Robert F Kennedy Jr

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Libertarians nominate Chase Oliver for president, rejecting Trump and RFK Jr

      by

      The US Libertarian party has nominated Chase Oliver as its presidential candidate after members rejected overtures from Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr.Oliver, 38, who describes himself as “armed and gay”, was chosen at the party’s convention in Washington DC on Sunday at the end of seven rounds of voting that lasted seven hours.Accepting the nomination, he vowed to be “the only national candidate” – contrasting himself to Trump, Kennedy and President Joe Biden – in the presidential poll and called for a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, saying “end the genocide”.Oliver’s victory followed separate pitches to the Libertarian convention – staged against the backdrop slogan of “Become Ungovernable” – by Trump and Kennedy for the backing of a party that could win a significant enough proportion of the popular vote to swing what is expected to be a close election.Trump has been running narrowly ahead of Biden in most nationwide polls, while Kennedy – with the advantage of name recognition through being a member of America’s most storied political family dynasty – has been consistently running at around or above 10%, making him a potential spoiler candidate.With the party platform dedicated to individual freedom and small government, members booed and jeered Trump on Saturday when he addressed them in a bid to win their support.“We should not be fighting each other,” Trump – the former president and presumed Republican nominee – told the gathering, only to be greeted with a chorus of profane catcalls. “Combine with us in a partnership – we’re asking that of the libertarians. We must work together. Combine with us. You have to combine with us.”Kennedy, the son of the former attorney general Robert F Kennedy and running as an independent after initially trying to win the Democratic nomination, earned a warmer reception after pledging to pardon Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower now exiled in Russia, and drop espionage charges against Julian Assange.But he was eliminated in the first round of Sunday’s voting after winning just 19 votes, 2% of the total. Trump, who was not an official potential nominee, won six write-in votes.In his acceptance speech, Oliver took aim at both candidates, as well as Biden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Rule No 1: If you want to elect a real political outsider, don’t elect somebody with the last name Kennedy,” he said.Referring to the advanced years of Trump and Biden, aged 77 and 81 respectively, he said younger voters “don’t want octogenarians running their lives”.The party, which expects to be on the ballot in at least 37 states, won 1.2% of the popular vote in the 2020 election. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr attacks Trump and Biden as he makes 2024 pitch to Libertarian voters

