I haven’t paid much attention to RFK Jr. He’s been shut out of the Democrat Party process, where the powers that be don’t want a challenger to Joe Biden or whomever they select to replace him as nominee.
But RFK Jr. has garnered a fair amount of support according to early polling, though how many of those people answering pollsters actually would vote for him remains to be seen. He has spoken out strongly for border security and is very pro-Israel, which puts him at odds with the progressive wing of the party. He’s also an anti-vaxxer, which is a wild card issue IMO.
Regardless, he is pissed with the way he has been treated by the Democrat Party, and unlike Bernie Sanders who received similar treatment, he’s not just going to take it and say “thank you, sir, may I have another.”
According to Mediaite, RFK Jr. plans to announce he’s running for President as an independent:
2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce he will run as an independent on October 9 in Pennsylvania, Mediaite has learned.
Kennedy’s campaign machine is now planning “attack ads” against the Democratic National Committee in order to “pave the way” for his announcement in Philadelphia about running as an independent, according to a text reviewed by Mediaite.
“Bobby feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” a Kennedy campaign insider told Mediaite.
This video posted after the Mediaite article ran seems to support that RFK Jr. is likely to run:
My initial and unthinking quick reaction when I heard about this was that it would hurt the Democrats. But as Mediaite notes, that’s not so obviously true:
The New York Times reported last week that he met with the chair of the Libertarian Party, raising the prospect of a departure from the party that decades ago became synonymous with his family name.Kennedy remains far behind Biden in the polls. Yet while the Times reported “Democrats worry that a third-party run by Mr. Kennedy could draw votes away from Mr. Biden and help elect former President Donald J. Trump,” it’s unclear whether such a run would hurt the current president more than the Republican nominee.
Indeed, polls show Republicans have a far more favorable view of Kennedy than Democrats.
Some more reactions on who an RFK Jr. independent run helps/hurts, I’m seeing a lot of opinion that this will hurt Trump/Republicans:
Even key Trump social media influencers think it will hurt Trump.
One important barometer will be how viciously the Democrats and media attack RFK Jr. if he goes independent. If they do the media equivalent of Arkancide on him, then their internal polling is telling them he’s a threat to Democrats. If they go soft on him once he’s out of the party, or even promote him through proxies, then you know he’s harming Trump or whoever the Republican nominee ends up being.
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