Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has dropped out of the race for the Democratic candidate for President and will run as an Independent candidate for 2024. CNBC. Kennedy said he didn't have a chance against entrenched interests in the Democratic Party so left the "rigged" primary race for the party. Kennedy was far behind in the polls with Joe Biden, who has the advantage of incumbency. Kennedy is also in the political wilderness in the Democratic Party because he questions vaccines, Coronavirus restrictions and support for Ukraine. Those views have given him some support from people on the right who would normally reject Democratic candidates. However, the Biden administration views Kennedy's run as a threat to them as he could function as a spoiler which could allow Trump to win in 2024.
My Comment:
Despite the fact that Joe Biden is a very unpopular candidate and polling indicates that Democrats want almost anyone else to run instead of Biden, apparently RFK Jr. isn't one of them. He never really had much of a chance in the first place, challengers against incumbents almost never win in primary races and that is nothing new.
Of course, RFK Jr. is pretty far out there in terms of his beliefs. Instead of being against the Coronavirus vaccines specifically, he's against pretty much all vaccines, which is a position few people actually support. Being anti-Ukraine funding is also not something a lot of Democrats are on board with.
RFK Jr. was also successfully tarred as an anti-Semite and racist for claiming that the Coronavirus was less dangerous to Chinese and Jewish people. There is some evidence that some ethnic groups are more vulnerable to the virus but the way he said it left an opening to people that wanted his head.
Still, RFK Jr. does have an audience. It's a fairly motely crew of anti-vaxxers and old school leftists that are sick and tired of everything Biden is doing. He does have more support than some of the also-rans in the Republican. There are a lot of people that are willing to vote for him.
He doesn't have a realistic chance of winning though. Most people will stay inside the two party system and the most a third party candidacy can do is essentially decide the president. It has happened before. I know a lot of people blame Jill Stein, somewhat unfairly, for Trump winning in 2016, but what I am thinking of is the two runs of Ross Perot that ended up giving the Democrats control of the White House twice in the 1990s.
The $1 million question is who Kennedy's run hurts more. I've heard arguments for both sides. The CNBC article says that Biden considers Kennedy a huge threat and there are more than a few Democrats that supported him during the primary race. Some of those people will continue following him as an independent. And in what could be a close election it might be enough to torpedo Biden.
But I do think that RFK Jr. could take a few Republican votes as well. There is a certain breed of anti-Trump Republican that absolutely despises Trump because of his role in Operation Warp Speed, which developed the Coronavirus vaccines. They are mostly Ron DeSantis supporters and if you listen to them they will never vote for Trump again, even if it means another term of Joe Biden. Once DeSantis inevitably drops out it's possible they will go for RFK Jr. on his stance on vaccines alone, even though he's not at all conservative.
My gut says that RFK Jr. still takes more away from Biden than Trump. The vast majority of Republican voters are happy with him and want him to win and even most of the people that want someone else will vote for him if he's the candidate. Biden is historically unpopular and has failed at almost every level and it's mostly blind partisanship that keeps people supporting him. And the idea that anti-vaxxers are all Republicans is a myth, there are many on the Democrat side as well. Indeed, pre-pandemic if you said anti-vaxxer I would have thought it was a Democrat.
Complicating matters is the long shot campaign of Cornell West. He's a far left looney that will draw at least some progressives away from Joe Biden. He's got a totally different appeal than RFK Jr. and unlike him, he is extremely unlikely to draw any voters from the Republican Party at all. If both candidates run and draw votes away from Biden, who very will might lose in a two man race between him and Trump, it's very possible Biden gets kicked out of the White House.
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