      by

      Robert Kennedy Jr, a longshot independent candidate for US president, has sought to woo Libertarian party voters by casting rivals Donald Trump and Joe Biden as enemies of individual freedom.Kennedy, 70, brought Libertarians to their feet by promising to pardon government whistleblower Edward Snowden, currently exiled in Russia, and drop espionage charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder battling US attempts to extradite him from Britain.Founded in 1971, the Libertarian party is committed to limiting the size and scope of government, and gained 1.2% of the national vote in the 2020 presidential election. But with this year’s race looking tight, Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and environmental advocate, and Trump, the Republican nominee, are chasing votes at its its convention in Washington.Early in a 45-minute speech, Kennedy made light of the recent revelation that he had a brainworm more than a decade ago. Accusing past leaders of repeatedly encroaching on personal liberties, up to and including the coronavirus pandemic, he said to applause: “Maybe a brainworm ate that part of memory, but I don’t recall any part of the United States constitution where there is an exemption for pandemics.”Addressing a few hundred delegates, Kennedy accused Trump of allowing the government to abuse individual liberty during the pandemic. He said: “I think he had the right instinct when he came into office. He was initially very reluctant to impose lockdowns, but then he got rolled by his bureaucrats. He caved in and many of our most fundamental rights disappeared practically overnight.”Kennedy earned further applause when he asserted: “All of our constitutional rights were ploughed under. They closed all the churches but they kept open the Walmarts and the liquor stores.”He accused Trump of closing down 3.3m businesses. “President Trump said he was going to run America like a business, and he came in and he gave the keys to all of our businesses to a 50-year bureaucrat who’d never been elected to anything and had no accountability,” he said.Kennedy touched a nerve in his audience when he turned to the espionage charges against Assange, who this week won the right to bring a fresh appeal against his extradition, and National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Snowden. Each line was greeted with cheers and applause as he spoke.View image in fullscreen“President Trump also assaulted the first amendment and failed to defend press freedom when he continued President [Barack] Obama’s persecution and prosecution of Julian Assange,” he said. “Assange should be celebrated as a hero. He did exactly what journalists are supposed to do, which is to expose government corruption. We shouldn’t put him in prison; we should have a monument to him here in Washington DC.“The same is true of Edward Snowden … He’s a hero, not a criminal, and I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to do what President Trump should have done. On my first day in office, I’m going to pardon Edward Snowden and I’m going to drop charges – all charges – against Julian Assange.”The room erupted in roars of approval.Kennedy argued that he deserves a place on the debate stage with Biden and Trump, who have so far agreed to two TV debates without him. Opinion polls suggest that he could siphon votes from both men, with a May Reuters/ Ipsos survey showing he was supported by 13% of respondents.He went to take aim at the current president, too. “When President Trump left office, the assault on the constitution intensified. President Biden violated a freedom so fundamental that James Madison didn’t even think to put it in the Bill of Rights.”Kennedy accused Biden of “a programme of coercion and information control” during the pandemic, repeating unfounded claims that Biden colluded with the FBI to coerce social media sites to allow government agencies to carry out “an obscene orgy of federal censorship”. He said it went from “medical misinformation” to “an entire censorship industrial complex” that also suppresses critics of the war in Ukraine.Coronavirus vaccines were deemed safe and effective by the US government and its regulatory agencies as well as the World Health Organization. The first two years of Covid vaccines saved an estimated 3m lives in the US alone, according to a study published by the Commonwealth Fund.Kennedy has been criticised for making false medical claims over the years about vaccines. The son of Senator Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his own presidential bid, Kennedy has drawn rebukes from his famous family, who have publicly backed Biden. At his event on Friday, badges reminiscent of John F Kennedy’s 1960s campaign were placed on the seats.Kennedy, who chose wealthy lawyer Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, and who is officially on the ballot in seven states so far, supports Israel and has questioned a six-week ceasefire backed by Biden. On Friday, one delegate shouted: “Free Palestine! Free Palestine!” Kennedy replied: “Happy to talk afterwards.”View image in fullscreenThe candidate went on to pledge: “Murder is not OK anywhere in any form. That is why I will end the forever wars. The wars that have bankrupted our nation and ruined our reputation abroad.” There were cheers and shouts of “Yes!”Overall, Kennedy’s reception at the convention was warm, throwing down the gauntlet to Trump, who is due to speak on Saturday evening.Dan Belforti, a Libertarian party member wearing a “Kennedy 2024” T-shirt, said: “He’s libertarian enough. He’s actually better on the environment than the Libertarian party platform is. A true free market would price in the externalities of pollution but the Libertarian party doesn’t necessarily put that in their platform yet.”Belforti, 60, a retired financial adviser and former congressional candidate and radio host, also praised Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism. “He’s right. Well researched. It’s amazing to me how the the American press at least has demonised him as some kind of anti-vax extremist when in reality he’s a very sensible, reasonable, rational man, so it just goes to show you how powerful the pharmaceutical lobby is.”But Belforti, who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, parts company with Kennedy on Gaza: “I don’t understand why he is supportive of Israel’s response to the terrorist attack. Around the world people would understand that you want to enact some kind of justice but I think what’s going on is so far overboard that I can’t support that policy. That’s the one issue I think Bobby Kennedy might be weakest on in this room.”Pendleton Spicer, 79, a musician and county elections official from Tucson, Arizona, has no intention of voting for Kennedy. “He just doesn’t represent my beliefs. I feel like he’s bought into the narrative about how horrible climate change is. I disagree with the narrative.”But she added: “I like his position on medical stuff – there’s plenty of science to say that the vaccines are dangerous – as long as he holds the position that we have freedom over our bodies, freedom of choice about what goes into our bodies.”Adrian Malagon, chair of the Libertarian party in California, said: “He’s a very interesting man. He’s great on medical freedom. There’s some things that he’s fantastic on. He doesn’t hold all libertarian positions but he is a fascinating man. I’ve had the privilege of meeting him, speaking with him and I very much like him.”Kennedy’s appearance was protested by progressive group MoveOn, which circulated a mobile billboard around the Libertarian National Convention in a push to argue that a vote for Kennedy is effectively a vote for Trump.Joel Payne, MoveOn’s political action chief communications officer, said: “As if we needed any more evidence, Kennedy Jr made it clear today that he should be nowhere near the Oval Office. It’s no surprise that Kennedy Jr and Trump are on the same stage this weekend. They already share the same views on restricting abortion access and spreading dangerous conspiracy theories.” More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Who does RFK Jr pose the bigger threat to: Joe Biden or Donald Trump? – podcast

