The Nonsensical Decision of RFK Jr.
Discussing RFK Jr.’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse Trump
I’m Isaac Saul, and I’m the executive editor at Tangle where I write an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.” For more political analysis like this, subscribe to Tangle here!
On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump. Kennedy plans to remove his name from the ballot in ten battleground states but remain an option in safe Republican and Democrat states to give his supporters in noncompetitive states the option to vote for him without playing spoiler. Kennedy has already taken action to remove his name from the ballot in Arizona and Pennsylvania, but election officials in Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin said it is too late for him to take his name off the ballot.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and the son of former Sen. Robert Kennedy, launched a primary challenge to President Joe Biden last June, then pivoted to an independent campaign in October. Though he routinely polled at 10% or more as a third-party candidate, his poll numbers have steadily declined since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket. The Kennedy campaign has struggled to remain financially viable, with recent reports suggesting it was nearly out of money. Kennedy said his decision came after determining he had no “realistic path to electoral victory,” as well as internal polling that showed his presence in the race would hurt Trump and help Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Kennedy cited three “great causes” for his decision to endorse Trump: free speech, the war in Ukraine, and “the war on children.” He said Trump is the only other candidate in the race “willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech and our constitutional freedoms, clean corporate influence out of our government, or defy the neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism.” He also accused Democrats of being “the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big AG, and big money” and said his candidacy was undermined by “relentless, systematic censorship and media control.”
The first question: Will Kennedy dropping out change the race?
Let’s discuss the primary question: Will Kennedy dropping out meaningfully change the race?
A few weeks ago, we published a piece suggesting that RFK Jr. could be the most important factor in the 2024 election. Suffice it to say that piece hasn’t aged so well. Shortly after we published it, Biden’s disastrous debate upended the entire race, then someone attempted to kill Donald Trump, and then the Democrats changed their nominee to Vice President Kamala Harris. All the while, Kennedy’s poll numbers were steadily falling.
Now Kennedy’s impact is looking much narrower — but it could still end up being critical. Given how close the polls are, a 1–2% shift in any swing state could throw the race to Trump. Based purely on what the polling has indicated so far, Trump usually gets a bump when Kennedy is removed from the ticket and the race moves to a head-to-head. Take Arizona: Biden won by around 11,000 votes in 2020, and Kennedy polls at 6% there. With him dropping out and endorsing Trump, even half of those voters following his lead could throw the entire state.
And it’s not just Arizona. In a survey of seven battleground states by the Cook Political Report, Trump was the second choice for 45% of Kennedy voters in swing states, while Harris was the choice for just 26%. Again: These margins will matter in November.
The more interesting question: Will Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump matter?
The more interesting question is whether Kennedy telling voters to cast their ballots for Trump will actually matter. Everything about this race is unusual, but a Democrat-turned-independent endorsing the Republican nominee is especially novel. How seriously can voters take Kennedy’s backing, and how loyal were they to him in the first place? These are questions I can’t confidently answer right now.
In announcing his decision, Kennedy gave his standard stump speech. As usual with him, some of it was a strong, biting criticism of the Democratic Party: It’s become more censorious, more captured by corporate interests, less focused on the working class, and less anti-war than it has been in the past. He’s also good at identifying real problems that major politicians are ignoring, like chronic health issues among children and the increased instances of autism (and no, that’s not just because of changes in diagnosis). His identification of root causes for those issues often veer off into fantasyland, but the passion with which he speaks reaches millions of people for a reason.
The nonsensicality of his decision
Still, there are a couple things about what he’s doing that are pretty nonsensical. First, even if you subscribe to Kennedy’s worldview entirely, I find it peculiar that the candidate he’s backing to reign in “big pharma, big tech, big AG, and big money” is… Donald Trump? If Kennedy is worried about things like Big Pharma pushing drugs to market that aren’t safe, or major food producers over-using pesticides and other chemicals to maximize profits, it is rather difficult to imagine a world where Trump is the president to step in and fight on his behalf.
Remember: Core pillars in Kennedy’s ideology are environmental issues, like removing pesticides from food, which he hoped to do by “weaponizing” regulators. Whatever you think of former President Trump, he does not have any tangible track record that would indicate a desire to put the vice grip on corporations and address the issues Kennedy made a centerpiece of his campaign.
The second nonsensical aspect of Kennedy’s announcement is that he is only sort of dropping out. He’s attempting to remove himself from swing state ballots to help Trump, while remaining on the ballot in safe states, and he’s even floated the idea that he could still eventually win the election in the event Trump and Harris tie at 269 electoral college votes. But, actually, that doesn’t seem possible. The House of Representatives breaks a tie by casting votes from its state delegations for any candidate who receives electoral college votes. If Kennedy wants to win a contingent election in Congress, he’ll have to get at least one electoral vote; and remaining on the ballot in only the least competitive states is probably the worst way to do that.
Concluding Thoughts
Of course, any discussion of Kennedy’s decision must include a note that his endorsement for either candidate might be conditional on him landing a cabinet seat. There’s a good deal of reporting out there that suggested Kennedy was “for sale,” approaching both candidates with the carrot of an endorsement in exchange for a position in their prospective administration. Perhaps, from Kennedy’s view, Trump’s record on some of his top issues is irrelevant if he gets a seat at the cabinet table. But again, Trump is the kind of pro-business, anti-regulation candidate who has always been resistant to using the government to check corporations — and I have no idea why Kennedy imagines that will change now.
Ultimately, Kennedy’s campaigns struggled to get past many of the same issues that past third-party challengers have faced: He was unable to get consistent media coverage, he didn’t have the ground game to get on all the ballots he needed to, and the sum of his views contained too many fringe positions unpopular with the major political tribes to pull significant support from either main candidate. His endorsement of Trump might change the race on the margins, but the opportunity for him to fundamentally challenge the status quo has come to an end.
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