For the first time in my life, I’m volunteering for a presidential campaign, trying to get RFK, Jr. in the White House. I’m learning not only about how to get a candidate on the ballot in various states, but also about the attitudes of the general public at this moment in history. These insights may be useful to librarians.
In my home state of Arizona, we need to gather the number of signatures equal to 3% of the registered independent voters in the state. I have heard this is somewhere between 43,000-46,000 signatures, but we are aiming to gather more than 60,000 signatures because many will be thrown out. In Utah, the signature requirement is only 1,000 registered voters (thus RFK, Jr. is already on the ballot there). In Oregon, a nonaffiliated presidential candidate may obtain ballot access for the general election through nomination by an assembly of at least 1,000 electors gathered in one place for no longer than 12 hours. I’m with Oregon— have one long party and be done!
In some states such as California, RFK, Jr. is creating a new political party, We The People, in order to get on the ballot. Even then, 75,000 Californians will have to register for the party by June in order for We The People to qualify as a party in that state.
In talking to people while gathering signatures, I am finding that many, many young people are entirely disillusioned with the political system and say they are no longer voting. A few will say that if they did vote it would be for Kennedy, so they will sometimes sign the petition. Republicans and independents are more likely to stop and talk and are pretty knowledgeable about RFK, Jr.’s positions as well as his struggle over Secret Service protection. “Blue team” members are the most likely to give an immediate and hard “no” or “no way” (or yell at me that he’s a “kook”) and keep walking.
As RFK, Jr. has reported, Democrats are the group most likely to trust the mainstream media. As he said in a speech in Tucson last night, which had a line around the block of people waiting to get in, he is the least popular with Boomers. Kennedy joked that millennials need to tie their parents down and “force them to listen to Joe Rogan.” I know I am deep in NPR territory when I get a lot of “no way” responses to my petition.
Image: Joe Rogan.png/ Wikimedia Commons
Some people don’t yet even know RFK, Jr. is running, but of the people who are knowledgeable about his campaign, many are critical of his stance on Israel/ Palestine. I haven’t heard people reference other critiques, such as those voiced by Alison McDowell. I am guessing her analysis is too esoteric for most people, or perhaps they are just happy to hear that he has a plan when it comes to addressing our most pressing issues. I have heard the Psyop Cinema hosts criticize Kennedy for his more New Age as opposed to traditional bent when it comes to religion, but that bent is reflective of the American public.
When I’m out petitioning, I find it very difficult to suss out who may be a Kennedy supporter. It’s such a diverse group of people that it is almost impossible to predict who will be receptive to signing the petition. This impression was confirmed last night as I surveyed the line of people waiting to get in to hear Kennedy speak. Young and old, all races, all classes. I saw a few people I know personally— Libertarians, Bitcoiners, a pickleball player. The one thread they tend to have in common? The people who like Kennedy REALLY like him.
His comprehensive vaccine skepticism and his rigid pro-Israel myopia (Zionism being the "ideal type" of wokeness with all of its bafflingly simplistic hallmarks) are possibly deal breakers for me. He has all the militarism of the regular Democrats, sadly. He would be an improvement over the Democrats for being to the left of them on economic issues though.
I believe his stance on vaccines now is for more rigorous testing, which, after reading "Turtles All the Way Down," I support. He would also end pharma advertising in the media, which I also support-- only the U.S. and New Zealand allow direct advertising of pharmaceuticals.
I do wish he was at least advocating more vocally for peace regarding Israel/ Palestine, but I don't see the other candidates doing that either, and I feel like he is solid on a lot of other important issues, including librarian-type issues like free speech and surveillance. I do think he's good on economic issues as well.
We've seen the consequences of third-party candidacies often enough that I'm surprised that some people want to repeat the experiment. A third-party candidate cost Gore the election and gave us the war in Iraq. Third-party candidates cost Clinton the election in 2016 and gave us Trump. A third-party candidate this time around could give us Trump again. It's one thing to understand the mechanisms by which candidates may be put on the ballot in different states. It's another thing to fail to understand the consequences of a particular third-party candidate under our present political circumstances. 2024 will be about preventing a right-wing authoritarian from becoming president again, not about what a particular candidate's positions are on Israel or vaccines or any other single issue.
