AP Photo/Antonio Calanni

When Mediaite reported on Friday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-shot candidate challenging President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination, is planning to run as an independent, a debate erupted: will the defection prove more damaging to the Republican frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, than to the incumbent?

Since launching his campaign, Kennedy has been eagerly promoted by pro-Trump voices, from Steve Bannon to hosts at Fox News, who see his election bid as a useful cudgel against Biden. For those voices, news of his independent run was cause for celebration.

“Kennedy’s independent run will devastate Biden’s shot at re-election,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said on his prime time show Friday.

Yet despite the simplicity of the argument that a Democrat running as an independent will hurt Biden in 2024, Kennedy is no ordinary Democrat. His views on issues like Covid and Ukraine, expressed at length in countless appearances on Fox News and right-wing podcasts, align neatly with the beliefs of the current Republican Party.

That fact has led Trump supporters in the media to fret that he could pose a greater threat to the former president than Biden. As a Kennedy campaign insider put it to Mediaite: “MAGA folks are upset over this news.”

Indeed, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk argued on his podcast last week that an independent Kennedy run is so damaging for Trump that it must be the result of a media “plot” to encourage Kennedy to defect from the Democratic Party.

Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump activist, agreed with Kirk about Kennedy’s effect on the race.

“RFK cant win but he can deny Trump the White House and hand it to Dems,” Posobiec wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“RFK will operate like Ross Perot,” Posobiec explained in an appearance on Real America’s Voice. “Where he’s picking up that anti-establishment vote, people who may have considered Trump, but if they’re given an alternative … they’ll go for RFK.” (We should note: the credibility of Posobiec’s claims are always worth viewing skeptically: he once allegedly brought a “Rape Melania” sign to a Trump rally as a stunt.)

The polling we have so far offers some insight the state of the race going forward. Surveys show Republicans have a far more favorable view of Kennedy than Democrats. The latest polling from Quinnipiac found Kennedy scoring 49 percent approval and 19 percent disapproval among Republicans. Among Democrats, he fared far worse: 14 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval. When another survey asked New Hampshire Democrats to describe Kennedy in one word, the top responses were “crazy,” “dangerous,” “insane,” “conspiracy,” and “unknown.”

Put simply: Democrats don’t like Kennedy; Republicans do.

As data guru Nate Silver noted on Twitter, the available numbers indicate a Kennedy third party run is trouble for Trump. “Not being remotely sarcastic when I say this is good news for Biden,” Silver said.

There hasn’t been much new polling since the news broke on Friday. Politico reported on an internal poll conducted by a super PAC supporting Kennedy, which found an independent run by the political scion would take more votes from Trump than from Biden. On the other hand, when reached for comment for this story, the Trump campaign pointed to a poll from Echelon Insights finding Kennedy’s independent run would increase Trump’s polling margin over Biden by a single point.

Kennedy himself seems to understand that his constituency of supporters has more overlap with Trump’s than Biden’s. In an appearance on a podcast last week, before news of his independent run broke, Kennedy said a third-party bid would not help the Trump campaign.

“I take more votes from President Trump than I do from President Biden,” he said.

The Kennedy campaign insider who spoke with Mediaite agreed.

“This is going to fuck Trump,” they said. “Bobby’s values are much more in line with patriots. He’s against Big Pharma. He’s pro-Bitcoin. Decentralize so the government can’t control it.”

The insider also expressed confidence that Kennedy has a better shot at the presidency than others who have tried and failed to run as independents: “He comes from a Kennedy dynasty unlike other independents. He has a deep well of political connections. You cannot compare him to other independents.”

Whether Kennedy’s quixotic campaign spoils 2024 for the Democrats or the Republicans may not end up mattering, however, given hurdles independent candidates face in getting on the ballot.

One Republican operative dismissed Kennedy-mania altogether when reached by Mediaite, asking, “When is the last time an independent candidate qualified for all 50 state ballots?”

The answer is Ross Perot, and it wasn’t easy. During his independent bid in 1992, the New York Times described the uphill battle Perot faced in biblical terms. Against all odds, the billionaire from Texas succeeded — and his first third-party run is often credited, or blamed, with delivering Bill Clinton to the White House.

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