Obama insider: RFK's presidential bid keeping Democrats, Republicans 'up at night'

Rumors have been swirling for some time that former President Barack Obama and those in his inner circle harbor serious concerns about President Joe Biden's re-election prospects, and recent remarks from one such insider point to a key reason why.

The man who headed up Obama's winning 2012 campaign, Jim Messina, has recently weighed in on the ability of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to draw votes away from the Democrat incumbent, noting that his presidential bid is keeping many people “up at night,” as the Washington Times reports.

Concern warranted

During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Messina was asked for his take on RFK's campaign and the impact it is having on the campaigns mounted by the major-party candidates.

Messina opined that it was “absolutely” understandable for Democrats to worry about Kennedy's run, given that it introduces a distinct air of uncertainty to the process, not just for Biden, but also for former President Donald Trump.

“RFK is the one thing that makes the polls confusing because you just don't know in what state who he is pulling votes from,” Messina noted.

He went on, stating, “So if you are a Democrat or a Republican, yeah, he is the thing you don't know about, and for a campaign manager that is the stuff that keeps you up at night.”

Messina, who also worked as Obama's deputy chief of staff in the White House, mused, “You can control everything else, but there are some things you can't control. And let's be honest, RFK Jr. is something you cannot recall.”

Equal Opportunity Threat

New York Magazine recently noted that in the earlier days of his campaign, it appeared that RFK Jr. was pulling more votes away from Biden than from Trump, but that the true picture is now far less certain.

A pair of polls, one from NBC News and one from Marist, seems to suggest that Biden does better in a five-way contest than in a head-to-head matchup with Trump.

Though Trump has said publicly that he believes Kennedy's presence will hurt Biden more than himself, the outlet hinted that Republican insiders suggest that the former president is actually quite uncertain about the impact the independent bid will have on his election chances.

NY Mag further posits that if Kennedy persists in taking votes away from both the Democrat and the Republican, each campaign will be forced to make a strategic decision to ignore him or attack him head-on.

Third-party “PTSD”

With Kennedy now declaring that he has earned a spot on the ballots in the key states of Nevada and Michigan, some Democrats are heeding the danger and warning the base not to allow a repeat of 2016, a contest about which Messina said, “You can argue Hillary Clinton lost in part because the third parties got 6% of the vote.”

Suggesting that the Democratic Party hierarchy still suffers from “PTSD” from memories of Ralph Nader's 2000 third-party bid, which he says cost Al Gore the White House, Messina wants his ideological brethren to pay attention to what Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently stated on the topic.

“It's throwing your away your vote if you're a Democrat and you vote for someone else on the ballot other than Joe Biden,” Pritzker said, but whether that is a message that resonates sufficiently to prevent a potentially race-changing Kennedy surge among disgruntled liberals, only time will tell.