I've definitely heard from a lot of Biden supporters that this will put Trump in the White House, but in reality, Kennedy will pull votes from both Biden and Trump, so that could be a wash--https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4240625-rfk-jr-could-draw-votes-from-both-biden-and-trump-survey/.
I'm kinda with the young people on this one-- if it comes down to Biden and Trump again, I don't really care anymore. There's a lot I don't like about Trump, but he didn't start any new wars, so there is that.
Susan, I suggest reading both Timothy Snyder, a historian of Eastern Europe, and Anne Applebaum, another very knowledgeable historian and journalist who wrote an entire history on the Ukrainian famine caused by Stalin, for longer views on this war in Ukraine. I'm very sure that neither of them would say the origins are "mixed."
I don't know of any reputable foreign policy expert or scholar about that part of the world who'd cite NATO expansion as an inciting factor. Those who know Ukraine and Russian history best, and especially recent history, with Putin's drive to re-establish something that looks like a Russian empire, would (and have) ridiculed the notion of NATO expansion as an inciting factor. I think being careful about reliable experts in offering causal explanations actually matters--shouldn't it?
When you've had conversations with the "young people," are these conversations more than just about 'liking" a candidate, or disliking them for some reason, either Biden or Trump? Are you talking with them about their knowledge of policies attached to either of them? do they know about what RFK Jr's ideas are, for example, about economic or trade policies? Do you get a sense of their civic knowledge in general?
I'm asking because I'm aware of the polls that show lack of enthusiasm for both major party candidates, particularly among the 18-29 year-old cohort. I'm finding those interesting when roughly corresponding to other polls about lack of civic participation in that group, and even some polls suggesting that a sizable minority within that cohort don't care about living in a democracy any more. I think this is troubling, and am wondering what your thoughts are about these admitted generalizations based on polling data. And I'm especially interested if your experience in talking to people in that age group about their RFK enthusiasm, gives you evidence that they think a third-party candidate with his track record can somehow work with others to address a particularly fraught political and cultural environment solve some especially vexing problems in the country and face huge international crises as well? Is their enthusiasm for RFK--the ones who support him-- something we should listen to seriously?
I haven't had in-depth conversations with them other than they want to just exit the whole system. There may be economic reasons in there if they feel their opportunities are bleak-- that's my guess.
I have been thinking that I need to read a book, and/or I'd love to see a TV show based in an era where the American political parties were changing. I don't actually know much about how the Know Nothings came to, or then lost power, but I would love to go into a library and see a display of books on the history of America's parties. I have honestly found myself curious this last year.
What cost Gore the election was the fact that in Florida Jeb Bush contracted a new company, DBT, to scrub the voter roles ahead of the elections, *incorrectly* categorizing as felons -- and thus ineligible to vote -- tens of thousands of Black and Latino voters, who were statistically * much * more likely to have voted for Gore. When they showed up at the polls to vote they were told they were ineligible to vote -- even though they weren't. So in a state that Bush supposedly won by 537 votes, tens of thousands of Democrat votes were trashed ahead of time. Similar things happened in 2004 in multiple states such as Ohio. Investigative journalist Greg Palast was working for the BBC in 2000 and came over and got all the details by speaking to election workers and looking at county documents during the period between the election and when it was called. He gave all his sources to colleagues in conventional US news outlets who at first said they were going to report the story -- but then they didn't. I heard about this in 2002 on Democracy Now! Here are some sources that are still up on the internet: https://youtu.be/ClTxaY8Uy5U you can start at minute 1:26 -- "Florida: Purging Voters Like It’s 2000 Again"; and "2000 Election Theft in Florida - Part 1" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClTxaY8Uy5U . Also https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/florida-gop-takes-voter-suppression-to-a-brazen-new-extreme-184830/ : "Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters – a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore – were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. [Palast found that the number was greater.] African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state’s electorate but 41 percent of those purged." The Black Caucus protested, saying the 2000 election results were invalid, but no Senators would back them up (as needed to get it into official discussion). In 2004 when the same problem occurred they managed to get this crime entered into the Congressional Record -- they had held hearings in the intervening months and had tens of thousands of pages documenting all the voter disenfranchisement that had taken place. I watched the Congressional "debate" in real-time on CNN.