      by

      Last week it was announced that Donald Trump and Joe Biden would finally hit the debate stage for a rematch. While voters contemplate which of the pair stands to lose more by going head to head, another candidate is working hard to try to join them – Robert F Kennedy Jr. The controversial independent candidate doesn’t even have the backing of his famous political family, but he’s polling nationally stronger than any third-party candidate has in decades.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to political analyst David Corn about which of the two frontrunners should be more worried by RFK Jr’s presidential campaign

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Kerry Kennedy on the family political split: ‘There’s so much at stake’

      by

      Every Christmas Kerry Kennedy makes a book for her numerous relatives. “It has at least one photograph of every single member of my extremely enormous family,” she says. “And yes, Bobby is in the book.”“Bobby” refers to her brother, Robert Kennedy Jr, a hopeful sign that the sibling bond will survive an oncoming storm. Robert is running as an independent candidate for US president in November’s election. Kerry is one of at least 15 members of the Kennedy clan who recently endorsed Joe Biden instead.Robert’s long history of promoting vaccine conspiracy theories, and associating with racists and antisemites, has been a source of anguish for what was once seen as America’s equivalent of a royal family. They have been at pains to distance themselves from the 70-year-old’s dangerously fringe, anti-scientific views.Last year Jack Schlossberg, the sole grandson of former president John F Kennedy, denounced Robert for “trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame” and described the candidacy as an “embarrassment”.With Robert polling at about 10% with potential to have an impact in crucial swing states, the Kennedy family has closed ranks around Biden, who keeps a bust of one-time presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Sr in the Oval Office. Last month they joined the president at a campaign stop in Philadelphia to publicly back him against Donald Trump, whom they cast as a dire threat to American democracy.Robert responded on social media that his family was “divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other”.View image in fullscreenKerry, 64, the seventh of Ethel and Robert Kennedy Sr’s 11 children, recalls in an interview that the collective decision involved “a lot of texts and emails and phone calls and ‘let’s do that’”.Several notable members of the dynasty did not endorse, including Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia, and the non-profit leader Maria Shriver, which the Biden campaign said was due to their non-political professional roles. Kerry adds: “Then there’s my brother Bobby and one cousin but 100% of everybody else endorsed Joe Biden.”How did it feel to go against her own brother? After a pause, the human rights activist and lawyer says by phone from the family home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts: “I feel like there’s so much at stake. When Daddy ran for president, in part of his speech he said, ‘I cannot stand aside,’ and that’s how I feel. I just feel there’s so much at stake.“I’ve spent the last 40 years working on civil rights domestically and international human rights and trying to hold governments accountable for abusing people, particularly members of the press, and I can’t let this go. We cannot have Trump in for four more years. And Biden is great. He has accomplished so much more as president, which is wild considering the Congress that he’s had to work with.”She points to historic legislation that Biden signed to tackle the climate crisis and slash child poverty, and to an economy that has made a better post-pandemic recovery than China, Europe or any other major competitor.View image in fullscreen“Most Americans are doing a lot better than they were and Trump would be a disaster for us. I felt, and my siblings and my cousins all felt, that what’s at stake here is our democracy, our freedom. our fight for the middle class and all that means that Joe Biden must be re-elected.”Robert, an environmental lawyer, has pushed bogus assertions about the dangers of vaccines, linked antidepressants to school shootings and claimed last year that the coronavirus was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” (he later said his remarks were misinterpreted).But Kerry, president of the organisation Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, is reluctant to comment on her brother’s public statements or policy agenda, citing the impossibility of an independent candidate breaking Democrats and Republicans’ stranglehold on the electoral college.