Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivers remarks at an event where he announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in Boston, on April 19. Announcing his long-shot bid to challenge President Biden, Kennedy Jr. spoke to a crowd of people who voiced their shared skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.SOPHIE PARK/The New York Times News Service
Members of the fabled Kennedy family win no prizes for loyalty to their leaders. Bobby Kennedy was the first to challenge a sitting president for the Democratic nomination. He entered the primaries in March of 1968 against Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ stepped down two weeks later.
Ted Kennedy challenged president Jimmy Carter in 1980. Mr. Carter survived but the confrontation wounded him. One of my more memorable moments was being on the convention floor in Madison Square Garden for the late senator’s electrifying “The Dream Shall Never Die” speech. You could see the blood draining from the faces of Carter supporters.
And now – why not make it three? – another Kennedy is trying to take down a president. This time it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the 69-year-old gravelly-voiced environmental lawyer whose very-long-odds bid against Joe Biden is showing surprising early strength.
This Kennedy is straight out of Fringeland. He’s a conspiracy theorist who has waged an unrelenting crusade against vaccines. He thinks it was a second gunman who assassinated his father Bobby in 1968, not the man who was convicted for the crime, Sirhan Sirhan, who he wants to see released from prison. He rails against a “deep state” under the control of corporations. He claims neocons lurking in the Biden administration intentionally provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
His appeal, unique so to speak, is to both the far left and far right. He’s assembling, quipped some wag, a coalition of crackpots.
But in this age of rage, conspiracy theorists and disruptors are hot commodities. Precedence is no longer a good guide for judging American politics. Wars on reality, as Donald Trump and other Republicans have demonstrated, can garner widespread support.
Mr. Kennedy draws support from anti-vaxxers and from his famous family name. He is already scoring much higher than expected in polls, with support ranging from 14 to 20 per cent. While not a threat to win the nomination, the support for Mr. Kennedy is a signal that there are many Democrats who do not want Mr. Biden to simply have a cakewalk to the nomination, and that other challengers could do well against him.
So bizarre is the Kennedy candidacy that it has gained the favour of Trump supporters like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. They’ve said he would make a great running mate for Mr. Trump. Tucker Carlson has spoken highly of him.
Other Kennedy family members are supporting Mr. Biden. They are embarrassed by the black sheep of the family. As for Mr. Kennedy’s revered father Bobby, we hardly have to wonder what he would think.
His son was 14 when Bobby was assassinated and has since suffered through long periods of drug addiction and broken marriages. His estranged wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide in 2012. And now, the descent into conspiracy madness.
The policy strength of RFK Jr. is mainly on the environment and climate. In 2010, he was named a “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine for his work in saving the Hudson River from pollution. He is the author of many best-selling books, the most recent of which trashes immunologist Anthony Fauci.
His bid is helped by the fact that almost half of Democrats surveyed want someone else besides Mr. Biden as the party’s nominee. Since his announcement that he would seek a second term, Mr. Biden has been slipping in the polls, which were already looking bad for him. Meanwhile Mr. Trump, despite being hit with criminal charges for falsifying business records and being found liable in a sexual abuse civil lawsuit, has seen, astonishingly enough, his support grow.
Mr. Biden’s forces are trying to prevent a normal primaries process. The Democratic National Committee has announced there will be no televised primary debates. The primaries schedule is on track to be changed, so as to have the first Democratic one held in South Carolina, a stronghold for Mr. Biden, as opposed to the usual Iowa and New Hampshire rota. The latter two are likely to hold unofficial primaries anyway, with Mr. Kennedy campaigning in them.
In 1968, senator Eugene McCarthy staged a longshot bid against LBJ, which turned into a real shot when he came a close second in the New Hampshire primary. It triggered Bobby Kennedy’s entry.
While sullying the Kennedy name, RFK Jr. will continue to trade off it. He is a determined eccentric and Joe Biden need be wary of him. Other, more conventional Democrats of ambition will be watching closely. They will quietly be hoping he makes more inroads, thus opening the door for them.