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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not an intimidating political opponent. Or at least not on the surface. Yes, he is a scion of Camelot named for his father, a patron saint of American liberalism. But beyond the Kennedy factor, everything about him screams amusing sideshow rather than serious contender.
His main contribution to public life over the last few decades has been as the country’s most prominent antivaxxer — a fringe role almost by definition. Many of his policy positions are a long way from mainstream opinion in his party. And his speaking engagements in recent years are as likely to have been at MAGA-friendly conservative organizations as at the sorts of places a Democrat with presidential aspirations tends to want to be seen.
In spite of these quirks, or perhaps because of them, Kennedy has so far outperformed Washington’s nonexistent expectations for his candidacy. He now quite consistently polls around 20 percent among Democrats asked about 2024. That may be forty points behind Biden, but a fifth of supporters is a sizable share of voters in a primary that the White House insists isn’t really happening.
Kennedy is fast becoming a bit of a headache for Biden. And it is his very obvious shortcomings that make this Camelot kook a problem. Why? Because to other Democrats watching, Kennedy’s candidacy communicates a clear message about the hunger for an alternative to Biden. It’s bad enough for the president that there’s someone registering 20 percent against Biden in a primary that was supposed to exist. It’s really bad that it’s this guy.
For Democrats, Kennedy’s unexpected strength is so eyebrow-raising because it plays on their pre-existing insecurities about whether Biden has what it takes to run and win again. His approval ratings are close to the lowest they’ve been during his presidency. Poll after poll shows that a majority of Democrats would rather he weren’t running again. In a crowded field, the survey that should alarm the White House the most was one conducted last month. As well as showing Biden losing to Donald Trump by six points, the ABC/Washington Post survey found that large majorities think Biden does not have the mental sharpness (63 percent) or the physical health (62 percent) needed to serve as president.
Those voters can see exactly what is in front of them: an eighty-year-old man in decline. When Biden tripped on stage earlier this month, Democrats inhaled nervously, glanced at their calendars and contemplated the year and a half to go until election day.
Given these very obvious shortcomings and the shakiness of support for Biden exposed by Kennedy’s quixotic run, a smooth, non-event of a primary that ends with Biden as the Democratic Party’s nomination for president hardly seems like a sure bet. For example, the pressure on Biden to debate Kennedy continues to grow. Biden’s campaign will keep saying no, opting for the perception of a stitch up as the lesser of two evils versus the risk of a humiliating debate performance.
Look past Kennedy, though, and the outlook only gets murkier for Biden.
Talk of a credible third-party presidential bid continues to grow. West Virginia senator Joe Manchin feels betrayed by Biden after being persuaded to vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that has ballooned in estimated cost since it became law, and is likely to lose his seat next year to Jim Justice, the state’s Republican governor. With nowhere to go and a score to settle, Manchin continues to flirt with a presidential bid. In an interview with Fox News earlier this month he said he is “not ruling anything in, not ruling anything out.” He added: “You better have Plan B, because if Plan A shows that we’re going to the far reaches of both sides, the far left and the far right, and that people don’t want to go to the far left and the far right, they want to be governed from the middle. I think there is, that you better have that Plan B available and ready to go.”
A serious third-party presidential bid from Manchin or someone else need not materialize to weaken Biden’s position. The threat of one gives Democrats who might want to move on from Biden leverage. And No Labels, the organization positioning to organize a third-party run looks to have upped its game this cycle, with high-profile backers and a lot of cash. Last month No Labels founding chairman and former senator Joe Lieberman refused to say whether his organization viewed Biden as a tolerable candidate or not. This week, Democrats and former Republicans opposed to Donald Trump met for nervous talks about the threat of a third-party bid. Exactly what was achieved by former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Lincoln Project strategists and other attendees at this #Resistance summit isn’t clear, but it certainly suggests that Biden’s camp is getting nervous.
Under pressure from the center, Biden now has a non-Democratic opponent on the left. The professor and activist Cornel West is, like Kennedy, an authentic eccentric. Formerly a prominent Bernie Sanders booster, West this month announced he is running as the People’s Party’s presidential candidate. He is also seeking the Green Party’s nomination “in the spirit of a broad United Front and coalition strategy.” West’s bid is another chance for Biden’s weaknesses to be exposed: a bump in the road that adds to Biden 2024’s underwhelming aura.
Biden hasn’t made things easy for himself. A ham-fisted effort to reorder the primary calendar has boomeranged badly and now risks serious embarrassment for the president. Biden and the DNC wanted to move South Carolina to the start of the primary calendar, but New Hampshire and Iowa have refused to budge. It looks increasingly likely that Biden will respond by not participating in the first two contests of primary season. In other words, Kennedy, or maybe someone else, will jump out to a strange early lead in a primary that was supposed to be a nonevent. The White House will spin these rogue votes as nonevents, but it adds to a volatile and unpredictable outlook.
There are some signs that mainstream, serious Democratic presidential hopefuls smell blood.
Gavin Newsom continues to act an awful lot like someone running for president. The California governor has spent more time out of his state, and has positioned himself as a culture-war crusader ready to offer the energetic leadership that some on the left wish they saw from the White House.
In an interview that aired Monday, Sean Hannity asked Newsom, “how many times does your phone ping a day with people saying you need to get in this race as they agree with me that he’s not up to the job?” Needless to say, the governor did not take the bait. But the question isn’t going anywhere. On Thursday, Ron DeSantis prodded Newsom: “Stop pussyfooting around. Are you going to throw your hat in the ring and challenge Joe? Are you going to get in and do it or are you just going to sit on the sidelines and chirp?” said the Florida governor of his California counterpart.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, another state-level executive with White House ambitions, has launched a new political action committee, Fight Like Hell. The PAC is ostensibly an effort to help candidates in races nationwide. The group will give Whitmer more national visibility and influence — and it’d sure come in handy were there to be a vacancy at the top of the ticket.
If Biden were to lose his grip on the 2024 Democratic nomination, it would happen — like Hemingway’s bankruptcy — two ways: gradually, then suddenly.
As is increasingly obvious, a waning Biden has very little room for maneuver. And it is not hard to imagine possible trigger events that could force either Biden to withdraw or a serious challenger to declare themselves a candidate. After all, the president is eighty and the first family faces multiple investigations for possible criminal conduct.
With every slip up, be it an actual fall on stage, another dire poll or something else, Biden’s reserves of political capital shrink. And when the time comes that needs that capital to survive, he may have nothing left.
