Caution: Spoilers Ahead

As I long suspected would happen, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is filing for a third party spoiler run to run against President Joe Biden in order to try to hand the country over to Trump.

 

2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce he will run as an independent on October 9 in Pennsylvania, Mediaite has learned.

Kennedy’s campaign machine is now planning “attack ads” against the Democratic National Committee in order to “pave the way” for his announcement in Philadelphia about running as an independent, according to a text reviewed by Mediaite.

“Bobby feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” a Kennedy campaign insider told Mediaite.

Kennedy, a notorious anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist challenging incumbent President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, has been flirting with a third party run in recent weeks. The New York Times reported last week that he met with the chair of the Libertarian Party, raising the prospect of a departure from the party that decades ago became synonymous with his family name.

Kennedy remains far behind Biden in the polls. Yet while the Times reported “Democrats worry that a third-party run by Mr. Kennedy could draw votes away from Mr. Biden and help elect former President Donald J. Trump,” it’s unclear whether such a run would hurt the current president more than the Republican nominee.

Indeed, polls show Republicans have a far more favorable view of Kennedy than Democrats. As the National Review’s Jim Geraghty pointed out in July, when a survey asked New Hampshire Democrats to describe Kennedy in one word, the top responses were “crazy,” “dangerous,” “insane,” “conspiracy,” and “unknown.”

 

That he's kicking this off in Pennsylvania is no accident. If RFK Jr. can throw the state to Trump, it's all but over. Again, we don't know what kind of margin will be in the Keystone State in 2024, but if it's anything like 2016 or 2020, one percentage point could be enough. 50-75 thousand votes could give the state and country to Trump, and I suspect enough Republicans could get RFK Jr. onto the ballots of several battleground states, not just PA.

We'll see how bad this gets, but the potential for Bobby Kennedy's son to help destroy the country for good can't be overlooked.