Well, it seems conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decided to move on from the Democratic primary and instead announce that he's running for president as an independent. The topic was brought up towards the end of a panel segment on this Sunday's Media Buzz on Fox, with host Howard Kurtz asking his two guests, the National Review's Rich Lowry, and former Joe Walsh campaign manager Lucy Caldwell, what this means for the other candidates in the election.
KURTZ: Very briefly, I want to turn to the campaign. RFK Jr. Mediaite reporting that he's going to run as an independent even though his family, of course, has a hallowed Democratic history. Rich, does he potentially hurt Joe Biden or Donald Trump more?
LOWRY: You know, he might hurt Trump more, you know? Because, if the key element of this race, or one way to look at it is establishment versus anti-establishment, RFK is more anti-establishment than establishment. But, you know, we've been arguing about the definition of rebel. Usually the media likes rebels. Here's a rebel on like all sorts of stuff, and he is going to get negative coverage up and down because the fear will be that he hurts Joe Biden.
KURTZ: Right. Well, I mean, he was not really getting anywhere in the Democratic race, in part because the incumbent president has it locked up. But for him to suddenly switch horses, Lucy, I wonder whether Rich is right. I think he's popular with some Republicans, he's been on Fox a lot, but then there are all the crazy conspiracy theories. He's anti-vaxx.
CALDWELL: It's really hard to say what the introduction do of RFK Jr. into the race as an independent does. There are Republican donors who believe he hurts Biden, because, we know that from the ad spends they're funding, NIEs in favor of RFK Jr. against Biden.
Look, the reason RFK Jr. is getting coverage, is a couple of fold. One, he is named Kennedy, so he's getting coverage that he wouldn't otherwise get. And then there are some other things, like he's a crazy anti-vaxxer and spreading disinformation, and he's also, seems to be, have some other pretty problematic views like maybe is vaguely antisemitic.
So they all basically admitted he's nuts, and will hurt Trump and has Republicans propping him up, but then Caldwell just had to toss this bit of nastiness out there.
CALDWELL: So I will just say on the RFK Jr. point, shame on the Democrats for not keeping him in the primary, but who's to say?
Sorry Lucy Caldwell, but Democrats weren't the ones that propped this raving lunatic up in the first place. That would be Trump's buddies, and Fox "news" that has him on there constantly and loves him as long as he's bashing Biden and Democrats.
I'm not sure what Democrats were supposed to do to "keep him in the primary" since most Democrats didn't want his crazy ass in our primary in the first place.
Here's more from The Washington Post on RFK Jr.'s latest move: How the right’s elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could now backfire:
The American right’s efforts to elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were as transparent as they were cynical. The idea, as advanced by Stephen K. Bannon and the like, was clearly to try to embarrass President Biden in the Democratic primary. So they used Kennedy’s inflated early poll standing as an excuse to treat the primary challenge from a fringe figure as something real and threatening.
Fox News picked up the ball and ran with it, publishing many dozens of stories and featuring him regularly on-air. House Republicans even invited him to testify on Capitol Hill.
It hasn’t worked. And now, it’s looking as if the whole thing could backfire.
The latest indications are that Kennedy will end his Democratic primary challenge against Biden and instead run in the general election. Mediaite reported Friday that he will declare an independent bid on Oct. 9, and Kennedy is now teasing a major announcement on that date, while saying and doing the kinds of things that suggest Mediaite’s report is accurate.
As the article goes onto explain, there are plenty of reasons to believe Kennedy will do a lot more harm to Trump than Biden, that Republicans like Kennedy a whole lot more than Democrats do, and that gap has only widened since he announced his candidacy:
The latest polling from Quinnipiac University shows that Republicans like Kennedy by a 30-point margin, 48 percent favorable to 18 percent unfavorable.
Democrats, meanwhile, have developed an overwhelming distaste. The Quinnipiac poll shows just 14 percent have a favorable opinion of him, compared with 57 percent who have an unfavorable one.
