Polls are contradictory on whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign helped or hurt the major party candidates. It may take some time to fully understand the reality of the third party/RFK impact, especially after the results of the general elections are analyzed and counted. Kennedy, however, has no intention of waiting that long.
Kennedy, during a New York campaign event on Wednesday, announced the “no-spoiler pledge.” He proposed that Democrat President Joe Biden would agree to drop his candidacy if polls showed the 81-year-old incumbent was the true “spoiler” of the race and not the Independent Kennedy.
The Kennedy and Biden campaigns would jointly fund a poll of 50 states to be conducted by mid-October. The poll will need to survey over 30,000 voters. Anyone who is not in favor of former President Donald Trump as the GOP candidate must withdraw from the race.
Kennedy thinks he’s not the “spoiler”, and his chances of beating Trump in general elections are better than Biden, based upon polling by John Zogby, a firm that has worked both with the campaign and a Kennedy-aligned super PAC.
Kennedy and Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, his campaign manager, presented a scenario that demonstrated Kennedy’s ability to beat Trump even without Biden or any other Democratic Party candidate in the race.
Fox Kennedy spoke during the presentation.
Can there be a scenario where President Trump takes part in the election but doesn’t win? There is only one. This scenario involves President Biden admitting that he can’t win.
RFK Jr. said that he does not consider Trump a “spoiler,” stating:
If I remained in the race, and if the election was held today President Biden would win. The fact that President Trump can win means he is not a “spoiler”. I am happy to share this pledge with President Trump, as I think I can beat President Biden better than President Trump.
I should support people who vote for President Trump out of fear. In the end, I believe that we all want Americans to not feel compelled to vote because of fear in this election.
As I reported previously, a new Emerson College/ Hill Poll shows that Trump is ahead of Biden in seven swing states, including Arizona, Georgia Michigan, Nevada North Carolina Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
In Georgia, Nevada North Carolina Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, when third-party candidates such as RFK Jr. were included, the survey showed that more support was pulled away from Biden compared to Trump. RFK Jr. can pull support from both major parties in Arizona and Michigan.
In a statement, Matt Corridoni, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, referred to an HBO comedy when he called Kennedy a spoiler.
The fact that he is not serious about his campaign, as he demonstrated today with a VEEP-like performance, does not dispel this notion.
Fox Kennedy said it was fair to ask Biden to withdraw from the race because the Democrat National Committee had done the same to RFK Jr.
