2023-10-10 17:34:42
by Massimo Gaggi
Bob’s conspiracy theorist son (and Jfk’s nephew) breaks away from the Democrats and runs alone. With 14% of the vote he could steal voters from the other challengers
The threat of the third wheel between Biden and Trump for the conquest of the White House materialized yesterday with the change of coat of Robert Kennedy Jr. John’s nephew and Robert’s son – a president and a presidential candidate assassinated in 1963 and ’68 — summoned his fans in front of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to announce that he will no longer challenge Joe Biden in the primaries seeking the Democratic nomination (he has a huge gap from the president in the polls), but will run in the November 2024 elections as an independent.
Not even this new guise increases Rfk’s chances of becoming president but the 14 percent of approval given to him by the polls can decide the outcome of the Biden-Trump duel. Environmentalist and pro-union, but against limiting the spread of deadly weapons (according to him the massacres in schools depend on the abuse of antidepressants among young people), anti-vax supporter of more or less imaginative conspiracy theories (Covid engineered in such a way as attack the white race), ready to abandon Ukraine to its fate and wavering on abortion (in favor of the ban after the first 15 weeks, but then his spokesperson backtracked), Rfk appreciated by white supremacists more than by which was his party until yesterday.
Supporter of bizarre ideas and with a past of cocaine addiction, the last Kennedy to enter politics can, however, become the tip of the balance in the states swinging between Biden and Trump: he brings with him the most beloved name in American politics and many, both on the right and on the left, are tempted to focus on him, disgusted by the repetition of the duel of 4 years ago between a very aged leader and another very controversial one who is on the brink of criminal convictions.
The Democrats are the most scared: there is already the black academic Cornel West who, by running with the Greens, risks causing a hemorrhage of African-American votes. Now Rfk can open another hole in the president’s electorate.
But there are also those who argue the opposite, given that in the polls Kennedy is much more appreciated by the ultra-conservatives than by the Democrats. And he was long courted by the Trump clan who saw in him a character capable of shattering the Democratic Party. It is no coincidence that most of the funding received by Robert Kennedy’s campaign so far has come from conservative and even Trumpian billionaires. But Rfk was also helped by libertarians and left-wing liberals: many exponents of Silicon Valley, Hollywood actors, artists like Eric Clapton. At the moment the only polls on a hypothetical three-way race say: Trump 40%, Biden 38, Kennedy 14. But almost no one believes that the third wheel could reach that high.
However, much less is enough to shift the needle in some key states: many do not believe that in 1992 Bush senior was defeated by Clinton due to the 18.9% of votes obtained by the entrepreneur Ross Perot (Clinton won with wide margin and the Democrats also liked Perot), but it is certain that in 2000 Al Gore was defeated by Bush Jr. because of Ralph Nader who took only 1.6% in Florida: more than enough to decree the defeat of the Democratic candidate who he lost Florida, the decisive state, by just 537 votes. Surveys done well in advance and generic, at a national level, are worth little or nothing. The most attentive analysts look elsewhere. Democratic strategist David Axelrod warns that if the rumor of Elon Musk siding with Kennedy with his billions and his influence (160 million followers on X, ex-Twitter) were true, the Rfk factor would become a real loose cannon.
October 10, 2023 (modified October 10, 2023 | 5.34 pm)
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