Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s only role in the 2024 presidential election is 'spoiler candidate.' He is not going to win. Since the birth of the GOP in 1854, third-party and independent candidates have never finished better than a distant third (*unless the candidate was a previous president). That will not change in November.
RFK's run as a spoiler candidate raises the question: whose campaign will he spoil? Last year, that seemed obvious. Now, the answer is less clear.
When Kennedy announced in April 2023 that he would challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination, everybody assumed he was a Democrat. Why wouldn’t they? He is a scion of America’s most famous Democratic family.
Kennedy, however, did not stick with it. The early consensus showed he was unlikely to upset Biden. Instead of ramping up his game or accepting that it was not his year, he reinvented himself. In October, he declared as an independent candidate. Republicans were delighted. Kennedy only had to shave a small percentage from Biden’s total to throw the election to Trump.
But while it is too early to say the media experts and MAGA wishful thinkers are wrong, there is no empirical evidence they are right. What numbers exist show that Trump is the major party candidate who should be worried by RFK.
Flame-out contender Ron DeSantis presented himself as Trump without the drama — missing the point that MAGAs thrive on drama. Kennedy is Trump without the court cases. If you want your crazy undiluted by legal woes, RFK is your man.
At the beginning of April, a WSJ poll showed that RFK was pulling more support from Trump than Biden. At the time, I pointed out that polls have been weak on absolutes. But they are better at trends. Back in July 2023, Kennedy had a +25% favorability rating. It is now down to zero and still falling.
Let me reiterate that polling science needs to improve before we can trust their absolute results. But bearing that in mind, a new NBC poll shows the same result as the WSJ poll. RFK is getting more love from MAGA than liberals.
First, the top line — 2024 will likely not see the record number of voters the 2020 election did. While the media’s talking heads have characterized the 2024 election as the battle for democracy (liberals) — or the last stand against the deep state (conservatives) — the average voter has not so far shown the same sense of urgency.
I think that is nuts. I find it amazing that there are people so uninterested in politics they think that Biden and Trump are just two sides of the same doddering old-man coin. But that is what the NBC poll says. We will find out how accurate that is in November.
More important is this news from the NBC report:
But what also stands out in the survey is how the low voter interest and the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. potentially scramble what’s been a stable presidential contest with more than six months until Election Day. While Trump holds a 2-point edge over Biden in head to head, Biden leads Trump by 2 points in a five-way ballot test including Kennedy and other third-party candidates.
This good news for Biden raises the question: how did RFK become a liberal pariah — or at least not a slam dunk spoiler for Biden? The short answer is that Kennedy is nuts. And liberals, unlike MAGA, prefer their candidates sane.
Before many people paid attention, RFK was known for his environmental activism and his anti-vax absolutism. The first was Liberalism 101. The second was catnip to the MAGAs. Most people interested in the race assumed that Kennedy would run to the left. They probably believed that the Kennedy experience in running campaigns and RFK's connections in the Democratic establishment would lead to a professional campaign stressing the candidate's appeal to the usual Democratic demographics.
They were wrong. Although, no doubt some say they knew the truth about RFK all along. Good for them.
Besides the anti-vax stand, Kennedy has much to recommend him to the lunatic fringe (aka the Republican base). Even when his goal is admirable, he sounds crazy. RFK is for an economically vibrant middle class. But he sees monsters piling up under the bed.
RFK blames the COVID pandemic for a generational shift in wealth. Economists rightly point to 40+ years of Republican tax policies. He is right that corporate America has too much influence on government agencies. But he offers no evidence for his claims that big business runs the EPA and FDA as personal fiefdoms. And he thinks the solution to Pentagon overspending is to bail on Ukraine.
Then there is the plain crazy. RFK has become a fan of Tucker Carlson, who he celebrates as a fellow populist free speech warrior. He has said he will go on Steve Bannon and Alex Jones's shows because he wants to talk to their audience — let him. He knows his fellow travelers when he sees them.
Kennedy is psychologically a MAGA. He loves conspiracy theories. He is scientifically illiterate and hangs with science deniers. His spokespeople must keep “clarifying” what he “really meant.” And he appoints people for their money.
He has said that the attempted insurrection of the Jan 6 rioters was no big thing. In a podcast last October, he said of the attempted assassination of American democracy:
“What’s the worst thing that could happen? Right? I mean, we have an entire military, Pentagon, a few blocks away.”
Adding: “Then, you know, put the ones who broke the law in jail, and let’s move on.”
Does RFK not realize that Trump was in charge on that dismal day? The military cannot do anything unless ordered to by the President. And Trump was the reason for the riot. Which is worse — that Kennedy is a moron, or he is a coup apologist?
Kennedy did not misspeak. In a fund-raising letter, he described people detained for storming the Capitol in 2021 as “J6 activists.” (What happened to law-breakers?).
Campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear offered this:
“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”
It is a poor defense to say that outsiders are responsible for a campaign's message.
Kennedy has even compared Trump favorably to Biden. He told Erin Burnet on her CNN show that:
“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history — the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent”
Nice try. Asking social media sites to be responsible is not censorship — where are the court cases? Who is Kennedy trying to appeal to? Lying does not seduce most liberals.
Kennedy had so lost his mind to monomania that in his anti-vax hysteria, he compared the health advice of serious doctors to the Holocaust while he spat on Anne Frank’s grave.
"Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. Today the mechanisms [COVID] measures are being put in place so none of us can run and none of us can hide."
Kennedy seems to base his historical research on the success of the Von Trapp family in escaping from the Nazis. However, the Sound of Music solution was not available to most Germans after they elected fascism into power.
I am not surprised that Kennedy appeals to MAGAs. I am astounded that some liberals will still back him. If those dogmatists think it is better to be pure than in a position to effect positive change, they should vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West.
Meanwhile the rest of us can only hope that RFK keeps improving Biden’s chances.