History provides examples of third-party presidential candidates swinging elections. Ross Perot denied George H.W. Bush a second term in 1992, running on the Reform Party ticket and garnering 18.9% of the popular vote.  Bill Clinton won with only 43.0%.  In 1980, Congressman John Anderson ran an incoherent candidacy yet captured 6.6% of votes. Reagan prevailed over Carter 50.7% to 41.0%.  It is unclear if Anderson’s bid was engineered by Reagan’s campaign to split votes from Carter. Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 third-party run split Republican votes, yielding Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive leftist president.

Now comes RFK Jr. with a platform exhibiting substantial overlap with the MAGA agenda. Kennedy's recent interview with James O'Keefe reveals his targeting of MAGA voters, especially younger ones unfamiliar with his family’s dark history.

44:30: I think because of my ability to attract Independents and many, many Republicans that I actually have probably a better chance of winning the election than any other Democratic candidate.

Trump’s Achilles heel was allowing himself to be bamboozled into supporting the COVID narrative of the pharmaceutical-medical-globalist complex. Because of his congenital reluctance to issue a mea culpa and admit that he was conned, Kennedy could potentially appeal to this large segment of the electorate. Perhaps Trump is banking a mea culpa for an October 2024 surprise. 

For solid realpolitik reasons Trump avoids attacking Kennedy and is modestly complimentary. Many assume a Kennedy independent run would pull more Democrat than MAGA votes.  This could be a fatal error. Certain things are appealing about Kennedy and his late uncle and father. But to believe the Kennedy clan are saints is absurd. Exhibit A was Teddy Kennedy, with a seedy record including Chappaquiddick, waitress sandwiches, and perfecting a career of boozing, bonking, and borking in collaboration with a senator named Biden.  Or his backdoor bromance with Yuri Andropov against Reagan. The morals of Teddy’s older brothers were not altogether different.  Seymour Hersh, dean of investigative journalists and no conservative, assembled a 500-page tome of Kennedy family negatives. Their crimes and foibles were hardly confined to stealing the 1960 election from Nixon in Illinois and beyond.  There is an extensive record of their payoffs and acceptance of bribes, collusion with mobsters and corrupt union bosses, womanizing, and promoting assassinations of foreign leaders.  The posthumous sainthood of RFK, his brother’s consiglieri and enforcer, was the final plank in Camelot mythology. Camelot was more than myth. Hersh described it as “years of lies and cover-ups.”

Kennedy previously maintained he has “always been fiercely pro-vaccine” and supports “policies that encourage full vaccination for all Americans.” This obviously conflicts with his current stance.  Kennedy is no conservative, supporting Hillary Clinton in her senatorial and presidential races. Kennedy’s schtick is a bipartisan fusion of anti-globalist rhetoric appealing to populists, combined with climate change/environmentalism.  He inserts populist buzzwords at every opportunity.  Right-leaning influencers now fawning over him need to explore his background and that of his ancestors, beginning with Joseph P. Kennedy’s organized crime roots. The family business morphed from crime to politics -- crime by other means. He is a skillfully repackaged Democrat, scheming over decades for this moment. A chameleon continuously reconfiguring in response to shifting political winds, appropriating MAGA issues which now possess currency. The same guy who supported Hillary Clinton whined when mean Republicans stole the 2004 election from John Kerry.

In O'Keefe's interview, Kennedy somberly relates with great seriousness that soon before his father's death, he told his son his dismay at discovering government officials lie (8:25).  Who knew? This is a rich observation from a Kennedy.  Whether the father actually told this to his son is irrelevant. (Any lingering doubts Americans had in this regard were resolved by the Biden administration’s lie machine. Baghdad Bob had nothing on this crew.) There will be many disaffected Democrats regardless which candidate secures the nomination.  Media and Democratic attacks on Kennedy only help him, similar to Trump. This became clear with the Democrats’ heavy-handed attacks on Kennedy during his July appearance before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Kennedy skillfully converted the attacks into a free infomercial, a talent Trump shares. He is making the rounds of the leading podcasts, overnight becoming a coveted guest while campaign donations roll in.  He believes much of the 2024 election battlespace will be online.  This has proven accurate to date.

Capturing the Democratic nomination requires that Kennedy overcome the media and the Clinton/Obama machine. Fat chance. Ask Comrade Bernie.  His only path forward is an independent bid. The question becomes: would he damage Democrats or Trump more? Republicans have a dilemma: countering Kennedy without attacking him and antagonizing his supporters.  Kennedy asserts that internal polling has him up eight points on Trump (44:30). (Remarkably, the only time during the 48-minute interview the word “Trump” appears.)  Readers can determine if they find this assertion, or his denial of contemplating an independent candidacy, to be credible. Until tens of thousands begin attending rallies, claims to be leading Trump flunk the laugh test.  Kennedy’s campaign events appear more astroturf than grassroots. He makes the podcast rounds; Trump hosts the largest ever American political rallies. 

Kennedy could be a perfect storm opposing Trump in a three-way race.  He refrains from criticizing Biden. Why would he when Republicans occupy that lane? He is a skilled debater, commanding facts, with his finger on the pulse of current existential concerns. No one in his imploding party comes close. No one owns the COVID vaccine debate as he does. A three-way contest between Kennedy, Trump, and a Democrat is a wild card the nation does not need. For now, the two are playing nice although both draw from the same pool of voters.

MSNBC’s histrionic and unhinged (but always entertaining) Lawrence O’Donnell actually makes fleeting sense, puncturing the veil of Kennedy's packaged narrative while underscoring Democrats’ fear of his candidacy:

Most [Kennedys] do not drop references to their fathers or their uncles so that you all know for sure, in the first minute, exactly who they are and treat them accordingly... I've been very reluctant to speak about Robert Kennedy Jr. on this program because I have not wanted to enable his access to the drug addiction that he has never conquered, the drug addiction that has been with him for all of his adult life, the addiction to attention.

O’Donnell is suspicious of anyone addicted to ancestor references. Emerson: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” Republican efforts to assist Kennedy in undermining the Democratic party might backfire. For now, he provides a useful cudgel against Democrats’ house of cards. Which explains Republican funding of his campaign. Trump currently needs Kennedy more than Kennedy needs Trump. Kennedy needs Trump to determine which policies to emphasize.

Image: Gage Skidmore