Thomas L. Knapp is a director and senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, where this was first published. He lives in north central Florida.
On April 19, 2023, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his long-shot presidential bid as a Democrat.
On Oct. 9, 2023, he declared himself an “independent” and began courting (and, in some states, creating) “third parties” for their nominations. He received 19 votes for the Libertarian Party’s nomination at its 2024 national convention over Memorial Day weekend.
Three months later, on Aug. 23, he “suspended” his campaign and called for a “unity party” with the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump.
I didn’t see that last part coming, but color me unsurprised that his campaign struggled, grasped at various life preservers and finally drowned.
All Kennedy ever really had going for him was his family’s name. He knew that was his biggest asset — he even ran a Super Bowl commercial reprising his uncle’s 1960 TV advertisements — but nostalgia can only take one so far, especially when the family in question comes out hard against you.
Independent and third-party presidential campaigns generally enjoy success (relatively speaking) in proportion to one or two factors.
The first, the one Kennedy leaned on, is identity.
Theodore Roosevelt didn’t knock down 27.4% of the vote in 1912 because of his Progressive, aka Bull Moose, Party’s platform. He did so well because everyone knew who Theodore Roosevelt was, and many remembered his previous terms fondly.
It was Ross Perot’s personal legend — an up-by-his-bootstraps billionaire businessman who flew Christmas gifts into Hanoi, Vietnam, for America prisoners of war and orchestrated the rescue of his company’s employees from postrevolution Iran — more so than his hammering on the national debt and opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement that drove his vote totals of 18.91% in 1992 and 8.4% in 1996.
The Kennedy name was a big deal ... once upon a time. But the U.S. median age is 38.9 years. Most people alive today weren’t alive when Ted Kennedy unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 1980, let alone when RFK Jr.’s father and uncle were assassinated in, respectively, 1968 and 1963. Young people know the name, but they don’t feel the vibe.
The second factor is the issues. Most third-party campaigns are either “single-issue” or, more generally, “ideological.” They’re about the candidates’ platforms and policy positions. When voters go for a Libertarian, Green or Constitution party candidate, it’s because they care deeply about an issue or set of issues that the “major” parties either get “wrong” or ignore completely.
Kennedy’s policy suite was a dog’s breakfast of contradictions (antiwar on Ukraine, “pro-Israel” on Gaza), flip-flops (“pro-choice” early in the race, then supporting a federal ban at the 2023 Iowa State Fair; calling for prosecution of “climate deniers” back when, then supporting free speech as a candidate) and too-niche obsessions (he’s more generally “antivaccine” than the significant voter bloc outraged by COVID-19 mandates).
As Stewart Lawrence puts it at CounterPunch, he’s “a man with no enduring allegiance to an ideology, a party or even a platform who is willing to sell his campaign and his support to the highest bidder — in exchange for his own personal and political advancement.”
He saw, and seized, his opportunity to sell out.
Supporters who thought he was the “real deal” got conned.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
