The RFK Jr Campaign Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (I-NY)

We will see how much of this I get out in the next few days, but I currently have five political topics (in addition to getting to some actual races in the 2023 OVP) that I want to do on the blog in the coming days, but I am also trying to have a super productive week on other topics, so we'll how it goes.  My hope is to get it all done, as I think all five political topics (and of course the 2023 races) are intriguing (and at least a couple are time sensitive).

We're going to start with a conversation about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is currently running as an Independent for the White House.  This past week, a top campaign official on Kennedy's team said something that felt telling, albeit telling in the way that you're saying "the quiet part out loud."  Rita Palma, who according to CNN is Kennedy's campaign director in New York, stated that the campaign's "No. 1 priority is to get rid of Biden."  I'll clarify that she was speaking specifically about Kennedy's campaign in New York, not his national campaign, but it's a telling sign that Kennedy wants to specifically beat Biden in New York, not make things more difficult for Donald Trump.

Let's take a step back to point out a few things.  First, the goal of third party campaigns is rarely to actually win the White House, even that's what they claim to the public.  The last third party candidacy that had a shot at winning the White House in public polling was Ross Perot in 1992, whom, it's worth noting, despite winning 19% of the public vote, received exactly zero electoral college victories (the closest he got was Maine's second congressional district, which he got within 5-points of taking from Bill Clinton).  No third party candidate has won an electoral college vote on their own since George Wallace in 1968, and while there have been some that have made serious overtures since Perot (specifically Evan McMullin in Utah in 2016), most are running for other reasons.  They might be running on single-issue campaigns (like around marijuana legalization) or are running to raise awareness about a specific issue (like climate change or racial justice).  Or...they're running to be a spoiler.

Whether or not that's the actual case, in the past thirty years, save for Perot & McMullin, this has been the role of any third party candidate that you can actually name.  Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, even Kanye West...all of them were running with the most meaningful thing they could do is throw the race to another party, in all of these cases, the Republicans (Johnson is debatable, the other three are not).  That is the case with Kennedy-he is 100% running with the intent of being a spoiler in the race, and it is clear not just from his campaign staff's public statements, but also in the way he's conducting his campaign.  Kennedy's condoning of the actions of those who participated in the January 6th attacks on the Capitol is just one of many entreaties that Kennedy has made in an effort to show a stronger alignment with Donald Trump than with Joe Biden.

You might be asking yourself a pretty obvious question here-if Kennedy is aligning himself with Donald Trump, doesn't that put Trump (who is, like Joe Biden, wildly unpopular) more at risk of losing votes to Kennedy than Biden?  That's not a bad question to be asking at this point in the race.  Kennedy's views on vaccines, the attacks on January 6th, and in particular his penchant for supporting conspiracy theories are very much aligned with the Republicans than the Democrats in 2024.  If Kennedy were to get the same kind of coverage in the presidential election that Joe Biden or Donald Trump did, I think the Trump camp would need to be worried, and it's possible he will.  His polling is decent enough at this point that he might be invited to a debate, or at the very least major news outlets will continue to treat his candidacy more seriously than those of Stein or McMullin.

But I still think Kennedy (currently) poses a greater threat to Joe Biden for three reasons.  First is that he wants to beat Biden; it's clear that of the two, Kennedy prefers Trump, and that is dangerous because if he's lucid enough to know that he's going to hurt one of the candidates, he'll make a point of hurting Biden.  This is why he's trying to get on the ballot in Arizona, Michigan, & North Carolina, all crucial swing states that Biden is going to need at least one of to get the White House.  Second, Kennedy's views on other issues (such as gay marriage & abortion access) are more moderate than your average Republican (i.e. he's not as conservative as Trump), albeit they shift depending on the day you ask him.  Put it this way-if Kennedy was an actual voter, and not a candidate who has made public statements & signaled their preference, I would be genuinely curious who they were voting for for the White House in November.

President Biden with dozens of members of the Kennedy
Family this past St. Patrick's Day

And third is: he's a Kennedy.  Kennedy is not well-known to the public, and so I guarantee if you asked most people voting for him they'd either say "he's different" or assume that he is more progressive than he actually is because of his family name.  It is entirely possible this is where the race stays for low-propensity voters...that they will go into the election booth, and the only thing that they know about the guy is that his father and uncles were US Senators (and one was US President), and vote for him assuming he's the same guy.  And those voters that are impressed by the Kennedy name are going to be Democrats or moderate/swing Republicans (i.e. the type that will vote for Nikki Haley but not Donald Trump), all of whom are winnable by Joe Biden (and in fact, he needs to win to get a second term).

This is where the Biden campaign I suspect takes the cue.  Frequently with third party candidates, the best idea is to ignore them, and pretend they don't exist but you aren't seeing that from Democrats.  They are going after Kennedy pretty hardcore, and that's because they're taking his polling seriously.  The best way they can do this is through using the Kennedy brand against RFK Jr, and you're seeing Biden do that.  Four of Kennedys siblings (Rory, Kerry, Joe, & Kathleen) publicly admonished their brother and announced their support for Joe Biden, and in the months since several other high-profile members of his family (including his cousins Caroline & Patrick, nephew Joe III, and aunt Victoria) have publicly endorsed Biden, and indeed an entire group of Kennedys were at the White House for St. Patrick's Day, basically a billboard for the Kennedy support of Biden.

Expect to see more of this in the coming months-I would bet my next paycheck that before this campaign is over, members of the Kennedy family will cut an ad for Biden that he can air in states where RFK Jr. might be a threat.  This wouldn't be the first time this has happened, after all; Rep. Paul Gosar's siblings cut an ad for his opponent in his House campaign in 2018.  The Kennedy family branding is at stake here too-if the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins figures like Ralph Nader & Jill Stein (basically swear words in the Democratic Party), it will reflect poorly on them, and their power within the Democratic Party will waver.  A Biden victory is also a Kennedy victory...except for one black sheep that's trying to elect a man his father would've been repulsed by.