RFK Jr.'s bid could be a spoiler ... for whom?
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks Monday during a campaign event in Philadelphia. Credit: AP/Matt Rourke
This national scenario has no precedent. An 80-year-old president with some legislative accomplishments but depressed approval ratings prepares to face his indicted and dissembling 77-year-old predecessor at the polls next year. In a marketplace of voters always interested in new products, the prospect of third-party candidacies would seem inevitable.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who turns 70 in January, quit his primary bid this week for the Democratic Party nomination and went independent. How this may change the race is anyone’s guess especially if neither President Joe Biden nor former President Donald Trump makes the 2024 ballot.
"I've come here today to declare our independence from the tyranny of corruption which robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future, and our respect for each other," Kennedy said in Philadelphia.
Those are strong talking points. One question is logistical: How can Kennedy get his name on the various states’ ballots? More intriguingly, he’s widely regarded as a potential “spoiler” who won’t win but can get just enough votes to hurt either of the major-party candidates. That raises another big unknown: For whom would the son of the late New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy do the spoiling?
Worried Democrats in recent months raised objections to Kennedy Jr. based on his very strange declarations on several topics, much of it based on an imaginatively impressionistic view of the physical universe that leads him condemn certain people.
That would include his signature anti-vaccine canards, his denial that Sirhan Sirhan killed his father, his science fiction about how chemicals in the water supply can turn children transgender, how antidepressants cause mass shootings, and how AIDS may not be caused by HIV.
Problem is, many Americans even in the maelstrom of 2023 believe that manipulatively stating your cosmic doubts and visions as absolute certainties denies you the credibility needed to perform in the nation’s top office.
Trump and his circle never balked at claiming alternative realities. They really like loose conspiracy talk. Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in April: “Bobby Kennedy would be, I think, an excellent choice for President Trump to consider” for vice president.
NBC quoted Trump operative Roger Stone as saying he likes Kennedy’s opposition to “globalists” (whatever that means) and skepticism of U.S. support for Ukraine. “On those geopolitical ideas, he makes a lot of sense. In fact, he sounds a lot like Donald Trump,” Stone said. Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in July called Kennedy a potential Cabinet pick.
But that was then, with Kennedy’s candidacy viewed as a cudgel against Biden. This is now, with the New York environmental advocate going third-party.
Suddenly, Republicans seem anxious that Kennedy could siphon more voters from Trump than from Biden. The evidence: Trump spokesman Steve Cheung called an RFK Jr. candidacy “nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy to cash in on his family’s name.”
Not the entire family's name, though. On Monday, three Kennedy siblings said in a statement: "Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today's announcement is deeply saddening for us."
Academic and activist Cornel West is also running. But for the moment, for wary insiders of both parties, the practical question is about Kennedy — and whether he'd muster the impact of a Ross Perot, a Ralph Nader, a George Wallace or a Henry Wallace.
Best not to bet the mortgage money on any of it.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
