Robert Fringe Kennedy, Jr.
RFK Jr. running as an independent may not make much difference either way.
Just days after the publication of an absolutely scathing Vanity Fair profile in with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. insists he Has no plans to run for President as an independent candidate,1 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has announced that he will be running for President as an independent candidate:
U.S. presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce he is running as an independent instead of pursuing his long-shot bid to oust President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party nominee, a shift that could complicate the 2024 election.
Anti-vaccine activist Kennedy, a member of a storied U.S. political dynasty, posted a video on YouTube on Friday asking Americans to join him for a "major announcement" in Philadelphia on Oct. 9.
"I'll be speaking about a sea change in American politics," he said, decrying corruption in "both parties."
"How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?" he asks. "It's not through playing the game" by the current rules, he said.
There’s been some chatter about Kennedy running for the Libertarian Party nomination (despite his fairly recent history of demanding that libertarian-leaning organizations be forcibly shut down for climate change wrongthink) which would at least get him on the ballot in nearly every state. But he might be a bit too moderate for them. The Green Party already has its man, running to stave off paying his tax and child support arrears ending poverty and mass incarceration.
I feel like an independent or third-party run was always the endgame for Kennedy, because of his own bloated ego and messiah complex, and became of some well-heeled conservative backers who’ve stopped just short of calling their organization SiphonVotesFromJoeBidenPAC. It’s surely no accident that so much of his friendliest media coverage has come from right-wing media outlets.
And yet…would it actually work? In the Vanity Fair profile, Kennedy himself posits that an independent campaign is just as likely to take votes from Trump as from Biden.
And Aaron Blake of The Washington Post agrees:
…while Kennedy is a lifelong Democrat from the country’s preeminent Democratic family, there is plenty of reason to believe that a third-party bid could hurt Donald Trump more than Biden.
There is no good polling that tests a Kennedy third-party bid. What we do know is that Republicans like Kennedy a heck of a lot more than Democrats do. That was true pretty shortly after he launched his campaign in April, and the gap has now grown into a chasm.
The latest polling from Quinnipiac University shows that Republicans like Kennedy by a 30-point margin, 48 percent favorable to 18 percent unfavorable.
Democrats, meanwhile, have developed an overwhelming distaste. The Quinnipiac poll shows just 14 percent have a favorable opinion of him, compared with 57 percent who have an unfavorable one.
Democrats never particularly liked Kennedy, despite what you might have been led to believe. But he’s gone from 14 points underwater (more unfavorable than favorable) with them in mid-June, to 23 points underwater in late June, to 26 points in July, to 31 points in August, and now to 43 points underwater.
[…]
But even many Trump-skeptical Republicans like him. While his numbers in the Quinnipiac poll were better among Republicans who back Trump in the GOP primary — 53 percent favorable to 17 percent unfavorable — his split among non-Trump-supporting GOP primary voters was still well in positive territory, at 40-18.
We’ve also seen that the number of Republican-leaning voters who are dissatisfied with Trump as their nominee rivals the number of Democrats who are dissatisfied with Biden as their option. And these numbers suggest that Kennedy has significantly more appeal to the political right than to the political left.
A third-party candidacy is on the verge of shaking up American politics and ending the partisan duopoly. And it always will be. Once in a while you might get a Perot or a Ralph Nader who actually does makes some impact without coming anywhere close to winning, but the rules makes it excruciatingly hard for an outsider to even get listed on the ballot in most states, much less run a competitive campaign.
The trick is to take over an established party from within and remake it in your own image, as we’ve learned since 2016.
There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the Democratic and Republican Parties - isn’t there always? - but I feel like most of that is from frustrated centrists who think both parties have become too radical. (I’m not saying that’s true - as much as Democrats from the progressive wing annoy me, they aren’t running the show like MAGAworld completely took over the GOP - just that it’s a popular perception.)
Which makes me think that, in theory, someone like Mike Bloomberg could launch a credible independent run. It helps that he has the cash. But a total crank like Kennedy, even with his famous last name, isn’t going to attract these kind of disaffected voters.
Plus, the cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs electorate already has its man:
…it matters which voters might be up for grabs in a contest between Trump and Biden. While a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats like Kennedy, indications seem to be that Kennedy’s potential base (conspiratorial, anti-establishment, anti-vaccine people) overlaps significantly with Trump-oriented voters. If those voters like Kennedy but already have a home, it mitigates the impact.
Some Biden supporters will worry that RFK, Jr. could cost him a close election. I don’t know. If he attracts any meaningful support at all, I see it coming from Trump and Biden equally, if not mostly from the Republicans.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an erstwhile environmentalist and 2004 election conspiracy theorist, splitting the Republican vote in a Presidential election. I have to admit, I never would have seen that coming.
How brutal was this profile? Well, instead of leaving it up to the reader to decide for himself how the author felt about his subject, this one ends with writer Joe Hagan openly talking about what an asshole he was:
Did I like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? No, I did not. He is a humorless bully living in a paranoid fantasy in which reporters like me are cast as corrupt dupes whose only redemption is to follow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into this miasma of overheated conspiracies. It’s a script that’s beneath Netflix, let alone the Kennedy legacy.
"...a lot of dissatisfaction with the Democratic and Republican parties...from frustrated centrists who think both parties have become too radical" describes me (and I suspect a few other folks like me) to a T, minus the "radical" as regards the Ds, and amplified exponentially as regards the GOP.
My dissatisfaction with the Democrats is, and has always been, with some of their policies, or specific features within those policies. My dissatisfaction with the Rs used to track the same way, but now has basically boiled down to being dissatisfied with the fact of their very existence.
Radical ideas and rhetoric from some in the Progressive wing of the Democratic party taint the perception of the party as a whole, but its actions IRL put the lie to the 'radical' label for anyone who understands the definition of the word. Those who don't should look up the definition and they'll find a picture of MAGA fascists and burn-it-all-down crazies cracking the whip over a cowed and compliant GOP, which for years now has repeatedly chanted "Thank you sir. May I please have another?!" in public while secretly crying in its beer in private in an attempt to go along to get along and to cover their asses so their asses will remain in their seats. The scattered wing nuts within the Progressive wing of the Ds aren't even snapping a locker room towel at the ass of their party by comparison. And none of them who are actually bona fide Dems, unlike poseurs such as RFK Jr., are trying to get what they want by destroying the democratic process and steamrolling over and past the rule of law.
Respecting the democratic process and the institutions created in its furtherance along with the results of elections and abiding by democratic norms and the rule of law: truly subversive and dangerously radical ideas, which one party still subscribes to, and the other has rejected wholesale. So, I'll be casting my lot with - and vote for - the radical Ds exclusively, as long as the GOP serves its MAGA overlords and itself instead of the country and the democratic system that makes it what it is...the freest with the most liberties and opportunities for its citizens of any on the face of the earth.
I can much more easily live with whatever things the Ds are selling that dissatisfy me, but which find enough other buyers to get them done, than I can with what the GOP is up to, which is passively allowing its overlords to engage in a force-feeding program and cramming its crazy lawlessness down the nations throat whether there's enough of an appetite for it or not.
Robert Fringe Kennedy. I like that. His "environmentalism" - like everything else about him - stinks. He's exactly what I'm thinking of when I say "those people are an embarrassment that they claim they're on my side."