Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for President
The Democrats have so thoroughly demolished democracy in their presidential primary, RFK looks poised to go Independent and have a shot at winning.
My father died suddenly when I was 19. It was an amazing shock to the whole family and a devastating turn of events in the life of a young man. I still think of my dad almost every day and wonder how my life would be different had he lived.
This is perhaps, in some small way, why I feel a level of simpatico for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.(RFK Jr), who tragically lost his uncle when he was nine and his father when he was fourteen, both to assassinations. Indeed, he struggled with alcohol and drug addiction as a young man, but nonetheless graduated Harvard, studied at the London School of Economics and earned a JD at the University of Virginia. His struggles with addiction continued well into the 1980s, when he got clean and starting working in environmental law. He has been credited with many positive wins, including the saving of the Hudson watershed in New York.
Today he stands as a polarizing figure in the Democratic Party. He has, of course, declared his candidacy for President, but you would be hard pressed to know it in Democratic Party circles. Other than disingenuous and misleading attacks meant to freeze him out of the race, he is the candidate not to be mentioned.
But it is much worse than that. Despite consistent polling that show Democrats overwhelmingly prefer anyone other than Biden in 2024, the Democratic National Committee has declared there will be no debates between their 3 declared candidates (Marianne Williamson being the third). This despite polling that shows RFK Jr has more support than Ron DeSantis, currently polling in second for the Republicans. RFK averages 14.9% (with recent showings of 16 and 25%) support with Democrats, while Ron DeSantis is at 13.6%, all according to RealClearPolitics.
Even dreamy James VanDerBeek is upset about this lack of debate, stating in a TikTok: “I cannot get over the fact that the Democratic National Committee is saying there will not be a debate to decide the nominee for president. Are you fucking kidding me? There’s no debate? There’s no debate over an 80-year-old man who, if he lives, will be the oldest sitting president in the history of the country? And if he doesn’t live, has a vice president whose approval rating is worse than his?”
Of course, the counter argument will be that Biden is the incumbent and so should automatically receive the nomination. But I wonder, does the party that continues to tout itself as “fighting for Democracy” really wish to disallow a fair democratic process to choose their candidate for President, especially when a large majority of their members have made it clear they want another candidate? Does the decision Democrats have made (to disallow a race) serve the people, or the party insiders?
Further, you might be surprised to learn that even in a non-incumbent year, the Democratic Party nomination process for President is highly un-democratic. The Democrats (unlike Republicans who have no such thing) employ the use of “super delegates” for their convention voting - superdelegates are party insiders that get to vote at the convention. The super delegate numbers change from year to year but are significant enough that some wonder whether Bernie Sanders would have won both 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party nominations without these elitist oligarchs thumbing the scale for Clinton and Biden, respectively.
To show you what I’m talking about, here’s an example in which Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary by 22% in the popular vote. But because 6 Party Insiders (the super delegates, shown here as “Unpledged” Delegates) committed to Hillary, the delegate count was a tie - 15 to 15. So 6 party fat cats negated the voting results of 147,000 members of the Democratic Party who clearly chose Bernie.
This will get even worse this year if RFK Jr is to be believed, as he claims Democrats will not count any delegates he wins in Iowa or New Hampshire, and they will go to President Biden instead. He told Forbes recently:
“They’ve made rules that if any candidate sets foot in the state of Iowa or sets foot in the state of New Hampshire, then none of the votes that are cast for that candidate will be tallied. In other words any delegate that I win in New Hampshire or Iowa would go instead to the president,” RFK Jr. said during the interview. “If you add up all the super-delegates that they control, and all of the automatic delegates that just go to the party, I would have to win almost 80 percent of all the states.”
The scuttlebutt now is that RFK Jr., because of the anti-democratic primary process, will likely switch to an Independent run as early as next week. I think this bodes very poorly for both Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s campaigns. As James Carville said on Bill Maher’s podcast, in a race between Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Cornell West and RFK Jr., Donald Trump is the clear betting favorite.
This is very good handicapping by an old pro that knows, perhaps better than most. However, I would take issue with his prediction from another perspective:
As a right-leaning libertarian that normally votes with the Republicans, if the parties nominate Trump and Biden again, I will vote RFK Jr. Enough is enough.