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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as anticipated for several days, has “suspended” his presidential bid with an endorsement of Donald Trump and a plan to withdraw his own name from swing-state ballots only, so as to boost Trump’s prospects of winning the Electoral College.
In April 2023 Kennedy began one of the most bizarre and troubled campaigns in presidential history by seeking the Democratic nomination. Gaining little to no traction in that endeavor, in October he dropped that bid in order to run as an independent. In March of this year, he chose billionaire Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, and she has subsequently been the campaign’s principal funder, pouring in roughly $19 million to date. Kennedy had already burned through most of the $20 million given to his super-PAC by far-right Trump megadonor Timothy Mellon, who subsequently pitched Kennedy an additional $5 million, for a total of $25 million.
Without a party endorsement, the 70-year-old Kennedy struggled to get the state ballot access he would need to compete nationally but insisted throughout the year that he was in the race to stay and was offering voters a desirable alternative to the two very old and flawed presumptive major-party nominees, Trump and Joe Biden.
At the outset, Kennedy was polling in double figures — peaking at over 20 percent — and seemed to be pulling significantly more support from Biden than from Trump, a matter of serious concern for the Democratic Party. There had even been some loose talk — promoted by MAGA operatives including Roger Stone and Mike Flynn, and recently revived by none other than running mate Shanahan — of a Trump/Kennedy “unity” ticket. Steve Bannon had for months reportedly encouraged Kennedy’s candidacy as a “useful chaos agent,” a report that Kennedy denied but that was bolstered by Mellon’s dual support of both Kennedy and Trump’s bids.
Kennedy, of course, had the heavyweight family legacy, a kind of automatic appeal to Democrats who had once venerated his father RFK and uncles JFK and Ted, as well as to younger voters for whom the name carried a more distant mystique.
A Slow-Sinking Lead Balloon
But as the year wore on and both his views and antics became better known, his overall support began dropping off and Democrats found little to admire in his positions or behaviors. His fervent embrace of a variety of extremist conspiracy theories, most prominently his radical anti-vax stance; his antisemitic and racist remarks; his anti-immigrant rhetoric; his all-over-the-lot statements on abortion; fresh accusations of sexual assault, to which he responded that he was “not a choir boy”; his brain worm and dead bear cub stunt; the Kennedy family’s strong opposition; the support of such as Joe Rogan; and his zig-zagging tack further and further right: All contributed to the erosion of enthusiasm for Kennedy among would-be Biden voters, and by July left him likely pulling more votes from Trump than from Biden — a reverse spoiler effect and hardly what Stone, Bannon, and Mellon had in mind.
He was already polling in single digits, and embraced mostly by MAGAs, when Biden dropped his candidacy and was replaced by his far younger and more energetic vice president, Kamala Harris. Trump cried foul, with zero legal basis for doing so, as he saw his lead disappear almost overnight and Harris’s momentum build; Kennedy, for his part, dropped under 4 percent — dismal, but enough to turn a tight election.
The panic in Trumpworld has been palpable and has only grown more intense as the Democrats pulled off a near flawless and broadly inspiring convention, going into the election’s bell lap with an acknowledged lead in both national and swing-state polls, unity, energy, and all-important momentum.
‘Lunatic’ Meet ‘Sociopath’
Meanwhile, first quiet and then louder efforts had been underway, led initially by Donald Trump Jr., to woo Kennedy and bring about today’s result. It remains unclear exactly what Kennedy has been promised by Trump but influence over health policy in a second Trump administration, perhaps even at the Cabinet level as head of Health and Human Services, has been mentioned by at least one highly placed go-between.
The courtship has been a tad awkward, given that Kennedy, amid other harsh criticisms, had called Trump “a terrible human being” and offered his opinion that the former president was “probably a sociopath” as recently as last month. Trump, for his part, had called Kennedy a “Radical Left Lunatic,” though, in a phone call leaked by Kennedy’s son, Trump bent over backwards to assure his quarry, with all the art-of-the-deal sincerity he could gin up, that he shared the whole schmear of Kennedy’s radical anti-vaxxer agenda.
Perhaps Kennedy was left unconvinced because 10 days ago it was reported that he sought a meeting with Harris to discuss a Cabinet position in her administration. I’m not sure why he thought that she would, even for a minute, give consideration to such an absurd proposal, which of course she didn’t. Perhaps it was just the due diligence of a bottom-feeder shopping himself to the highest bidder — leading to the “heart-wrenching decision” that Trump is “our best hope.”
But I think it shed light on the fundamental “qualities” that Kennedy and Trump have in common. They are both quintessentially unprincipled, entitled, lying, abusive, deeply troubled narcissists — transactional birds of a feather. Even more striking, they have both led shoddy lives.
There’s a great line in William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying, spoken by a carpenter: “You can’t get away from a shoddy job.” Not “with” — “from.” Shoddiness follows you around, comes to characterize your life and your approach to every situation in it. Getting away with it, blaming others, finding the easy way out, leaving your mess, your bankruptcy, your bear cub behind. Always. It has characterized virtually all of Trump’s life, certainly his current campaign. And it has characterized much of Kennedy’s life, and certainly his now-suspended campaign.
It is no real surprise, then, that these two shoddy beings found each other. It may or may not cost our nation dearly. That remains to be seen, but the mere possibility is pestilential.
A Fate Worse Than Camelot’s?
What is now finally decided is the matter of Kennedy’s character. Trump had no legacy to besmirch but RFK Jr. traded on his family’s brilliant, and only slightly tarnished, legacy and left it in ruins.
Perhaps most glaringly, a scion whose Irish forebears suffered the sting of anti-immigrant bigotry and ultimately took their places among the most welcoming of American leaders to subsequent arrivals on our shore, now gives his backing to the spigot of anti-immigrant bile and fear-mongering that is Donald Trump.
Kennedy’s family has been all but united in urging him to end his bid for the presidency. They’ve finally gotten their wish, with the ugliest and least intended of twists, and they have been swift to react. Regardless of its consequence, Kennedy’s act, timed as it was for maximum-momentum shifting impact, is one of profound betrayal — of his legacy and, if it proves fruitful, of our democracy.
