highlight in Hitler with Nukes?

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.