Welcome to the Democrats’ Nightmare: RFK Jr. Goes Third Party? – The American Spectator

If reports are accurate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., promising a major announcement in Philadelphia on October 9, will declare himself an independent and pursue a third-party run for the presidency. If he does, it will be the Democrats’ worst nightmare. It makes possible — not a guarantee, but very possible — a Donald Trump presidential win in November 2024.

Yes, yes, I know — conservatives are debating whether this would hurt Donald Trump as the Republican nominee more than Joe Biden as the Democrat nominee, pulling more votes from Trump than Biden. It would indeed pull some votes from Trump, but it has the potential to hurt Biden more.

I’ve stated repeatedly that Donald Trump’s political ceiling is 46 percent of the national vote. It was 46 percent in 2016, again in 2020, and is trending that way yet again (if not lower) in 2024. Even now in the RealClearPolitics composite average of polls, which has had Trump in front of Biden the last few weeks, Trump is at 45 percent. Donald Trump cannot get 50 percent of the vote in the United States of America, because too many people despise him. More hate him than like him.

For Trump to win the Electoral College, he probably needs his opponent at or under 48 percent. The only way that can happen is if a third-party candidate enters the race and pulls Biden under 48 percent. That third-party person needs to be a Democrat. RFK Jr. is a Democrat.

I’ll add an historical element here: A serious third-party candidate usually dooms the incumbent president, and often is drawn in because of the incompetency and unpopularity of the incumbent. That happened in 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt jumped into the race and torpedoed the Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, giving Americans the catastrophe of Woodrow Wilson. TR was a fool.

Speaking of fools, it happened again in 1992 when the country’s crazy uncle, H. Ross Perot, entered the race and did nothing but undermine President George H. W. Bush and elect Boy Clinton and his wife Bruno. If not for the cackling, babbling Perot, Americans would have never had to endure the Hillary Clinton horror show.

Thanks, Ross. And thanks to you Republicans who voted for him. You elected the Democrat that year. You gave us decades of the Clintons.

Why Go Third Party?

Which brings me to 2024, RFK Jr., Biden, and Trump.

Though I’ve been writing for a while that RFK Jr. pursuing a third-party run could have this effect, I was never sure that he would actually do it. Kennedy is a loyal Democrat. His family is downright Democratic Party royalty. Would he ever really go rogue and betray his party? I noted that he has a strong independent streak, as did his father, but would that be enough to break the blood-bond to the party?

Well, it looks perhaps so. And for that, irate liberal Democrats can thank themselves.

RFK Jr. and his team are very unhappy with how the dirty DNC has treated them. Above all, they’re incensed that dirty Joe and his administration has repeatedly refused them Secret Service protection (our founder R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. has been writing about this outrage for weeks).

That refusal is outrageous. Needless to say, this man’s famous father was shot and killed while pursuing the presidency. His famous uncle was shot and killed while serving as president. The man is a bit sensitive to the prospects of potential assassination.

“Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection,” RFK Jr. wrote in a tweet in July. “But not me.”

No, apparently not. Could you imagine the howls from liberal journalists if a President Donald Trump refused Secret Service protection to a man challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination? They would accuse Trump of wanting the man dead. But not in this case. Quite the contrary, some media menaces, like CNN.com, trotted out the predictable dubious “fact checks” about RFK Jr.’s “misleading viral claim.”

Yes, of course. Misleading. No bias there on your part at CNN — eh, guys?

A few weeks after CNN and its ilk sought to toss cold water on RFK Jr.’s concerns about, oh, being killed, an armed individual disguised as a police officer managed to sneak into an RFK Jr. rally. Chillingly, that rally happened to be in Los Angeles, California. That’s the place where RFK Jr.’s dad was murdered 55 years ago.

Did the liberal media have a collective cow at that moment, doing a rethink and urging the Biden folks to heed the Kennedy team’s security request? Well, what do you think? (READ MORE: The Kennedy Liberal Democrats Are Long Gone)

The silence was so deafening that it prompted Kennedy’s campaign to again demand Secret Service protection. Campaign manager Dennis Kucinich fired off an open letter to President Biden that he copied to the stinking media: “​​Although it is a well-known historical fact, apparently, in your case, it bears repeating: Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Mr. Kennedy’s father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while a presidential candidate.”

Did this lead the Biden folks to reconsider and provide protection? Nope. And that refusal led to more outrage, as well as some stark suspicions.

I’ve heard those suspicions. In Pittsburgh two weeks ago, I emceed an event for our Institute for Faith & Freedom at Grove City College. It was a lecture by Dr. Gene Kopelson, an M.D. who is also a presidential historian, with expertise on Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and most notably on the late RFK’s relationship and rivalry with Ronald Reagan, a subject on which Kopelson published an excellent book. Kopelson spoke movingly about how Governor Reagan and Nancy dashed to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles after the shooting of RFK that awful night of June 5, 1968 to express their concern and pay their respects.

At the start of the Q&A, the first question that came up was on the Biden refusal to give security protection to the late Kennedy’s son. The person asking the question seemed to wonder if perhaps the Biden administration wanted RFK Jr. to be dead. It was a shocking thought, not one that I’m endorsing (Biden is a sleazy man, but I don’t think he’s that sleazy), but surely one that many might well endorse. (READ MORE: Democrats Smear RFK Jr. as Anti-Semitic)

Those harboring such grave suspicions might well include RFK Jr. and his team. And perhaps to the point that they’ve said enough is enough, and now they’re willing to bolt the Democratic Party and take on sleazy Joe with a third-party challenge. One person told me yesterday, “this is RFK Jr.’s middle finger to Joe Biden.”

Maybe so. And if this gesture is a symbol of RFK Jr.’s defiance, just wait and see the ultimate symbol, perhaps, in November 2024.