Robert Kennedy Jr to run for president as independent in 2024 – report
Robert Kennedy Jr to run for president as independent in 2024 – report
Scion of US political dynasty, who had been challenging Joe Biden for Democratic nomination, expected to announce on Sunday
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.
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.
59To 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.
50Hmm, 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.
23
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.
5I 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.
2It 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.
1
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.
36As 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.
5Sign me up for -$100k!
2
On the other hand, if you vote 3rd party they only need a few percent of the votes to get federal funding next round. Side-effect, it might push the Dems to support approval/ranked voting systems.
RFK sucks, but there's many third party candidates, and changing the system overall seems like the only way forward. Handing the ball back and forth between the two big players hasn't been working the past 50 years.
-4The path to changing the system runs through the DNC.
2
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
20He’s a nut job
28He is a god damn loon, don't give him so much credit lol
11I attribute several avoidable deaths to him for vaccine skepticism.
2
Well, he's gonna get the QAnon voters.
12Why nepotism is silly
9Is 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'"?
5
I still think he’ll end up being trump’s running mate.
7This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
“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.
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!
1I still haven't seen any confirmation of whether this means he will be out of the Democratic primary or is trying to do both.
1Someone 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.
-1The crystal orb lady?
5If 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.
-1
West or RFK Jr.? Susan Sarandon has a tough choice to make.
-2Speaking of, just saw Blue Beetle, and she fucking killed it as Hillary Clinton.
1
Mafia, Masons, and Bloods. NWO. Call em out. He's owned by the Mob that killed his brother.
America's no better than Mexico with the Cartels. Normal people aren't free.
-15Jfc.
9You should put down the crack pipe for a bit.
3Well, this was what happened when he did
0