US election 2024
“Our common enemy is Joe Biden”: Will Kennedy, of all people, help Trump get re-elected?
“Joe Biden sucks”: A number of critics of the US president also gather at an RFK Jr. event
© Bryan Olin Dozier / Picture Alliance
Officially, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to spoil the presidential election for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But now a voice from the Kennedy camp is speaking out, which is unusually clearly on one side.
“My intention is to spoil it for both of them,” says the scion of the most famous American political family about his presidential candidacy. The two who Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to spit in the soup are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The latter ex-president and Republican, the former incumbent and Democrat. That was Kennedy until a few months ago. But there is no sign of solidarity with his former comrade, on the contrary: some from his camp are now making it clear that their primary concern is to prevent the incumbent US President from being re-elected.
“If Biden wins, we will all be upset”
“Our common enemy is Joe Biden,” said a New York campaign official Kennedys in a video. Rita Palmer has only recently started working for the nephew of the famous John F. Kennedy. She used to vote for Donald Trump, but now she will vote for Bobby or RFK Jr., as the 70-year-old is called in the best family tradition.
If she wakes up on November 6th, the day after the US election, “and Trump has won, it won’t be a big deal. But if Biden wins, then we’ll all be terribly upset,” Palmer continued. Officially, she is alone in the movement with this attitude. A spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign said: “Palma spoke as a private citizen and her statement does not reflect the goals of our strategy.”
Robert F. Kennedy in polls at ten percent
Even if it is not RFK Jr.’s stated goal to harm the man in the White House more than his right-wing populist opponent, that would still be the consequence. Because in the de facto two-candidate system in the USA, the other presidential candidates actually have no chance, more than a few percent are not included – until now: According to surveys, ten percent of voters could imagine voting for Kennedy Jr. There hasn’t been this much support for the third man in a long time.
As intended, his success in the survey comes at the expense of others:Not for Kennedy, not even for Donald Trump, but for Joe Biden. Most pollsters place the ex-president ahead of or on par with the incumbent president. But that changes when the polls are expanded to include the other candidates Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein (Green Party) and Cornel West (an independent from California). In this case, Biden drops significantly, but Donald Trump remains stable and is suddenly in the lead.
So far, RFK has only helped Donald Trump
It’s unlikely that RFK Jr. will change anything. At least with that one He broke the Democratic Party, the political home of his entire family. Perhaps out of disappointed love, but perhaps also due to differences in content, both sides throw sticks between each other’s spokes. Bobby is mining Biden’s voters while the “Democratic political machine is pulling out every trick out of its hat to stop our momentum,” as the candidate recently complained.
Perhaps it is actually Kennedy’s intention to harm both candidates – nevertheless, 30 weeks before the presidential election, there is one person who is happy about the candidacy: Donald J. Trump.
Sources: CNN“Politico”New York Times,”Forbes“, RealClearPolitics,