When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary and announced an independent bid, plenty of Democrats understandably worried that the former environmentalist and current conspiracy hound would represent another threat to Joe Biden’s reelection. Kennedy inherited, after all, the most famous name in Democratic politics. He’s been considered a progressive — albeit a wacky one — for many years. His campaign manager during his abandoned primary campaign was the perennial champion of lefty lefties, Dennis Kucinich. And polls regularly showed him with a significant following as a Biden challenger in those primaries.
In what is expected to be a very close Biden-Trump general election next year, might not RFK Jr. pick off enough disgruntled Democrats to throw the election to the 45th president? That has been a nightmare that has troubled the sleep of many Democrats.
But one of the first public-opinion surveys to both measure and analyze a potential RFK Jr. vote in a three-way race shows a very different outcome, as USA Today reports:
It’s a tie: One year before the presidential election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump each command 37% of the vote in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll — with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. costing Trump what would have been a narrow lead.
Kennedy, scion of the nation’s most revered Democratic family, won 13% of the vote in a hypothetical match-up, drawing voters who by 2-1 said they would otherwise support the probable Republican nominee.
When you think about it, Kennedy as a drain on Republican votes isn’t that surprising. As an irritant to Biden, for months he received substantial and largely positive conservative-media coverage. He has played to that audience by emphasizing his long-time anti-vaxx credentials and a “populist” hostility to liberal elites. And his decision to run as an independent shows he has figured out a Democratic-primary campaign would leave a significant share of his following out in the cold.
Polls aside, Republicans now appear to see RFK Jr. as a threat to Trump rather than Biden, as evidenced by their sharp turn against the candidate the minute he announced his new 2024 strategy. Per the Associated Press:
The Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign both took aim at Kennedy’s liberal background while national Democrats stayed silent as Kennedy insisted in a speech in Philadelphia that he was leaving both political parties behind.
“Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. He labeled Kennedy’s campaign “nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”
To be clear, any assessment of Kennedy’s ultimate impact on the 2024 general election is highly speculative. For one thing, it’s unclear where he will be able to secure ballot access. For another, to the extent his popularity depends on low-information “I hate everybody” voters, overall voter-turnout levels could have a massive effect on his appeal. It’s also likely his current support levels in the polls will steadily decline as November 2024 approaches, since that is almost always the case with non-major-party candidates whose backers choose not to throw away their votes.
But for right now, of all the things Biden supporters need to worry about as obstacles to the incumbent’s second term, RFK Jr. is likely to become a minor consideration and perhaps even an ace in the hole.
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