Hi Lauren: Yes, you're right: there's been a high level of what election chicanery and interference, which has happened in a variety of ways throughout American history. But even if we stipulate to everything you've said, at the end of the day--and regardless of what one side did to rig and gerrymander, third-party voting in what is structurally a two-party system has (along with the electoral college) put candidates that a majority of US voters didn't want into the presidency. Think of it this way: if suddenly hundreds of thousands of US citizens--distributed across the country in all states--couldn't vote on election day because they'd all been stricken with a virus and, on top of that disaster, tens of thousands voted for a third party, and the margin of third-party voters was sufficient (as it was in FL in 2000) to put one side over the top, we wouldn't say it was the virus' fault. We'd say, what's up with those third-party voters? We may have no control over some events at the moment of the election, but if the margin of third-party voters is big enough to change an election outcome, we may well wonder why so many people thought it was a good idea to roll those dice. S. Anderson has told us it's fine with her if either side comes out on top in this upcoming election. I don't agree. I do agree that we should campaign for election integrity. But let's not pretend that third-party voting doesn't matter as long as one side isn't playing fairly.
I keep seeing this statement that third-party candidates like RFK Jr., Cornel West, or a yet-to-be-named candidate supported by the “No Labels” movement will bring us a Trump re-election. If that happens, the biggest blame needs to be put specifically on the Democratic Party and Joe Biden himself, for not acknowledging how weak of a candidate he truly is. The majority of Americans don't like him.
The fact remains that the majority of voters in this country don’t want their option to be Trump vs Biden. Survey after survey has shown this to be true. Voters in 2024 want other options than these two people who, in their minds, have each proven themselves uniquely unqualified for election in 2024. If either of them wins re-election, it will be primarily because of the weakness of the other candidate. Trump has proven himself to be an authoritarian and the majority of voters reject that. Biden has shown enough signs of cognitive decline that voters legitimately have concerns about re-electing him. Furthermore, Biden has governed completely differently than how he promised he would when he ran for president in 2020. These two reasons are the main reasons the majority of voters also reject Biden.
People who state that a third-party candidate gives us Trump again either don't understand or don't believe that, to many voters, Biden is also unacceptable. Should Biden lose, Democrats can blame themselves for choosing to not challenge a historically-weak incumbent president.
And RFK, Jr. did initially try to run as a Democrat but was rejected by the party. At this point I am probably more concerned about the authoritarian overreaction on the left to another Trump presidency, particularly since most of the tech sector now resides on the "left."
The ballot access issue has been a real learning curve for me. I forgot to mention that (I think) Kennedy has to pick a VP before petitioning can begin in some states.
There is also a super PAC paying volunteers to collect signatures, but the volunteer campaign has to remain entirely separate from that effort, and I know very little about it.
Oh thank you I had missed this one because I can only listen to the previews and I'm unsure whether those are still free-- I can't get some of the recent ones to play.
I'm not sure I know quite how to respond to this piece, except to say I want to follow the HxA precept of "make your way with evidence."
One prime piece of evidence about the RFK Jr. candidacy and its likely impact is described by one of the commentators already, about the history of third-party candidates in the U.S. We seem to be unable to learn (and why is that?) about the history of third-party candidates and the results they often produce that have real consequences for millions of people. In my view, the RFK Jr. candidacy is another example of the well-known saying, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." The likelihood of another Trump presidency because of this third party candidacy (and some others) will grow, and in my opinion won't redound to the common good of this country and likely others. Presidential elections in the U.S. are often built up as the most consequential ones ever, every four years, but this one has enough potential impact that it isn't an exaggeration to say it's hugely consequential. I'm very attuned to the forms of leftwing authoritarianism at work in our institutions, but I'm just as attuned to the forms of rightwing authoritarianism attached to a figure like Trump.
