Libertarians, Please Nominate RKF Jr
Stove Top 37: RFK Jr's Libertarian push, political vs cultural power, pursue leverage
Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. As usual, each edition has a few brief stories and finishes with a mix of interesting links, hot takes, and good reads.
Enjoy.
When There Are Two Good Options, Do Both
When I decided I no longer wanted to be a beanpole, I took to the internet and went down the working out rabbit hole. It was through this that I discovered the age-old debate on weights versus calisthenics (bodyweight exercises). I remember reading these threads of heated people going back and forth for pages and pages on why people should do one method and not the other. To me, they both seemed pretty good, so I just did both.
Likewise, when I first started to research marketing for Raffle Leader, I took to the internet and went down the indie hacking rabbit hole. There, I read threads of heated people arguing over whether founders should focus on paid or organic marketing. Again, I think both have merits, so I’m just doing both.
The reason I bring it up is because of one Robert F Kennedy Jr, a man who is considering running for the Libertarian nomination even though he is by no stretch of the imagination a Libertarian:
He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15.
He strongly supports unions.
He is not exactly a free-trade guy.
He’s hawkish on immigration.
He wants to expand the social welfare state.
It’s clear when you read his platform that RFK Jr’s dream is to create a bigger social welfare state by cutting the military and “corruption”:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fab7cb459-8ead-498f-9aa6-e1d7809ec2c6_1292x430.png)
The only things you can passably say he is a Libertarian on are 1) cutting military spending and 2) believing nobody should be mandated to take a vaccine. But again, his motivations on those two issues are not derived from Libertarian ideals. He wants to fund his government programs and he’s an anti-vaxxing conspiracy theorist.
The dude just isn’t a Libertarian. He’s a Democrat, and he knows it. It’s why he was running as a Democrat until it became clear the establishment was going to drill him into the dirt.
So now he’s mulling a Libertarian run as that is his only real chance of getting on the ballot in all 50 states. It’s an interesting idea despite his lack of Libertarian credentials because he actually has the potential to make some real noise.
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Gary Johnson pulled in 4.5 million votes in 2016, and he inspires no devotion compared to RFK Jr. It’s like comparing a Honda Civic to a Mustang. The Honda Civic is fine, but the Mustang would be the best third-party challenger since Ross Perot.
The only problem is he probably won’t get the Libertarian nomination because the dominant caucus, the Mises Caucus, doesn’t want him. The Mises Caucus is basically the fundamentalist wing of the party. They care less about winning votes than spreading Libertarian ideals through the culture because they believe politics flows downstream of culture.
I actually agree with that idea, but why can’t we do both? In other words, why can’t we turn the Libertarian Party into a cultural machine that also has the potential to spoil elections? In other other words, why can’t we turn the Libertarian Party into a giant and powerful lobby that the two parties come crawling to every 4 years?
Let’s think about this rationally. The Libertarian Party is never going to win a Presidential election. So the most impactful thing we can do is hold leverage over one or both parties. We need to be able to push them in our direction, and the only way to do that is by pointing a missile at them. But you can’t point a missile unless you have a missile, and right now, the Libertarians are devoid of missiles.
In politics, the missile is votes. If you have control over votes, the parties will flock to you like seagulls at the beach. It’s why they grovel to unions. It’s why Biden is freaking out about Palestine. It’s why the Republicans can’t take a sensible view on abortion. It’s why politicians do anything. They are absolute whores for votes. If you have enough influence over a meaningful number of votes, they will become absolute whores for you too.
And you really don’t need that many votes for this whoring to begin. All you really need to make the most powerful people in the world really sweat is a few thousand votes in certain areas. Biden won the 2020 election thanks to 44,000 votes in key states, Trump in 2016 by 80,000 votes, and Bush by 537 votes in 2000.
So, if you run RFK Jr this time, he could very easily pull in 10 million votes. Maybe even 20 million. That’s not enough to ever win an election, but it’s definitely enough to swing one one way or the other.
The Mises Caucus might now say that this is all in vain because, remember, the dude is a Democrat. Why give up the purity of the party and movement for a Kennedy?
I can see where that line of doubt comes from, but it’s extremely short-sighted. Take cryptocurrency. Many hard-core members of the crypto movement absolutely hate that speculation is the industry’s current main use case. That’s fair; everyone wants the industry to “mature”. But what these people fail to realize is that speculation is how the majority of current hard-core members got introduced to crypto. It’s just the top of the marketing funnel. RFK Jr is no different for Libertarians.
Let’s say he pulls in 10 million new Libertarian votes. A lot of those people aren’t going to ever become Libertarians because they are either protest voters or RFK Jr voters, but we have to believe some of them will. After all, the ideals of our party are appealing, right? So if you can convert just 5% of that 10 million into the party, that’s 500,000 new members. For context, the Libertarian party got 1.8 million votes total in 2020.
And, at the same time RFK Jr is doing the election thing, the Mises Caucus can keep doing the grassroots culture thing. It’ll still work, and hell, it’ll probably work better because the party will actually attract eyeballs for the first time ever.
Basically, the Libertarians have two good options available to them right now. Just take both.
If you do, you’ll be a formidable political force. You won’t even need to keep running in elections. Turn the party into something that looks like a union or a lobby, and hold your massive membership and cultural influence to push the two main parties in your direction.
It doesn’t matter if RFK Jr isn’t a Libertarian. You’re never going to win regardless of who you trot up there. Instead of chasing that unobtainable dream, let’s build our political and cultural power so that we can actually make a difference.
Extras
The London Underground is testing AI surveillance tools.
The US keeps pouring money into chips.
The era of VCs pouring money into China might be cooked.
Get a heat pump.
Drone shows are pretty damn dope.
Companies are using AI to stalk workers.
Nobody likes reading anymore. 46% didn’t read a single book in 2023.
Everybody really should be getting more sleep.
If you don’t already know how to code, there’s really no point in learning.
AI is already costing some people their jobs.
Please, for the love of God, don’t use AI to recreate your ex.
Staying at home is fun sometimes, but bro just go out and get drunk. You’re in your 20s.
Violent crime is down bigly since 2020, but most people wouldn’t believe it. If it bleeds, it leads.
I really hope you don’t think that your “critical thinking skills” are going to save you from AI.
Families are continuously getting smaller.
Polanddddd, you dirty dog.
Trump is working on a “private red-state army” that would go into blue states and forcibly deport millions, especially the ones that oppose Israel’s invasion of Gaza. What?
I don’t know who, but someone is going to dim the sun. Good.
Your AI significant other is a data-harvesting horror show. Seems like Chinese women still find them superior to the real thing, though.
Thank God for the European Court of Human Rights.
The UK is now in a recession.
Scott Alexander is really just an absurdly good writer.
Until next time, ✌️
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