“I don’t think that matters because he can’t win,” she says matter-of-factly. “It’s irrelevant what he says about any given subject. It’s a nonentity. He can’t get 270 electoral votes. The only question is not where he stands on a particular issue but what’s his impact on the campaign, and that to me is dangerous because this election, just like every other presidential, is going to be razor thin and we can’t afford to lose one vote – not one.“We need every voter who’s thinking of voting for a third party to vote instead for Biden because otherwise it’s like you’re throwing a vote to Trump and that’s a disaster.”View image in fullscreenRobert, initially challenged Biden in the party primary election before running as an independent, could use his last name’s lingering Democratic mystique to siphon support from the president. A super political action committee supporting his campaign produced a TV advert during the Super Bowl that relied heavily on imagery from John F Kennedy’s 1960 presidential run. (Robert apologised if the commercial “caused anyone in my family pain”.)skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut there is some evidence that he might hurt Trump more. A Quinnipiac survey last month found that Robert drew support from 12% of voters who supported Trump in a two-way contest, compared with 7% from Biden voters. An NBC poll found that Robert attracted 15% of Trump supporters compared with 7% of those of who backed Biden.Kerry, formerly married to the Democrat Andrew Cuomo, an ex-governor of New York, responds: “That’s kind of irrelevant because I’m delighted for him to take every single vote he can from Trump but we want all those votes that would go to Biden to go to Biden because these margins are so close that we can’t afford to lose them to Bobby or anyone else.”Trump has been transparent about his ambitions for an imperial presidency. In a recent Time magazine interview, he said he was open to using the national guard to deport undocumented migrants and allowing states to monitor women’s pregnancies so they know if they receive an abortion.Kerry offers a nightmarish vision of what a second Trump term would look like. “He has said he’ll be dictator on day one, that he’ll suspend the constitution, that he will use the justice department to go after his enemies, that he will have a litmus test for the thousands of government workers on loyalty to Donald Trump and that loyalty test will be: was the election stolen or not? If you say the election was not stolen, you no longer have a government job.“It would be generational bias on courts, not just the supreme court but courts across the board. He’s said he will create massive labour camps and forced detention centres for immigrants and he would put not just the police but the armed forces in our streets in order to enforce that.“A Muslim ban on day one. It would be a disaster for global warming, as he’s indicated. It would be a disaster for women’s rights and women’s control over their bodies. You’d see more librarians going to prison for allowing books to be on bookshelves.”At age 43, Kerry’s uncle was the youngest person ever elected to the presidency. Her father, a former attorney general, was just 42 when he was assassinated while running for the White House in 1968. There could be no greater contrast with Biden, who at 81 is the oldest president in history. Kerry, who has spent time with him twice in the past two months, offers her assessment.View image in fullscreen“He physically does not have the grace of a 20-year-old but in terms of his mind, if you talk to him about any number of issues – and I’m not talking about what do you think about Gaza and the Middle East or Ukraine in general or poverty, I’m talking about what do you think about private prison systems that imprison Black youth in Louisiana? – he will talk to you about that.“And then he’ll tell you about three different bills by name. ‘Well, HR 2732 would address that but the Republicans don’t want it for this reason and they have a congressman in Alabama who’s against it for this reason but there’s a chance of changing it on these two paragraphs.’ I mean, it is unbelievable. That is a guy who knows what’s going on. That is my experience.”That is why, Kerry insists, voters must stay focused on the binary choice before them and not get distracted by third-party candidates: Jill Stein, Cornel West – and Robert Kennedy Jr. “I disagree with him on a range of the issues which I’ve discussed with him and been quite public about,” she says.“But the point here is not a sister and a brother or a family or anything like that. It is what’s the future of our country and what’s the future of our world and do we have a democracy in the United States and do we have a liberal world order or not? That’s what’s going on here. Who cares about two siblings? It’s absurd.” More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr says he’ll eat brain worms and ‘still beat’ Biden and Trump in debate

