Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped his Democratic bid for president Monday, coming to Philadelphia to announce that he would instead seek the White House as an independent.
Political prognosticators were already doing the math before Kennedy made his announcement in front of a crowd of supporters on Independence Mall.
But none of that adds up to a solution with Kennedy as the 47th president of The United States of America.
Rather, the odds are being calculated on whether Kennedy’s independent run helps or hurts President Joe Biden as he runs for a second term, or former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
In key swing states like Pennsylvania, an independent candidate could have a significant impact on the result of the presidential race. And Kennedy, who descends from a long line of Democratic politicians but espouses views more popular with conservatives — such as opposition to vaccinations — could pull votes away from both parties.
Kennedy, 69, declared his campaign independent of Wall Street, big tech, big pharma, big ag, military contractors, lobbyists, “the mercenary media” and “the two-party system.”
Speaking to a crowd of supporters cheering and waving “Kennedy 24″ signs, he repeatedly accused the country’s two-party system of “orchestrating” hatred and division among voters, warning that the opposing sides uses demagoguery to lean toward fascism or feed “a pipeline of endless wars.”
“In a polarized country it’s easy for corrupt powers to manipulate and to control and to strip the wealth, its freedoms, its equity, its dignity,” he said. “The most hateful voices are, of course, always the loudest. But there are a lot of quiet Americans out there who are looking with disgust at the vitriol, the name-calling and the venom. They want it to stop.”
Kennedy can expect serious scrutiny from the Democratic Party as he tries to get his name listed on 2024′s presidential ballot.
Democrats learned a lasting lesson in 2016, when Jill Stein ran as the Green Party’s nominee, winning 49,941 in Pennsylvania, where Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 44,292 votes.
The Democrats were ready in 2020, exploiting Green Party miscues in Pennsylvania’s processes to become a candidate, winning a legal challenge that removed the Green Party nominee from the ballot.
Prior to Monday’s announcement, he had been polling at about 14.6% among Democratic voters in the primary, while Biden was at a comfortable but not impervious 61.4% and Marianne Williamson was at 3.8%, according to an average of polls compiled by the website RealClearPolitics.
RFK Jr. embraced by some conservatives, but GOP is speaking out against him
While Kennedy has been running as a Democrat since mid-April, when he infused his campaign announcement with anti-science attacks on vaccines. That stance — and others — makes him seem more welcome on the conservative end of the political spectrum than in the Democratic Party.
The Conservative Political Action Committee, known as CPAC, announced Friday that Kennedy would be among the “key influencers” speaking at one of the group’s conferences next week, along with Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, who is facing a four-month prison sentence, and Kari Lake, who refused to accept her defeat last year in Arizona’s race for governor.
CPAC chair Matt Schlapp cast Kennedy’s appearance as “a reflection of the splintering of the left-wing coalition that has gone full woke Marxist to the point that traditionally liberals don’t feel welcome anymore.”
Kennedy had been scheduled to speak in Philadelphia over the summer at a national summit held by Moms For Liberty, a hard-right conservative group that advocates for banning books about LGBTQ issues in public schools. He backed out of that event, citing a scheduling conflict.
A super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, has raised $9.8 million this year, with $5 million coming from Timothy Mellon, an heir to a gilded-age Pittsburgh family that amassed a fortune in banking and other industries.
Mellon’s self-published 2015 autobiography used racial stereotypes and claimed social welfare programs make Black people “even more belligerent.” He contributed $20 million in 2020 to a political action committee trying to help Trump win a second term and another $1.5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC last October.
But there were signs of attacks looming on the right for Kennedy. Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, greeted his announcement by calling him a “typical elitist liberal.”
“Make no mistake — a Democrat in Independent’s clothing is still a Democrat,” McDaniel said in a statement Monday.
A vow to ‘spoil the election’ for both Trump and Biden
Kennedy said American voters want to move away from “tribal thinking” and a “uni-party that’s constantly bickering with itself as it leads us over a cliff.”
He dismissed suggestions that his candidacy “has no chance” and can only impact the campaigns of Biden or Trump.
“They say my campaign is only going to draw votes from the other candidates,” Kennedy said. “The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden. And the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil it for President Trump. The truth is they’re both right.”
Kennedy spent most of 2023 in a political Goldilocks zone, taking no criticism from the president he wants to unseat or the former president he wants to prevent from returning to the White House.
In Biden’s world, talking about Kennedy just gives his campaign more air.
Trump, who always like a good ego stroking, has enjoyed a back-and-forth flow of compliments with Kennedy.
That has left Kennedy and his campaign to largely be a creature of media coverage — good and bad, focused either on the storied branding of his last name or on the odd and controversial things he’s said.
Kennedy’s speech Monday involved the type of security typical for a visit from a president or front-running nominee, with his campaign footing the bill. One of several speakers ahead of him drew a roar of approval by declaring that the U.S. Secret Service should be protecting him.
Kennedy’s father, former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Sr., was assassinated in 1968 in Los Angeles while running for president, five years after his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated during a visit to Dallas.
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