JD Tusiel: Is RFK Jr. the presidential spoiler America needs?

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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be excluded from the scheduled debate between Democratic incumbent Joe Biden and former and likely future White House incumbent Republican Donald Trump. is against. It's no surprise that he was left out. Major U.S. political parties have traditionally treated politics as private clubs closed to new members. But the stakes are higher this year than in previous years, with two ancient retread candidates in a close race and Kennedy posting a strong showing that could easily affect the outcome.

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President Kennedy: “Presidents Trump and Biden are colluding to lock America into direct confrontation, but 70% say they don't want that.'' Posted About X after competitors announce their plans for a debate. “They're trying to exclude me from debates because they're afraid I'll win. Keeping strong candidates out of debates undermines democracy.”

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The Independent is correct in pointing out that Americans are not that excited about the options offered by the two major political parties. Last month, half of people responding to a Pew Research survey said they would replace the following products: both Preferably Trump and Biden as presidential candidates. An April AP-NORC study reached a similar conclusion, finding that both presidents “are seen as doing more harm than good on a wide range of issues.”

Widespread disdain for Democrats and Republicans' “choose your destiny” proposals has resulted in a close race, with Trump holding a slim lead in average national polls. Importantly, while the two leading candidates each have a support rating of perhaps 1%, Mr. Kennedy has steadily garnered the support of about 10% of American voters. So while either the Biden or Trump campaigns may advocate for Kennedy's inclusion in the debates to reduce support from their main opponents, who will be most hurt by The Independent? No one knows.

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vote Number of battleground states announced this week By The New York Times and Siena College With Kennedy's participation, 8 percent of Trump's supporters and 7 percent of Biden's supporters participated, it found. Minority party candidates could not make much of a difference, but The Times' Nate Cohn added, “The results were essentially the same in both the two-way and five-way games.” Combining Mr. Kennedy's 10 percent with support for candidates from smaller parties does reduce the total number of votes for the two major candidates, but by a similar amount and by no small margin.

Importantly, Cohn says: Mr. Kennedy has received a disproportionate amount of support from voters who normally support the Democratic Party but have switched to Mr. Trump, and their votes have been in the spotlight this year.

It's the kind of multifaceted and unpredictable electoral calculus common in most democracies, but it has infuriated factions of the two hollowed-out political parties that have dominated American politics since the mid-19th century. In other regions, parties come and go, majorities often require coalitions, and shifts in public sentiment can completely unravel political arrangements. But the Democratic and Republican parties settled into a comfortable, if somewhat corrupt, regime change. Their skin really cracks when someone challenges their dominance.

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In 2016, CNN's Eli Watkins claimed that support for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein helped Trump win. Like Kennedy, Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, reached double digits in some polls in a race that included then-“historically unpopular” Trump and Hillary Clinton. Mr. Johnson's approval rating had fallen to 3.3% in the final count, but Mr. Stein's approval rating was 1.1%, enough to infuriate Democrats.

And then the same thing happened again. After the 2020 election, Duke University political science professor John Aldrich described “strong evidence” that Biden's victory was due to Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen.

Although Mr. Jorgensen did not poll as well as Mr. Johnson or Mr. Kennedy, he upset Republicans by winning more votes in battleground states than the difference between the two major party candidates.

Now Kennedy, the son of a former U.S. senator and nephew of a former president and another senator, is poised to reverse fortunes again. Armed with skepticism about government encroachments on individual liberties and support for nationalist policies such as subsidized child care and government-backed mortgages, he called himself a “broken two-party system.” “Independent from government and corporate corruption.'' He increases the influence of politicians on people's lives. It's the kind of ideological incoherence that seems appropriate for a country in political turmoil.

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President Kennedy has a history of embracing conspiracy theories, even as federal officials have been caught secretly talking back to critics on social media. He is anti-vaxxer after public health institutions have lost trust and their restrictive pandemic policies have caused what former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins acknowledged was “collateral damage.” He said that a parasite ate part of his brain, in a moment in history that the entire American political class could suspect.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats and Republicans wonder if the 70-year-old Kennedy appears more honest and energetic than the 77-year-old Trump, who has spent much of this year in legal proceedings, or the 81-year-old Biden. I am concerned that this may not be the case. I can no longer be trusted to walk in public without assistance. He may seem less crazy than a rerun of a big name brand, dumb or whatever.

Kennedy is certainly not the presidential candidate America needs. He is probably not the right person for the country, although some of the people may be. But at a time when America's political system seems to be being posed as a big joke on voters, he's a fitting punchline.

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