      by

      In a US presidential campaign season growing more bizarre by the day, the independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr offered “to eat five more brain worms and still beat” Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a staged debate.Kennedy was speaking after the New York Times published a startling story about a 2012 deposition in which he said a previous neurological problem “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.“I offer to eat five more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate,” Kennedy posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.“I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap.”In answer to an account parodying the billionaire Elon Musk, who said Kennedy should debate Trump and Biden “on X spaces with Tucker Carlson monitoring”, Kennedy said: “I’m in!”Kennedy and Trump are both due to speak at the Libertarian party convention in Washington later this month. Kennedy has challenged Trump to debate him there.Kennedy’s health problems were the subject of a lengthy Times report, which quoted from a deposition Kennedy gave during divorce proceedings in 2012.Some doctors thought Kennedy had a brain tumour but another said a dark spot on scans could be the result of a parasite. Experts said Kennedy could have suffered a pork tapeworm infection. The Times said Kennedy also reported suffering mercury poisoning, from eating too much infected fish.“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” Kennedy said in the deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”Kennedy, 70, told the Times he had recovered. His campaign said: “The issue was resolved more than 10 years ago and he is in robust physical and mental health. Questioning Mr Kennedy’s health is a hilarious suggestion, given his competition.”Biden is 81, Trump 77. Public polling shows dissatisfaction with both. Observers from both sides of the divide fear Kennedy acting as a spoiler in the general election, as he continues to seek ballot access in all 50 states.Kennedy’s family has long sat in the mainstream of US politics. His father was the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, while uncles included John F Kennedy, the 35th president, and Ted Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts senator.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracy theories and other non-mainstream views have flourished online – where news of his views on brain worms caused predictable hilarity.“Robert F Kennedy Jr says health issue caused by dead worm in his brain,” wrote Craig Rozniecki, a satirist. “Well, that explains a lot …”The actor and comedian Patton Oswalt wrote: “‘The worm that ate part of my brain will not affect my ability to serve as president’ is the kind of dynamic campaign slogan that’s gonna seal the deal for ol’ Brainworm Bobby.”
      This article was amended on 9 May 2024 to clarify that Robert F Kennedy Jr was responding to an account parodying Elon Musk. A previous version incorrectly stated he was responding to Musk. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr dismisses Trump as ‘unhinged’ after being called a ‘Democrat plant’

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr has dismissed Donald Trump as “unhinged” after a social media tirade from the former Republican president accused the independent White House hopeful of being a “Democrat plant” and “wasted protest vote”.“When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged,” Kennedy wrote Saturday on X in a post that doubled as a debate challenge. “President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate.”Both Trump and Democratic incumbent Joe Biden have come to perceive Kennedy as a threat to their prospects in November’s presidential election over fears that he could siphon off enough votes to swing the race. But Friday, it was Trump who vented frustration at the specter of Kennedy, arguing in a screed on his Truth Social platform that the independent was dropped into the field to aid Biden’s chances of re-election and that his choice to select tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan as his running mate was unserious.“RFK Jr is a Democrat ‘Plant,’” Trump wrote. “A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him.”Despite his consistently goading Biden about debating, Trump hasn’t done much of it himself. He skipped all debates in the Republican presidential preference primary this year, withdrew from a second debate with Biden before losing the Oval Office to him in 2020, and in 2022 prompted his party’s national committee to withdraw from the body that stages presidential debates.Nonetheless, Kennedy on Saturday wrote that if Trump did meet him on the stage, he would attack the former president over the war in Ukraine, among other topics.Trump largely kept quiet about whether or not Congress should support an aid package for Ukraine before lawmakers approved one on Tuesday. It received Biden’s signature on Wednesday.“He promised to end the Ukraine war,” Kennedy said in part, referring to Trump. “And then [he] colluded … to fund it.”Recent polling from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ shows Kennedy with 7.7% support, trailing both Biden and Trump, who for the moment are tied.Trump is managing to make November’s election competitive despite facing more than 80 pending criminal charges for attempting to forcibly overturn his defeat to Biden, improperly retaining classified materials after his presidency and making illicitly covered up hush-money payments to an adult film actor.The trial of the case centering on the covered up hush-money is scheduled to enter its third week on Tuesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, Trump is also facing multimillion-dollar civil penalties for practices deemed fraudulent and an allegation that he raped a woman – a claim which a judge has determined to be substantially true.Kennedy is respectively the son and nephew of former US attorney general Robert Kennedy and John F Kennedy, who were both assassinated in the 1960s. He was once a Democrat like his famed predecessors and had a strong environmental record, though he has drifted to the political right over the years, espousing conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine views that some believe could attract Trump supporters.On 15 April, Kennedy claimed Trump unsuccessfully asked him to be his vice-presidential candidate in November’s race. Prominent members of the Kennedy political dynasty then resoundingly endorsed Biden’s re-election campaign three days later. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden closes gap on Trump but third-party candidates pose danger, polls show

