Bobby Unbound

Can he win as an independent?

Standing on the hallowed ground of the founding fathers—who, he said, risked their necks for freedom—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared his own independence today. From the Democratic Party of his famous family members. From all political parties, as he now runs for the White House as an independent.

Can he win? That’s often what he’s asked on the campaign trail these days. But in his rousing speech today on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, he turned back the question on his large, enthusiastic audience: “Will our movement win?”

Democracy is not a gift from those above, Kennedy reminded the crowd. “It happens when you decide to exercise your power.”

There have been a number of independent or third-party challenges to the Democratic-Republican lock on the presidency in the last 100 years or so. They all lost, with Ross Perot coming the closest in 1992 when he won nearly a fifth of the popular vote. But his campaign is different, Kennedy vowed. “This time the independent is going to win.”

Kennedy’s decision to abandon the party of his ancestors was not arrived at “lightly,” he said. But the Democratic establishment gave him little choice, with the Democratic National Committee rigging the primary system so brazenly in favor of President Joe Biden.

But RFK Jr. clearly sees a path less traveled to the White House in 2024. As he told his listeners today, the political system is broken. A majority of voters reject a Biden-Trump replay and want a different choice. The Democratic Party and Republican Party have become so hollowed out, Kennedy said, that politicians from both sides whisper to him they no longer believe in their empty rhetoric and wish they could support him.

With the Democrats backing endless wars and a surveillance state and Republicans decrying censorship and demanding freedom, the old categories of left and right are losing their meaning. Big oil funds the Republicans, Kennedy told the crowd, while big tech finances the Democrats and military contractors make sure to give money to both parties. This corruption is dooming us all, he said. Washington’s “uniparty is leading us over a cliff.”

Kennedy sees “anger and despair” as he crisscrosses the country. America has become a “powder keg.” That’s the dark reality, But he believes he can turn the “toxicity, pettiness, and dishonesty” that divide us into a winning populist movement for deep change. Can he? Can we?

There is a historic realignment going on in the country, with most voters now identifying as independent. If anybody can electrify this widespread discontent, it’s a candidate with Kennedy’s vision and speaking power—and, yes, his family brand name.

Like Kennedy, Donald Trump—during his victorious 2016 presidential campaign—withstood daily assaults from the corporate media. But unlike the phony populist and shameless narcissist who presided over the country for four years, RFK Jr. pointed out, he has fought Washington’s compromised regulatory agencies his entire professional life and is genuinely dedicated to people power.

Is Kennedy’s savvy leadership and the populist upsurge that he’s mobilizing enough to unseat the power elite?

Both Biden and Trump see RFK Jr. as a growing threat. “And they’re both right,” Kennedy quipped in Philadelphia. “My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”

Worried Democratic donors were convened on Zoom last week by Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Biden supporter, to discuss how the party’s wealthy sponsors can stop challenges like the Kennedy campaign. “People are very focused on this threat,” corporate activist Matt Bennett, who led the Zoom call with Hoffman, told Politico. Kennedy’s Democratic Party opponents are strategizing how to keep his name off state ballots and how to keep spreading disinformation about him.

Trump allies have also admitted Kennedy makes them “anxious,” with one Trump advisor telling Semafor, “We’re gonna be dropping napalm after napalm on his head reminding the public of his very liberal views, dating back to 2012. We have a lot of stuff on him.”

Kennedy believes that this poisonous partisanship has run its course. He believes that America is searching for a leader who can bring us together, is free of corporate constraints, is an experienced Washington antagonist, and is willing to embrace ideas from anywhere on the political spectrum if they make sense.

The media pundits insist that Kennedy is a “long shot,” he told the Philadelphia audience. “But it’s inside the Beltway myopia that thinks we don’t have a chance. Our campaign has ignited a movement to revive democracy that has been smoldering for years.”

“There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear,” Buffalo Springfield sang in the 1960s.

Like 1968, another Kennedy insurgency is roiling American politics. This Bobby Kennedy thinks he can go all the way. Maybe he’s right.