Second, as for RFK Jr and his history of conspiracism--and well-documented and known at this point, there's abundant evidence from scientists and experts, and it isn't always only about vaccines and other issues where he makes statements that show he's not informed, not well-grounded, outside of his area of knowledge and expertise. He did super work on environmental issues and deserves credit for that advocacy, but not for other areas of scientific expertise where, yes, there's some consensus that exists within epidemiology--and consensus surely matters even if it's not infallible and is subject to revision.
Third, to my mind there's more evidence, testimonial evidence, that comes from his own family, who have issued more than one statement about his candidacy, expressing chagrin and great embarrassment about it, deploring it, condemning some of his inflammatory statements, and urging Americans not to vote for him. Family members undoubtedly have their own biases and blind spots, and it's obvious that they care for RFK Jr, but these are responsible members of his family who are greatly concerned about his more extreme views and the real motivation for his running (a cousin, JFK's grandson, describes it as a "vanity project", full of "celebrity conspiracy theories" and a lot of Camelot legacy). Surely some evidence from those who know him well, and his mental habits and motivations, should count for something.
I'm sure there are people who really REALLY like RFK Jr. but there are others, from his own family who are embarrassed by his candidacy, and from a range of others in public life, who are greatly concerned about his long-term character traits and his long-held views, that all make him *not* a reliable individual who could lead this country, and as a third party candidate his impact will only create conditions for more division and not the healing and depolarization--or at least some kind of "normal politics", if we can remember that those are like--that we'd aspire to, in order to return to civic sanity.
For anyone who's interested, here's an article from Forbes summarizing RFK Jr's family reactions to, and statements about, his candidacy (see my previous comment, below). There are many other such articles and reports out there in the world, in a variety of publications.
An amusing coda to this article advocating for RFK Jr: I imagine some have heard by now, amidst all of the cultural hype and hysteria about yesterday's Super Bowl, that the RFK Jr. campaign aired an ad using John Kennedy's template for an ad from 1960, and various of RFK's relatives have voiced their objections, of course, as they do to almost everything he champions or supposedly believes in. They don't like to see RFK Jr. using the Kennedy family legacy in that way. He's obviously trying to live off "the legacy", rather than forging the bold new visionary model of leadership that some think he's capable of . . . .. almost certainly not the case. And he's already apologized for offending other members of the family.
That said I personally don't have an issue with him referring to his family's legacy, which he often does (although others may not like the idea of him "riding on their coattails"), as it seems like he is trying to accomplish some similar objectives. As with the general public, various Kennedy family members don't support his ideas.
His comprehensive vaccine skepticism and his rigid pro-Israel myopia (Zionism being the "ideal type" of wokeness with all of its bafflingly simplistic hallmarks) are possibly deal breakers for me. He has all the militarism of the regular Democrats, sadly. He would be an improvement over the Democrats for being to the left of them on economic issues though.
I believe his stance on vaccines now is for more rigorous testing, which, after reading "Turtles All the Way Down," I support. He would also end pharma advertising in the media, which I also support-- only the U.S. and New Zealand allow direct advertising of pharmaceuticals.
I do wish he was at least advocating more vocally for peace regarding Israel/ Palestine, but I don't see the other candidates doing that either, and I feel like he is solid on a lot of other important issues, including librarian-type issues like free speech and surveillance. I do think he's good on economic issues as well.
We've seen the consequences of third-party candidacies often enough that I'm surprised that some people want to repeat the experiment. A third-party candidate cost Gore the election and gave us the war in Iraq. Third-party candidates cost Clinton the election in 2016 and gave us Trump. A third-party candidate this time around could give us Trump again. It's one thing to understand the mechanisms by which candidates may be put on the ballot in different states. It's another thing to fail to understand the consequences of a particular third-party candidate under our present political circumstances. 2024 will be about preventing a right-wing authoritarian from becoming president again, not about what a particular candidate's positions are on Israel or vaccines or any other single issue.