      by

      Multiple new polls show Joe Biden strengthening slightly in the US presidential election, but suggest third-party candidates could present a risk to his chance of carrying the White House in November.According to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Saturday, Biden has whittled down the four-point lead Donald Trump held in February, with Trump leading Biden 46% to 45% among registered voters.The narrowing of support for the candidates seven months before election day comes as Trump is likely to be largely off the campaign and fundraising trail for the next six weeks while he attends a criminal trial in New York over pre-2016 election hush money payments.Despite the narrowing of Trump’s lead that the New York Times poll found, the survey located a worrying issue for Democrats: some voters recalled Trump’s 2016-20 presidency, despite his capacity to sow divisiveness and chaos, as a time of economic prosperity and strong national security.Before 2020 election, only 39% of voters said that the country was better off after Trump took office – a figure that has risen in the intervening years with a Democrat in the White House.According to the New York Times, 42% now view Trump’s term as better for the country than the Biden administration, compared with 25% who say the opposite and an additional 25% saying Biden has been “mostly bad” for the country.Approval of Trump’s handling of the economy was also up 10% over the past four years.A separate study of 1,265 registered voters released on Sunday by I&I/Tipp showed Biden at 43% and Trump at 40% if no other choices are in the mix.Poll respondents were asked who they preferred in a two-candidate contest, with the option to chose “other” and “not sure” – options that both returned 9% of those polled. That 18% figure of the total vote, editor Terry Jones of Issues & Insights wrote, showed that Biden and Trump “are not opposing against one another in a vacuum”.Asked a follow-up question that added the independent candidates Robert F Kennedy Jr, an environmental lawyer and vaccine sceptic, the Harvard professor Cornel West, and the Green party figure Jill Stein, Biden took the greater hit to his support, leveling with Trump at 38%.With Kennedy at 11%, West at 2%, and Stein at 1%, Jones calculated that Kennedy’s presence siphoned off five points of Biden’s support to Trump’s two.“This is not surprising, given that RFK Jr is on most issues a traditional progressive leftist, which makes him indistinguishable from the current leadership of the Democratic party,” Jones wrote.According to the Kennedy campaign, the candidate and vice-presidential pick Nicole Shanahan currently have enough signatures to get on the ballots of just six states: Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, North Carolina and New Hampshire.Earlier this month, third-party group No Labels announced it would not field a “unity ticket” candidate after reaching out to 30 potential people and raising $60m despite assessing that “Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run and hungrier for unifying national leadership than ever before”.The group said it would only offer a candidate if it could identify a candidate with a “credible path” to the White House.“No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down,” it said.Kennedy, who has consistently denied his candidacy is in effect a “spoiler” to Democratic hopes of retaining the White House, is not the only worry for the party currently holding executive power.Polls are wildly conflicting. A recent Rasmussen survey found that Biden trails Trump regardless of third-party candidates.In a two-way contest between Biden and Trump, 49% of likely US voters said they would choose Trump, and 41% would vote for Biden. That was a marginal increase for Trump since February, when he led by six points.That same poll found 8% would vote for some other candidate, virtually matching the I&I/Tipp findings. More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘He can help Trump win’: US groups take on RFK Jr after No Labels stands down

