In July, Democrats pulled off what some, including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, have described as a palace coup of sorts, shaming President Joe Biden into dropping out of the presidential race after his disastrous June debate performance.
Installed in Biden’s place was Vice President Kamala Harris, who critics have not hesitated to point out “won” the nomination without a single presidential primary vote ever being cast directly for her.
Biden, on the other hand, went through the traditional primary process and secured the delegates needed to become the nominee in March.
Terrifying Democrats since his entry into the race has been Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the famed Kennedy political family. He announced his candidacy in April 2023, challenging Biden for the nomination before switching to an independent presidential candidacy in October 2023.
“The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil it for Trump,” Kennedy said at the time. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”
The Democratic Party, however, was the most fearful of his candidacy and set about trying to keep him off the ballot over fears that disaffected Democrats and independents would opt to vote for him instead, effectively making him a “spoiler” candidate who ultimately could help Trump.
Kennedy had been critical of both Trump and Biden and what he called the “uni party” system of government that only did things to benefit itself, “a two-headed monster that’s constantly bickering with itself as it leads us all over a cliff.”
But last Friday, Kennedy announced he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump in part due to disgust over the behind-the-scenes machinations from Democrats to suppress his candidacy.
“In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to destroying it,” Kennedy said.
As to how this will impact the race, polls have been mixed over the last year, with some showing Kennedy pulling votes from the Democrat ticket, others showing him pulling from Trump, and some indicative that he’d pull from both.
But in recent weeks there has been a shift in polling, with recent segments on CNN laying out how Kennedy’s exit has the potential to benefit Trump down the home stretch.
“Now, the latest swing state polls show Kennedy with 5% or 6% of the vote. And so, when you think about it overall, you may say ‘Well, that’s not a big deal,’” anchor Erin Burnett said on Friday.
“Actually, if that is the case in swing states, it is huge, it is everything. It is more than the margin between Harris and Trump in some of those same states,” she also noted.
In another segment, anti-Trump presidential historian Tim Naftali observed that Kennedy’s move last week was “significant because he was taking more votes from — potential votes — from Trump than he was from Vice President Harris.”
“But we don’t know how many people who said they would vote for him will actually turn up on Nov. 5,” he also pointed out, while stating that the battleground states were close and that a couple of thousand votes changing from one side to the other could be a game changer.
As it should be, ultimately it will be up to the voters to decide. But rest assured that the Democrats who thought they’d dodged disaster in getting Biden off the ticket aren’t feeling nearly as confident anymore.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