I've definitely heard from a lot of Biden supporters that this will put Trump in the White House, but in reality, Kennedy will pull votes from both Biden and Trump, so that could be a wash--https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4240625-rfk-jr-could-draw-votes-from-both-biden-and-trump-survey/.
I'm kinda with the young people on this one-- if it comes down to Biden and Trump again, I don't really care anymore. There's a lot I don't like about Trump, but he didn't start any new wars, so there is that.
S.: Thanks. Your response provides very useful information about your political perspective.
You think Biden started the war in Ukraine or the war in Israel?
We've sent a lot of money to Ukraine. And I'm unsure of the true origins of the conflict-- probably mixed.
Susan, I suggest reading both Timothy Snyder, a historian of Eastern Europe, and Anne Applebaum, another very knowledgeable historian and journalist who wrote an entire history on the Ukrainian famine caused by Stalin, for longer views on this war in Ukraine. I'm very sure that neither of them would say the origins are "mixed."
I think there may be some NATO expansion in the mix of inciting factors, but I have listened to Applebaum before and will look into Snyder.
I don't know of any reputable foreign policy expert or scholar about that part of the world who'd cite NATO expansion as an inciting factor. Those who know Ukraine and Russian history best, and especially recent history, with Putin's drive to re-establish something that looks like a Russian empire, would (and have) ridiculed the notion of NATO expansion as an inciting factor. I think being careful about reliable experts in offering causal explanations actually matters--shouldn't it?
Susan,
When you've had conversations with the "young people," are these conversations more than just about 'liking" a candidate, or disliking them for some reason, either Biden or Trump? Are you talking with them about their knowledge of policies attached to either of them? do they know about what RFK Jr's ideas are, for example, about economic or trade policies? Do you get a sense of their civic knowledge in general?
I'm asking because I'm aware of the polls that show lack of enthusiasm for both major party candidates, particularly among the 18-29 year-old cohort. I'm finding those interesting when roughly corresponding to other polls about lack of civic participation in that group, and even some polls suggesting that a sizable minority within that cohort don't care about living in a democracy any more. I think this is troubling, and am wondering what your thoughts are about these admitted generalizations based on polling data. And I'm especially interested if your experience in talking to people in that age group about their RFK enthusiasm, gives you evidence that they think a third-party candidate with his track record can somehow work with others to address a particularly fraught political and cultural environment solve some especially vexing problems in the country and face huge international crises as well? Is their enthusiasm for RFK--the ones who support him-- something we should listen to seriously?
I haven't had in-depth conversations with them other than they want to just exit the whole system. There may be economic reasons in there if they feel their opportunities are bleak-- that's my guess.
Oh and also a significant number seem to be disillusioned former Bernie supporters.
I have been thinking that I need to read a book, and/or I'd love to see a TV show based in an era where the American political parties were changing. I don't actually know much about how the Know Nothings came to, or then lost power, but I would love to go into a library and see a display of books on the history of America's parties. I have honestly found myself curious this last year.
That does sound like a good display! Admittedly I don't know much history there either.
What cost Gore the election was the fact that in Florida Jeb Bush contracted a new company, DBT, to scrub the voter roles ahead of the elections, *incorrectly* categorizing as felons -- and thus ineligible to vote -- tens of thousands of Black and Latino voters, who were statistically * much * more likely to have voted for Gore. When they showed up at the polls to vote they were told they were ineligible to vote -- even though they weren't. So in a state that Bush supposedly won by 537 votes, tens of thousands of Democrat votes were trashed ahead of time. Similar things happened in 2004 in multiple states such as Ohio. Investigative journalist Greg Palast was working for the BBC in 2000 and came over and got all the details by speaking to election workers and looking at county documents during the period between the election and when it was called. He gave all his sources to colleagues in conventional US news outlets who at first said they were going to report the story -- but then they didn't. I heard about this in 2002 on Democracy Now! Here are some sources that are still up on the internet: https://youtu.be/ClTxaY8Uy5U you can start at minute 1:26 -- "Florida: Purging Voters Like It’s 2000 Again"; and "2000 Election Theft in Florida - Part 1" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClTxaY8Uy5U . Also https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/florida-gop-takes-voter-suppression-to-a-brazen-new-extreme-184830/ : "Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters – a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore – were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. [Palast found that the number was greater.] African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state’s electorate but 41 percent of those purged." The Black Caucus protested, saying the 2000 election results were invalid, but no Senators would back them up (as needed to get it into official discussion). In 2004 when the same problem occurred they managed to get this crime entered into the Congressional Record -- they had held hearings in the intervening months and had tens of thousands of pages documenting all the voter disenfranchisement that had taken place. I watched the Congressional "debate" in real-time on CNN.
