The Patriot Post® · It's (Third) Party Time

It’s a sign of the times that the American people’s appetite for a third-party presidential candidacy has reached record levels.

Indeed, as Gallup reports: “Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do ‘such a poor job’ of representing the American people that ‘a third major party is needed.’ This represents a seven-percentage-point increase from a year ago and is the highest since Gallup first asked the question in 2003. However, the current measure is not meaningfully different from the prior highs of 61% in 2017 and 62% in 2021, shortly after the January 2021 Capitol Hill riots.”

Those clamoring for a viable third-party candidate got their wish yesterday, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his independent run for the presidency. “I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate,” he told a crowd in Philadelphia amid chants of “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.”

“That’s not all,” Kennedy continued. “I’m here to join you in making a new declaration of independence for our entire nation. We declare independence from the corporations that have hijacked our government. We declare independence from Wall Street, from Big Tech, from Big Pharma, from Big Ag, and the military contractors and their lobbyists.”

It’s easy to see the appeal in that rhetoric, and Kennedy certainly has his supporters despite adhering to some wacky positions — from Wi-Fi causing “leaky brain,” to antidepressants causing school shootings, to routine vaccines causing autism, to chemicals in the water supply causing transgenderism. Still, he won’t have a lot of supporters at this year’s Kennedy family Thanksgiving gathering.

“Bobby might share the same name as our father,” said four of his siblings in a joint statement, “but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”

This last part seems misplaced, to say the least. Can anyone imagine an event more “perilous for our country” than another four years of Joe Biden?

The Gallup poll also showed that 58% of Republicans support a third U.S. political party, which is up from 45% a year ago. That’s a significant bump, but we suspect it’s due in large part to a sense that the potential third-party candidates are all likely to cut into the Democrats’ vote total more than the Republican total. RFK Jr., for example, is a Democrat with a famous Democrat surname. Some analysts point to polling that shows him with a higher favorability number among Republicans than among Democrats, but this could well be because Republicans see him as a spoiler for the Democrat candidate and are thus eager to have him jump into the race. In any case, it’s hard for us to imagine a voter who’s inclined to vote for Trump switching to Kennedy. Why? Because voters know what’s at stake, they know that Kennedy can’t win, and they thus know that a vote for him is a vote thrown away.

To this point, here’s a poll supporting our belief that Kennedy’s candidacy is likelier to help Donald Trump than to hurt him.

Regardless, the Republican National Committee isn’t taking any chances with Kennedy. It’s distributing a document titled “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.” Just for fun, here are the top 10: “He voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. He is a self-described ‘Kennedy Democrat.’ He has admitted his candidacy will ‘take more votes’ from the Republican candidate than Biden. He is a prolific donor to Democrat candidates dating back to 1985, including to Barack Obama’s 2007 campaign. He enthusiastically endorsed Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate, 2007 presidential, and 2016 presidential campaigns. He calls himself a ‘huge admirer’ of socialist Bernie Sanders. He praised rabid antisemite Louis Farrakhan as a ‘truly great partner.’ He supports divisive and unconstitutional affirmative action policies in higher education. He called the NRA a ‘terror group.’ He compared hog farmers to Osama bin Laden’s international terror network.”

Maybe it’s just us, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of crossover appeal here for GOP voters. Hard-left Democrats, though, should rightly see plenty of intersectionality between themselves and RFK Jr.

While Kennedy’s impact on the electorate is perhaps less than clear, the impact of one other third-party candidate is much easier to assess. That candidate, Cornel West, is a black man, an avowed socialist, and a Harvard professor, and he recently switched his affiliation as a Green Party presidential candidate to launch his own independent bid.

“People are hungry for change,” said West, who announced his independent run last week. Then he tapped into the dissatisfaction with the electorate: “They want good policies over partisan politics. We need to break the grip of the duopoly and give power to the people.”

West is unlikely to siphon off even a single GOP voter, but he’ll certainly pull black votes away from Biden. And the same is likely to be true if West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin or former Maryland RINO Governor Larry Hogan announces a presidential bid under the “No Labels” banner.

In sum, those who want to see Donald Trump returned or any other Republican sent to the White House should be encouraged by the emergence of third-party candidates in the current presidential cycle.