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Robert Kennedy Jr to run for president as independent in 2024 – report (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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Robert F Kennedy Jr is reported to be ending his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run instead as an independent candidate, in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.

Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, and a nephew of the former president John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October, according to Mediaite.

“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.

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[-] orclev@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.

I don't see how this follows. He was never a serious contender for the DNC in the first place. It always seemed weird he was running as a Democrat instead of a Republican to me as his policies were much closer to Republican policies.

[-] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago

To try and peel enough votes from Biden so Trump wins. And any Dem with more than two brain cells can clearly work out he's only slightly less nutty than MTG or Bobert.

Personally I think he'll get voters from Biden and Trump but not fundamentally change the outcome.

[-] orclev@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

Hmm, running as an independent I think his odds of stealing Republican votes are higher than stealing Democrat ones. As I said it always seemed strange to me he ran as a Democrat in the first place since he parrots a bunch of the Republican talking points. I think what votes he does get are likely to come from independent voters that would have voted Republican or maybe a few MAGAts that still want Trumps nutty platform (such as it is) but without the legal baggage Trump carries.

[-] millifoo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'm not saying I believe this report could come true, but... it claims that RFK Jr could siphon 1/3 Dem votes from Biden:

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-faces-disastrous-defeat-if-rfk-jr-runs-third-party-candidate-1828858

[-] orclev@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I don't believe a word of that purely because it's claiming 25% of Democrats they polled said they'd vote for RFK Jr. as their top pick. There's absolutely no way a quarter of Democrats support that lunatic.

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Most people are way dumber than you think.

[-] alcyoneous@midwest.social 10 points 1 year ago

I don’t disagree, but with 998 people polled, it’s not that reliable. To add to that, Rasmussen reports ran the poll and they have a rightward lean, so definitely doubtful of this polling.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yep, ticket wise he may be closer to Dem but he'll run in all the libertarian campaign circles and those are solid r votes.

[-] HankMardukas@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Instead of spoiling in favor of Republicans, he'll spoil in favor of Democrats.

That's what changes. If he's running for the dem seat and drops out to run as an independent, then he's taking more votes from the right.

[-] caffinatedone@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t see how this follows. He was never a serious contender for the DNC in the first place. It always seemed weird he was running as a Democrat instead of a Republican to me as his policies were much closer to Republican policies.

Because he's being funded as a spoiler to siphon off enough Democratic voters to potentially throw the race to trump? trump has a low cap to his general election support (probably mid-40's), but most of that is strongly committed, so he has a high base. With that, he won't win, but if they can run spoiler candidates to pull a few percent, that might be enough to win with his low cap.

The Democratic coalition is far broader, less cohesive, and thus overall more fickle than the modern republican one, so susceptible to these sorts of things.

[-] orclev@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It just seems like if that was their goal they would have had MUCH better luck funding an actual left wing candidate. Someone like Bernie Sanders or similar that's pushing for far more progressive policies than the rest of the DNC (not that that's a high bar to clear). Instead it feels like they found a left leaning Republican (putting him only moderately right of center) and convinced him to run under the DNC ticket, and then when that failed to do anything decided to run him as an independent, which is very risky for them as he's likely to pull a lot of the more right leaning independents.

[-] JustZ@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

He's a spoiler candidate, working for the Republicans.

Even Bernie Sanders, the longest serving and most popular third-party politician in modern history, maybe ever, has said that the only path to the presidency is through the Democratic party's nominating convention.

Voting for an independent in 2024, as usual, will be indistinguishable from just voting for the Republican candidate.

[-] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

If he's a spoiler, he'd be a spoiler for the right.

[-] Spellinbee@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

From my anecdotal experience, I would agree. The only person I've heard say they like him said immediately after that, I'm not a fan of Trump but he's better than Biden.

[-] HankMardukas@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

You'd hope.

[-] JustZ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

How's that?

[-] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

He's a lunatic conspiracy theorist, which nowadays appeals much more to the right than the left

[-] TechyDad@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

The right is hoping that people see the "Kennedy" name and his claims of being "a liberal" and vote for him. Obviously, the smallest research into Kennedy would show that he's nothing like his more famous family members, but the right is targeting low information voters.

That said, there is the possibility of some Republicans voting for Kennedy. My parents are staunch Republicans. They voted for Trump twice, only watch FOX News, and my father was convinced that Republicans would impact and remove Biden and install Trump with the help of the Democrats. (He didn't explain just why the Democrats would do this. I can only suppose that they were hoping for every Democrat to lose any shred of sanity all at once.)