Hi Lauren: Yes, you're right: there's been a high level of what election chicanery and interference, which has happened in a variety of ways throughout American history. But even if we stipulate to everything you've said, at the end of the day--and regardless of what one side did to rig and gerrymander, third-party voting in what is structurally a two-party system has (along with the electoral college) put candidates that a majority of US voters didn't want into the presidency. Think of it this way: if suddenly hundreds of thousands of US citizens--distributed across the country in all states--couldn't vote on election day because they'd all been stricken with a virus and, on top of that disaster, tens of thousands voted for a third party, and the margin of third-party voters was sufficient (as it was in FL in 2000) to put one side over the top, we wouldn't say it was the virus' fault. We'd say, what's up with those third-party voters? We may have no control over some events at the moment of the election, but if the margin of third-party voters is big enough to change an election outcome, we may well wonder why so many people thought it was a good idea to roll those dice. S. Anderson has told us it's fine with her if either side comes out on top in this upcoming election. I don't agree. I do agree that we should campaign for election integrity. But let's not pretend that third-party voting doesn't matter as long as one side isn't playing fairly.
I keep seeing this statement that third-party candidates like RFK Jr., Cornel West, or a yet-to-be-named candidate supported by the “No Labels” movement will bring us a Trump re-election. If that happens, the biggest blame needs to be put specifically on the Democratic Party and Joe Biden himself, for not acknowledging how weak of a candidate he truly is. The majority of Americans don't like him.
The fact remains that the majority of voters in this country don’t want their option to be Trump vs Biden. Survey after survey has shown this to be true. Voters in 2024 want other options than these two people who, in their minds, have each proven themselves uniquely unqualified for election in 2024. If either of them wins re-election, it will be primarily because of the weakness of the other candidate. Trump has proven himself to be an authoritarian and the majority of voters reject that. Biden has shown enough signs of cognitive decline that voters legitimately have concerns about re-electing him. Furthermore, Biden has governed completely differently than how he promised he would when he ran for president in 2020. These two reasons are the main reasons the majority of voters also reject Biden.
People who state that a third-party candidate gives us Trump again either don't understand or don't believe that, to many voters, Biden is also unacceptable. Should Biden lose, Democrats can blame themselves for choosing to not challenge a historically-weak incumbent president.
And RFK, Jr. did initially try to run as a Democrat but was rejected by the party. At this point I am probably more concerned about the authoritarian overreaction on the left to another Trump presidency, particularly since most of the tech sector now resides on the "left."
Something to consider. https://twitter.com/KarenLorre/status/1755681412035060062
I am donating monthly to the RFK campaign. I may not agree on everything, but he deserves to be heard.
Taibbi did a great America This Week podcast on how difficult we've made ballot access.
The ballot access issue has been a real learning curve for me. I forgot to mention that (I think) Kennedy has to pick a VP before petitioning can begin in some states.
There is also a super PAC paying volunteers to collect signatures, but the volunteer campaign has to remain entirely separate from that effort, and I know very little about it.
This link might work--they are discussing how "No Labels" is trying to get on ballot and then go on to the intricacies.
Followed by a short discussion of "The Lottery.".