      by

      Celebrating the demise of No Labels as a third-party presidential election threat, two advocacy groups who mobilised against it have said they would now turn their sights on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent run for the White House.Though it is hard to make solid predictions, a high-profile third-party run in 2024 unnerves both Republicans and Democrats who fear it might siphon off their votes. But the nervousness is especially pronounced among supporters of Joe Biden, who worry such a campaign could split the center and left and allow Donald Trump and his highly motivated rightwing base to win a return to the Oval Office.“Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr,” Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, told reporters a day after No Labels said it would not field a candidate against Biden and Trump in November.Kennedy – an environmental attorney, conspiracy theorist and member of a famous political family – is running as an independent, gaining ballot access and polling in double figures.“We’re going to let folks know he can’t win,” Epting said, “but he can help Trump win” by taking votes from Biden.“We’re going to let folks know that he said he supported abortion bans. We’re going to let folks know that his vice-presidential pick [Nicole Shanahan, an attorney] calls IVF ‘one of the biggest lies’ and we’re going to let folks know that his dark money Super Pac is being funded by Trump donors.“There’s a lot we’re gonna let folks know. This victory against No Labels is just the start. There is a lot of work that we have to do.”No Labels said on Thursday it had not been able to find a candidate to run against Biden and Trump.On Friday Matthew Bennett, of Third Way, said No Labels was helped on its way out by a coalition put together by his centre-left group and MoveOn, an effort “from the left all the way to the centre-right and the Never Trump movement”.But, Bennett said, “The challenges ahead of us are in some ways even tougher.“Kennedy cannot be talked out of this race. He is going to have a lot of money and he’s not subject to reason. So we’re going to have to make clear that voters understand who this guy is, and that is not his father.”Kennedy is the son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and the nephew of the 35th president, John F Kennedy.But, Bennett said, the current Kennedy “is not a safe place to park your vote if you’re dissatisfied with something that [Biden] is doing. This guy’s dangerous and voting for him is tantamount to voting for Trump. It’s also true of the other third-party candidates, Jill Stein [the Green nominee] and anybody else who runs.”Bennett said No Labels had posed a danger by planning to attack Biden from the political centre, even though Biden, as a Washington dealmaker of 50 years standing, was “kind of the platonic ideal of a No Labels candidate”.Kennedy, Bennett said, “is coming from some kind of weirdo fringe … and so it is harder to understand who his coalition is. However, our view is that anyone who divides the anti-Trump coalition is dangerous.”The Biden campaign has set up a team to combat Kennedy. But, Epting said, “It is incredibly important that we get to work in campaigning against Robert Kennedy … and ensure that the choices in November are clear to voters. It is that whether we like it or not … we live in a two-party system and there’s only two candidates that can win this presidential election. Donald Trump or Joe Biden.“Our job is to make that very clear to voters and in terms of resources … to ensure that we re-elect President Biden and an usher in a Democratic House and Senate. We have a $32m program to do that and we will be driving … We’ve got a great team that we assigned to this No Labels work. We’re going to reassign them to our Robert Kennedy work.”Epting and Bennett were asked what they would do to woo “the Kennedy curious”, voters who might be won back, perhaps by less brusque tactics than those employed by Hillary Clinton, who said this week anyone dissatisfied with a Biden-Trump rematch should “get over yourself”.“We’re not going to shame people into voting for Joe Biden,” Epting said. “That is not the pathway to get us out of this quagmire.“Really, it’s making a strategic case to voters, [saying], ‘We understand your grievances, we hear them and yet we live in a two-party presidential system.’ So the impact of your vote … will result in one of two possible worlds. A world in which Donald Trump is president, and he is dismantling our democracy even further. He is instituting a national abortion ban. He is setting up migrant camps, etc.“Or a world in which Joe Biden continues to be in the Oval Office and we’re able to continue to campaign, to push him to enact all the policies that we have dreamed up to strengthen our democracy: to go further around gun violence prevention reform, to protect abortion rights, to continue to create green new jobs and invest in our economy, to continue to tax the rich.”Epting promised to ask “tough questions” of Kennedy on subjects such as abortion, on which he supported a 15-week ban before quickly reversing.“We need to get [his responses] on camera and we need to share what we get … with all the voters that we can, especially in battleground states and districts,” Epting said.Asked about previous Democratic defeats involving third-party candidates, Bennett said that as “a veteran of the [Al] Gore campaign” of 2000, “losing two elections in my professional life to third-party candidates is incredibly galling, and I have made it my mission that we won’t lose three.”That was also a reference to 2016, when Jill Stein took votes from Clinton as Trump won.Bennett said: “I think everybody in Democratic politics … ignored Jill Stein in 2016 because we did not think that she posed a threat, just as the Gore campaign didn’t think Ralph Nader posed a threat in 2000.“We’re simply not going to make that mistake again.” More