According to media reports, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will suspend his presidential campaign as early as Friday and may even endorse former President Trump. But the question remains: will that have any impact on the race? Based on the people I’ve talked to, the answer may well be yes.
I will be honest, in my conversations with voters across this great land of ours, Robert F. Kennedy’s long-shot third party run for president has not come up all that often, but when it does, it is with a very certain kind of undecided voter.
The small group of voters still making up their minds whom I have spoken with are of two distinct varieties. The first and most common are those who like Trump’s policies, say they were better off when he was in the White House, but just don’t like him, on a personal or moral level.
‘I know I’m voting for a president, not a pope,’ one woman told me, a discernible mental anguish on her visage, ‘but it still feels wrong.’
‘They’re both so tied down by money and special interests,’ a couple in San Francisco told me, ‘We need a real outsider.’
Among these voters, nothing RFK, Jr. does is likely to have much impact. But there is another type of undecided voter I have discovered, a group that a scion of the Kennedy clan might have some sway over.
This group simply doesn’t trust that Trump and the Republicans, or Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats, are truly capable of bringing about real change.
‘They’re both so tied down by money and special interests,’ a couple in San Francisco told me, ‘We need a real outsider.’
Another voter said to me, ‘What are we even voting for?’
These Americans, a small but significant group, were consistently, and by far the most likely, to bring up RFK Jr. as a voting possibility, even when I never brought him up. And it really has nothing to do with Kennedy’s policy prescriptions.
This phenomenon is similar to something almost everyone covering the 2016 primary experienced; a bit of shock when some person in New Hampshire or Iowa would say, ‘For me, it’s between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.’
It seemed bizarre. On the one hand, you had the King of Capitalism, on the other, the Count of Communism, but none of that mattered. These voters just wanted somebody, anybody who was not part of the D.C. cabal.
Eight years later, Trump has lost much of his outsider status. He is now the official and established head of the GOP, a party he no doubt transformed, but now is also firmly part of ‘the system.’
This is where RFK Jr.’s potential endorsement of Trump could actually move the needle, especially if it comes with the promise of him serving some role in the administration.
The pox on both houses that independents want is the transparency that comes from somebody from the outside being on the inside who will tell them the unvarnished truth – and agitate for change.
If Kennedy comes out this week and says he believes Trump is the one who can break up the monotonous monopoly of Washington power, then many of these voters may well pivot to the former president’s side.
There is one other aspect of RFK Jr.’s story that has a chance to move the needle. I have not met one Democratic voter who was truly angry about Joe Biden being replaced by Harris without getting any votes.
And when Republicans point this out, they are accused of concern trolling. After all, if Democrats are happy with the outcome, who cares? The GOP, the argument goes, isn’t worried about democracy, but rather that they could now lose.
Kennedy has a legitimate argument to make that he, himself, is an aggrieved party in the DNC shenanigans. It was Kennedy, along with others like Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who called for a fulsome and real primary process and were told by the party to kick rocks.
RFK Jr.’s warnings about Biden’s unpopularity and frailty proved prescient. Now he has the ability to call foul on this process in a way no Republican does.
The Democrats are already starting to come after Kennedy, wrongly claiming he has always been MAGA, but most voters know that isn’t the case.
In a campaign chock-full of shocking curves and switchbacks, an RFK Jr. endorsement of Trump may only be a gentle bend in the road, but it might get Trump just a little bit closer to the finish line.