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-episode-7f0?r=z28y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Oh thank you I had missed this one because I can only listen to the previews and I'm unsure whether those are still free-- I can't get some of the recent ones to play.
I'm not sure I know quite how to respond to this piece, except to say I want to follow the HxA precept of "make your way with evidence."
One prime piece of evidence about the RFK Jr. candidacy and its likely impact is described by one of the commentators already, about the history of third-party candidates in the U.S. We seem to be unable to learn (and why is that?) about the history of third-party candidates and the results they often produce that have real consequences for millions of people. In my view, the RFK Jr. candidacy is another example of the well-known saying, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." The likelihood of another Trump presidency because of this third party candidacy (and some others) will grow, and in my opinion won't redound to the common good of this country and likely others. Presidential elections in the U.S. are often built up as the most consequential ones ever, every four years, but this one has enough potential impact that it isn't an exaggeration to say it's hugely consequential. I'm very attuned to the forms of leftwing authoritarianism at work in our institutions, but I'm just as attuned to the forms of rightwing authoritarianism attached to a figure like Trump.
Second, as for RFK Jr and his history of conspiracism--and well-documented and known at this point, there's abundant evidence from scientists and experts, and it isn't always only about vaccines and other issues where he makes statements that show he's not informed, not well-grounded, outside of his area of knowledge and expertise. He did super work on environmental issues and deserves credit for that advocacy, but not for other areas of scientific expertise where, yes, there's some consensus that exists within epidemiology--and consensus surely matters even if it's not infallible and is subject to revision.
Third, to my mind there's more evidence, testimonial evidence, that comes from his own family, who have issued more than one statement about his candidacy, expressing chagrin and great embarrassment about it, deploring it, condemning some of his inflammatory statements, and urging Americans not to vote for him. Family members undoubtedly have their own biases and blind spots, and it's obvious that they care for RFK Jr, but these are responsible members of his family who are greatly concerned about his more extreme views and the real motivation for his running (a cousin, JFK's grandson, describes it as a "vanity project", full of "celebrity conspiracy theories" and a lot of Camelot legacy). Surely some evidence from those who know him well, and his mental habits and motivations, should count for something.
I'm sure there are people who really REALLY like RFK Jr. but there are others, from his own family who are embarrassed by his candidacy, and from a range of others in public life, who are greatly concerned about his long-term character traits and his long-held views, that all make him *not* a reliable individual who could lead this country, and as a third party candidate his impact will only create conditions for more division and not the healing and depolarization--or at least some kind of "normal politics", if we can remember that those are like--that we'd aspire to, in order to return to civic sanity.
For anyone who's interested, here's an article from Forbes summarizing RFK Jr's family reactions to, and statements about, his candidacy (see my previous comment, below). There are many other such articles and reports out there in the world, in a variety of publications.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/10/09/rfk-jrs-family-denounces-his-dangerous-independent-presidential-bid-just-minutes-after-campaign-launch/?sh=218eb5e469fb
An amusing coda to this article advocating for RFK Jr: I imagine some have heard by now, amidst all of the cultural hype and hysteria about yesterday's Super Bowl, that the RFK Jr. campaign aired an ad using John Kennedy's template for an ad from 1960, and various of RFK's relatives have voiced their objections, of course, as they do to almost everything he champions or supposedly believes in. They don't like to see RFK Jr. using the Kennedy family legacy in that way. He's obviously trying to live off "the legacy", rather than forging the bold new visionary model of leadership that some think he's capable of . . . .. almost certainly not the case. And he's already apologized for offending other members of the family.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/02/12/robert-kennedy-jr-apologizes-to-family-after-super-bowl-ad-copies-uncle-jfks-famous-campaign/?sh=64e565e45bdd
I missed this one because I don't watch the Super Bowl but it appears that it was a Super PAC ad: https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1756900265368723562
That said I personally don't have an issue with him referring to his family's legacy, which he often does (although others may not like the idea of him "riding on their coattails"), as it seems like he is trying to accomplish some similar objectives. As with the general public, various Kennedy family members don't support his ideas.