Robert F Kennedy Jr is reported to be ending his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run instead as an independent candidate, in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.
Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, and a nephew of the former president John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October, according to Mediaite.
“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.
I don’t see how this follows. He was never a serious contender for the DNC in the first place. It always seemed weird he was running as a Democrat instead of a Republican to me as his policies were much closer to Republican policies.
To try and peel enough votes from Biden so Trump wins. And any Dem with more than two brain cells can clearly work out he’s only slightly less nutty than MTG or Bobert.
Personally I think he’ll get voters from Biden and Trump but not fundamentally change the outcome.
Hmm, running as an independent I think his odds of stealing Republican votes are higher than stealing Democrat ones. As I said it always seemed strange to me he ran as a Democrat in the first place since he parrots a bunch of the Republican talking points. I think what votes he does get are likely to come from independent voters that would have voted Republican or maybe a few MAGAts that still want Trumps nutty platform (such as it is) but without the legal baggage Trump carries.
I’m not saying I believe this report could come true, but… it claims that RFK Jr could siphon 1/3 Dem votes from Biden:
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-faces-disastrous-defeat-if-rfk-jr-runs-third-party-candidate-1828858
I don’t believe a word of that purely because it’s claiming 25% of Democrats they polled said they’d vote for RFK Jr. as their top pick. There’s absolutely no way a quarter of Democrats support that lunatic.
Most people are way dumber than you think.
I don’t disagree, but with 998 people polled, it’s not that reliable. To add to that, Rasmussen reports ran the poll and they have a rightward lean, so definitely doubtful of this polling.
Yep, ticket wise he may be closer to Dem but he’ll run in all the libertarian campaign circles and those are solid r votes.
Instead of spoiling in favor of Republicans, he’ll spoil in favor of Democrats.
That’s what changes. If he’s running for the dem seat and drops out to run as an independent, then he’s taking more votes from the right.
Because he’s being funded as a spoiler to siphon off enough Democratic voters to potentially throw the race to trump? trump has a low cap to his general election support (probably mid-40’s), but most of that is strongly committed, so he has a high base. With that, he won’t win, but if they can run spoiler candidates to pull a few percent, that might be enough to win with his low cap.
The Democratic coalition is far broader, less cohesive, and thus overall more fickle than the modern republican one, so susceptible to these sorts of things.
It just seems like if that was their goal they would have had MUCH better luck funding an actual left wing candidate. Someone like Bernie Sanders or similar that’s pushing for far more progressive policies than the rest of the DNC (not that that’s a high bar to clear). Instead it feels like they found a left leaning Republican (putting him only moderately right of center) and convinced him to run under the DNC ticket, and then when that failed to do anything decided to run him as an independent, which is very risky for them as he’s likely to pull a lot of the more right leaning independents.