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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently announced he would now run for president of the United States as an independent, not a Democrat. Recent polls suggest that a three-party ballot would hurt Republicans more than Democrats, potentially pulling votes away from the GOP frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.
Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman clarifies why Republicans are increasingly concerned about Kennedy following his party switch. Pakman also observes a new Republican strategy aimed at securing the support of independent voters by smearing Kennedy as “a far-left Democrat.”
Over time, however, it seemed as though — as RFK’s polling went from 20 to 10, and he lost half of his support — that he was losing Democratic support. And thus, if he ran third party, he might actually pull more votes from Trump than from Biden. Well, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has now announced that he is running as an independent. This means he doesn’t have to win the Democratic primary or the Republican primary to make it to the ballot, assuming he has some means of getting ballot access — which is, of course, another question — or will he run a write-in campaign, but that’s a separate question.
All of a sudden, Fox News has done a 180. Sean Hannity interviews RFK Jr., loads him up with all of his left-leaning positions, and makes it clear: “This guy is really a Leftist” — with the hope that he will siphon off voters from Democrats rather than from Republicans. RNC research — within hours of RFK Jr. making the announcement that he’s running for president as an independent — put out a sort of opposition research email, one-pager sort of thing, saying, “This guy’s a far-left Democrat, with all the far-left positions — don’t be tricked.” And this is all happening because the math has now changed.
