What Does RFK Want?
Third Party or Spoiler? Who Does He Hurt?
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., (RFK) the son of the late Attorney General and Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy announced his run for President in April 2023. RFK is a lifelong Democrat from a Democrat dynasty, so he should have really known that challenging an incumbent Democrat president is political heresy or at least tacky. This applies even to weak and doddering old Democrat incumbents like Biden, so RFK’s first and sudden foray into politics is being viewed by his party as somewhat graceless.
Now whenever a Democrat does something you don’t expect, you have to ask yourself, “What is he up to?” RFK did not just randomly or accidentally launch at campaign for the oval office.
Take it at face value. RFK wants to be POTUS and he chose this term to make his move. He’s going to be 70 this January, so he doesn’t have that much time eft even in our current gerontocracy.
RFK is doing something sneaky.
Dark horse winners of the oval office are not a rarity in American politics. Barack Obama is the last guy who did this. History is full of them. So RFK is not wrong when he says that he has a chance. Politico says RFK has no chance, with further bolsters my argument. Actually Politico said Trump had a better chance of winning the Democrat nomination than RFK, which shows that every now and then Politico can make a funny… and they said this in July of 2023 which is when RFK was running as a Democrat.
The polls kind of favor answer #1. Political polls are voodoo math, combining skewed statistics with selective sampling, but let’s look at some anyway. A favorability rating compares two values—how many people look at you favorably versus how many look at you unfavorably. Biden has a negative 9% net favorability rating meaning the difference between the people who like him (45%) are outnumbered by the people who don’t (52%). Trump is at a similar negative 10% net favorability. But RFK Jr. has a positive 19% net favorability in that 49% of those surveyed liked him and 30% did not like him. This may be helped by the fact that 21% of the people asked about RFK Jr. cast no vote at all, likely because they did not know who he was.
That being said, RFK does not have what a political observer would call a “clear path to victory.” Well, if you listened to pollsters, you would have said the same thing about Trump in 2016. But the argument can be made that the RFK campaign is a money-wasting exercise in futility.
Meanwhile, incumbent Biden says he is running, at least that is what I think he is mumbling about. And so far, the Democrat party and the Biden organization have given RFK the cold shoulder. They barely acknowledge him. All of this has pushed RFK into considering running as an independent or third-party guy, which argues that something else is going on. This reminds me of Bernie who was run off the road by the Hillary machine. Is Biden just trying to nudge RFK off the path to victory?
It is expected that RFK will announce a third-party run soon. So what does a strong third-party candidate mean to the race? It means that the third-party guy will siphon off votes from the two main candidates, who appear at this moment to be Trump and Biden. The question is—does RFK do more damage to Trump or to Biden?
RFK is strangely appealing to many Conservatives. He was an outspoken opponent of mandatory COVID-19 vaccines; he wrote a major book exposing Fauci and Gates (neither of whom has sued RFK for libel, leading me to believe the allegations documented in his book are true); he wants to curb our immigration disaster and build a wall; and he is not in favor of the biweekly pallets of cash we seem to be sending Ukraine. Now he is getting some Conservative media attention because he is listed as a featured speaker at the upcoming CPAC convention in Washington, D.C., this October. All of this brings me to a talking point I’m hearing more and more. On America’s Untold Stories, co-host Mark Groubert has repeatedly stated that he sees RFK as the candidate who is going to draw more votes away from Trump than Biden. The Daily Beast has the same opinion. I tend to side with Groubert myself but I’m a little less sure than he is.
Political strategist Dick Morris sees it the other way: he sees that RFK’s run is going to cost Biden sufficient votes to assure that Trump will be the next President. You can read it here: Dick Morris article.
In hypothetical polls (a hypothetical poll is to accuracy what a phrenologist is to medicine), many Conservatives think Groubert is right. A Conservative who would never vote for Biden but does not think Trump is the man for the job might very well vote for RFK. That makes RFK a sort of Trojan horse. If he is doing this knowingly, his campaign is a ploy to keep Democrats in power.
So what is RFK’s platform? I never trust a person running for political office, since they change opinions with circumstances, but here goes what we know about RFK from his activities and interviews.
He is an anti-vaxxer who is back-pedaling to a vax-skeptic
He runs groups that oppose childhood vaccinations
He was against vax mandates during COVID-19
He is a vehement opponent of Fauci, even accusing him of using the pandemic to launch a coup against democracy
He says that 5G technology is harvesting data on unsuspecting U.S. citizens
He says that school mass shootings may be related to strong psychiatric drugs given to school children
He says the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination and that Sirhan-Sirhan did not kill his father
He likes cryptocurrency
He is pro-abortion, but there are mixed reports on whether he wants limitations on abortions
He does not support biological males in women sports but there is no public record of his thoughts on other trans issues
He is an ardent environmentalist and proponent of many Green New Deal policies
But he has stated that the environmental movement has been hijacked by Bill Gates and the “billionaire boys” for their own benefit
He does not like big oil and wants the country to transition to green energy
He opposes fracking
He wants strong borders, better immigration policies, and a wall
He opposed the war in Iraq when it was going on
He supports what he calls “common sense gun control” but adds that if you like your guns, you can keep them (well, not in those words exactly)
He opposes American support of Ukraine and claims our efforts there are a proxy war of the US against Russia
He believes American elections can be rigged and says 2004 was rigged to get Bush into office
He campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008
If RFK’s move to the independent ticket is an effort to serve the Democrat greater good by chipping away at Trump support, we should be able to point to some motivations. And there are some good reasons to think RFK really does not want to be President.
Despite having failed the bar the first time around and being arrested for heroin, RFK has spent most of his career as an activist attorney with his main but not exclusive issue environmental protection
He has never sought or expressed interest in political office before
RFK has expressed concerns about assassinations due to the deaths of his father and uncle. He likely does not want to put himself in a sniper’s sites.
So is he helping out the Democrats by “taking one for the team” and working to move Conservative Trump skeptics away from Trump? I think we’ll know the answer if and when we see Trump taking shots at RFK. If Trump goes after RFK, it is because he sees RFK as a threat. Right now, Trump ignores RFK the same way Biden does. The question remains: is this campaign a Democrat chess move or is this just a lone guy doing something weird?
And speaking of weird stuff you might not know about RFK:
He was arrested and convicted of heroin possession in 1984; he got probation
He is a licensed master falconer and breed hawks and falcons
He once testified in 2014 in support of allowing falconry in New York City; the bill was defeated
He is a whitewater kayaker, a mountain climber, and an ardent gym rat
His son by his first wife, Robert F. Kennedy III is married to a self-described “former CIA officer” named Amaryllis Fox. Is there such a thing as “former” CIA?
He divorced his second wife, Mary Kathleen Richardson, on May 12, 2010 and she committed suicide on May 16, 2012 allegedly after having learned that during their marriage he’d had liaisons with 37 other women
He is currently married to actress Cheryl Hines. Hines was introduced to RFK by Larry David
Most of his siblings (and he has a lot of them) are opposed to his presidential aspirations
His father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated on June 5, 1968. He was in the hotel up in his room when his father was shot. His sister Kathleen was there, too, and she broke the news to him. As one can expect, RFK said the event “haunted” him for many years.
So what does a third-party run for President mean? Normally, it means defeat but it can change the election dynamics to hurt one candidate in favor of another. Is that what is happening here? Or does RFK really think he has a shot?