“It’s huge!”
Former US President Donald Trump welcomed the endorsement he received on Friday from independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who announced his decision to withdraw from the race and support the populist’s candidacy from Phoenix, Arizona.
Expected for several days, the announcement thus makes him enter history as the first Kennedy to support a Republican. “This is a sad end to a sad story,” several members of the clan — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s siblings, Kathleen, Courtney, Kerry, Chris and Rory — summed up in a letter, speaking of “a betrayal of the values that are most dear to our father and our family.” They had rallied to Joe Biden earlier this year.
But the independent’s move in the new election campaign currently underway may not bring the gains hoped for to the Republican camp, which has been placed on the defensive by the spectacular rise of Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for the presidential election next November. The vice-president was celebrated with great fanfare this week at the party’s national convention in Chicago.
“Robert Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign was confusing from the start,” John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Institute for Public Policy at Southern Illinois University, noted in an interview. “Early in his campaign, he seemed to be competing with Donald Trump and Joe Biden by offering another option to disaffected Democrats. But with the emergence of Kamala Harris as a strong Democratic candidate, his appeal has become negligible, and his support for Trump should have little effect on the outcome of the Trump-Harris battle.”
A Siena College survey conducted on behalf of the New York Times Between June and July, when Joe Biden was still in the race, showed that 40% of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s electoral base came from the Trump camp, compared to 38% for the Biden camp.
While garnering 2% of voting intentions, according to a recent YouGov poll conducted for CBS, he is most appealing to independent voters, those with a Republican leaning. But nearly a third of Americans attracted by his candidacy do not seem ready to rally to one or the other of the major parties, specifies the opinion measurement of Siena College.
“We could see a slight shift toward Trump among voters who said they supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but it could be a very small number and not do much damage to Democrats, who are expanding their base among several groups, including young people,” said Alan Schroeder, a political communications specialist at Northeastern University in Boston, when contacted by The Duty. “I think when this is all over, Kennedy will be mostly just a footnote, not a determining factor in the 2024 presidential election.”
“Anti-establishment voters who rallied behind Kennedy might indeed consider voting for Trump, but many of his supporters dislike neither Republicans nor Democrats and might also rally behind another candidate,” such as Green Jill Stein or independent Cornel West, adds Columbia University political scientist Robert Shapiro. “Ultimately, removing Kennedy could give Trump a percentage point nationally, without his distribution [dans des États clés comme le Michigan, le Wisconsin, la Pennsylvanie ou l’Arizona] be very clear.”
A renowned environmental lawyer who has moved into the conspiracy world in recent years, Robert Kennedy Jr. was due to join Donald Trump on Friday evening at a partisan rally in Glendale, Arizona, to symbolically display the support he has just given him.
“By aligning with Trump, Robert Kennedy Jr. is mostly hoping to stay in the spotlight, perhaps for ego reasons,” says Alan Schroeder, while calling the independent’s entry into the race last year a “vanity bid” seeking to “exploit a family legacy.” “He’s never made a serious offer to voters. And now he may be hoping to get a job in Donald Trump’s administration if he’s reelected.”
On Friday, during his press conference, the black sheep of the Kennedy clan indicated that the Republican had offered him to “enlist in his government” on two occasions, in the days following the attempted assassination of the former president and in the last few days.
“Like Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “seems to need attention above all,” concludes Mr. Schroeder.
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund-
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