My father twice told me about how he thinks Kennedy is a great candidate. Would he vote for Kennedy instead of Trump? Maybe. He's been backing off the Trump love recently - backing fist DeSantis and now Scott. Then again, he ALWAYS votes Republican so my bet would be his Kennedy support would disappear when he reached the voting booth.

[-] capital@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

As I have said every election year, I'll bet anyone any amount of money that either a Democrat or Republican will win the election. 3rd party will never win.

Don't waste your vote.

[-] Cavemanfreak@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Sign me up for -$100k!

[-] protist@mander.xyz 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Vanity Fair has a long but pretty good recent interview with him. As with most people, he's a complex dude, but he has an unfortunate lack of understanding of the scientific method and seems to think random internet news articles constitute evidence: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/rfk-kennedy-interview

Reminds me of my 70 year old aunts who get their news from Facebook and think sharing links to clickbait articles will convince me to change my worldview

[-] joker125@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago

He’s a nut job

[-] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

He is a god damn loon, don't give him so much credit lol

[-] HankMardukas@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I attribute several avoidable deaths to him for vaccine skepticism.

[-] Landsharkgun@midwest.social 12 points 1 year ago

Well, he's gonna get the QAnon voters.

[-] Akasazh@feddit.nl 10 points 1 year ago

Why nepotism is silly

[-] roy_mustang76@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago

Is it nepotism when his family is like "please Bobby, don't do this" and "please guys, don't listen to Bobby, he's got some screws loose not 'good points'"?

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

If you're running on your name alone and that name hasn't been popular for 50 years then yeah.

3 years ago noone knew this tiny face chucklefuck existed.

[-] roy_mustang76@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean, that's just running on name recognition, not nepotism.

Dude is crazy and unqualified, but he's not benefiting from nepotism. He'd need to actually be benefiting from some kind of family connections for that, and the entire Kennedy clan is running away from him.

Joe Kennedy III is a good example of a current day Kennedy nepo baby, even if he failed in his Senate bid.

[-] xenomor@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I still think he’ll end up being trump’s running mate.

[-] psychothumbs@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I still haven't seen any confirmation of whether this means he will be out of the Democratic primary or is trying to do both.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Trump is only three years younger – and faces 91 criminal charges, including for election subversion, and assorted civil threats – but polls show less concern among his fervent Republican base that he could be unfit to return to office.

Rightwing figures – prominent among them Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House strategist – have encouraged Kennedy to run against Biden or as an independent.

As cited by Mediaite, in July the Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “I think he should run as a third-party candidate because I do think he should, he would win.”

Running ‘independent’ means you’ll draw more voters from the candidate you resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality.

The original article contains 525 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] mycatiskai@lemmy.one -1 points 1 year ago

Someone in the Williamson campaign needs to get their shit together and make sure they are seriously working towards getting her on the ticket in multiple states. Now that this idiot is dropping them she should get moving.

I know there is a lot of pressure on people working in her campaign to leave because they feel they will never be able to get a job in any other political job afterwards but she needs to get on more progressive shows and get the word out.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

The crystal orb lady?

[-] mycatiskai@lemmy.one -1 points 1 year ago

If a crystal orb lady supports tuition free college, strong unions, Medicare for all, shrinking the defense budget to pay for social services for everybody in your entire country then yeah the crystal orb lady is probably the person to vote for rather than a status quo that has been crushing everybody except the 1% of the top.

The current president believes that crackers and wine are blood and flesh, the previous president was a fucking psychopath who believed in nothing but the almighty dollar. Maybe the world needs some person that believes in something a little different or just let people believe what they want to believe.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I vote for the lesser of 2 evils cuz we don't have ranked choice and orb lady is a sure loser.

[-] III@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I am sure the sprit of his reply will be along the lines of "there's no better protest than to hand the country over to fascists".

[-] mycatiskai@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Nah vote for Biden in the general election because Nazi fascists should be hung not running countries but don't pretend that a primary isn't happening like he currently is.

If Marianne is on ballots in primaries then she is participating in your democratic process and part of that is giving people.the chance to go out and decide between Williamson and Biden. It doesn't hurt Biden to have a primary challenger to debate unless he isn't fit for a debate. If he isn't fit for a debate against someone ostensibly on the same side to find the ideas that the Democrats want to support then how is he going to go against a fascist in a debate.

[-] Rapidcreek@reddthat.com -2 points 1 year ago

West or RFK Jr.? Susan Sarandon has a tough choice to make.

this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023

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