Kennedy Jr. initially announced his presidential candidacy in April 2023, under the banner of the Democratic Party, but in October decided to run as an independent. He accuses the Democratic Party, which closed ranks around Biden’s re-election, of manipulating the primary election process and assures that the values of the Democratic Party have changed.
“Nicole (Shanahan) and I left the Democratic Party. Our values did not change. The Democratic Party does,” she stated when presenting her presidential formula.
Kennedy Jr. is the nephew of the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963 in Dallas, Texas, and son of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic Party nomination.
According to Democrats, Kennedy’s candidacy could harm Biden and favor former President Donald Trump, as they head into a new electoral revenge in which crucial issues for the United States such as the unprecedented immigration crisis, the economy and the wars in Ukraine and Israel.
Political analysts, Democrat Isadora Velásquez and Republican Anthony Verdugo, agree that Kennedy Jr. could take votes away from Biden.
For lawyer Velásquez, Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy affects Biden more than it could affect Trump. He maintains that Kennedy’s campaign itself reflects this in order to be on the ballots in the different states where he has to obtain the missing signatures to be able to participate and he gave New York as an example of how, in his opinion, Kennedy is affecting the Democratic vote. , “in his campaign he emphasizes why he does not want Biden to be re-elected and asks for his signature to be able to be part of the ballot in New York and support Trump.”
Velásquez refers to a video by Rita Palma, a Kennedy campaign consultant who said during a meeting with voters in New York that giving Kennedy access to the ballots in that state would help “get rid of Biden” so that he does not continue in the White House, the newspaper reported New York Post which alludes to a video of Palma’s meeting with voters, published by CNN, a medium whose animosity towards Trump does not hide.
“Kennedy is a candidate who can affect that Democratic vote that does not want Biden, at the same time those voters that Biden expected to receive who did not want Trump are more likely to vote for Kennedy than for President Biden,” said analyst Velásquez.
Meanwhile, Republican analyst Anthony Verdugo agrees with his Democratic colleague. “Kennedy could take more votes from Democrats than from Republicans,” he said. The main reason is that “the Kennedy family is identified with the Democratic Party and what usually happens with third party candidates is that they speak to voters of both political formations, particularly to those of their party because it is not a figure from the right, the one who is running is a figure from the left, in this case he came from within the Democratic ranks,” he explained.
However, he acknowledges that Robert F Kennedy Jr. is a little more conservative than the typical Democrat today, especially with the issue of transgender people getting involved and affecting women’s sports competitions, he is a lawyer specializing in environmental issues. who could attract potential Democratic voters and opposes certain vaccines, considering their effects to be harmful to health.
“Without a doubt in key states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania there is a great probability that 2 or 3% could go to Kennedy Jr. because many of the Democrats are not happy with Biden’s work, due to his age, the issue of “Israel is hurting Biden a lot among the Democratic base, undoubtedly in a close race, which is going to be, in those key states it can make a difference, not so much national as state,” he said.
Polls place Kennedy’s popularity at 10%, which would complicate Biden’s campaign strategy, which seeks to turn the November vote into an election between him and Trump. Other polls put Kennedy at 14% approval, and in a poll conducted in November by Quinnipiac University, Kennedy reached a voting intention of 22% among registered voters. That figure is flattering for Kennedy considering that the last independent presidential candidate was Ross Perot in 1992, who obtained more than 20% support in the polls and reached 19% in the elections.
multimillonario H. Ross Perot-AP.jpg
In this June 1, 1996, file photo, billionaire H. Ross Perot speaks at the California convention of the Reform Party, which he founded. The two-time independent presidential candidate died on Tuesday, July 9, 2019, He was 89 years old.
AP Foto/Reed Saxon, File
Biden “a threat”
Kennedy Jr. affirmed that Biden is the one who represents the greatest threat to democracy in the United States because he uses state institutions as tools to censor his opponents. A practice applied in countries governed by dictatorships or socialist regimes against their opponents.
“I can argue that President Biden is the worst threat to democracy, and the reason is that President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history who has used federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent,” Kennedy said, holding the Biden administration responsible for censoring his social media content about COVID-19 vaccines.
Kennedy Jr.’s account was censored in 2021 and was reactivated in 2023 after announcing his candidacy. The independent candidate accuses Biden of censoring his political speech and undermining the First Amendment.
The same thing happened with Trump, the company Meta and Twitter suspended their accounts after the assault on Congress in January 2021 by a group of Trump supporters, a fact for which Democrats are trying to hold the former president responsible to remove him from the race.
Trump, who faces six lawsuits promoted by Democrats, assures that Biden uses government institutions to persecute.
One of Kennedy’s main campaign issues is freedom of expression, which he believes is at stake.
presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – AP/Wilfred Lee
AP/Wilfred Lee
Biden’s challenges
Biden not only faces contenders like Kennedy and Trump, but also criticism for signs of limitations caused by his advanced age. The president will turn 82 in November and if he wins the elections he would end his term at 86. But one of the situations that most worries Americans are the episodes of disorientation that the president has experienced at different public events.
Polls place him with only 38% approval. The unprecedented migration crisis on the southern border, inflation, high food costs, high fuel prices, and wars in Israel and Ukraine are taking their toll.
Biden faces pressure from his party and Muslims, especially in these key states due to Israel’s six-month war in Gaza following the attack by the Hamas terrorist group on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, which left a 1,400 dead, most of them civilians, and 250 kidnapped, of which 130 remain in the hands of the Islamist group in Gaza, including babies.
Muslims in the Democratic Party are putting pressure on Biden by conditioning their support in exchange for the President withdrawing his support for Israel. In Michigan there were more than 100,000 Muslims who voted in the Democratic primary with the label “without obligation”, a campaign led by Layla Elabed, the sister of the congresswoman of Palestinian and Muslim origin Rashida Tlaib. Through the campaign they seek to “create a bloc of voters” to express their opposition of the Democratic administration to the current policy of support for Israel. They also carried out that same campaign in Wisconsin in the Democratic primaries.
Representative Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, was censured by the House of Representatives for her comments against Israel considered a call for the destruction of the Hebrew nation and genocide, and her failure to condemn the terrorist group Hamas.
uncomfortable vote
The independent candidate is striving to be on the ballot in every state, a titanic effort. Velásquez believes that Kennedy Jr. will be able to participate in the November 5 elections.
“Yes, I think he will be able to run (compete), yes I think it will be an uncomfortable vote, I would not be surprised if he does not run in all jurisdictions, if he appears in some places and not others, but he will definitely run” , he noted. We will have to wait to know how successful it will be in a vote that the analyst projects as uncomfortable for the Democrats.
Velasquez is hopeful that Biden could win the race, despite the challenges he faces. Verdugo believes that Republicans should not become complacent, despite Biden’s low popularity ratings due to the crisis that his administration has generated. He assures that trusting himself would be a serious mistake.
Support from Obama and Clinton
Barack Obama – Joe Biden – Bill Clinton – 2010 – ap
AP/Charles Dharapak, Archivo
Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have joined to support Biden’s campaign in search of funds and votes. Verdugo believes that times have changed for Democrats.
“Votes are not transferred. Obama and Clinton are supporting Biden and seeking to transfer credibility to the candidate in those areas that he lacks. But the African-American vote is not going to vote en masse as happened in the first and second elections with Obama and that is one of the problems that the Democratic Party has. Yes, they are going to get support from that vote, but not as many African-American voters are going to come out as happened with Obama, even though he tells them to go out and vote.”
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