Mounting a primary challenge to an incumbent president is perhaps the most difficult task in American politics. It’s so difficult that no one has ever successfully done it in modern history. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is almost certainly not going to break that streak.
The environmental lawyer turned vocal anti-vaccine advocate has floundered in the polls since an initial bounce around his April announcement. The Kennedy campaign insists that there’s a way forward for his candidacy, but it’s unclear what that looks like as President Joe Biden’s lead in national polling has grown to over 50 points ahead of his challenger. However, if there is a playbook for primarying an incumbent president, Kennedy isn’t following it.
Bay Buchanan, the campaign manager for her brother Pat Buchanan’s 1992 primary against George H.W. Bush, told Vox that a candidate running against an incumbent president needed four things.
First, “some segment of that population has to feel they’re forgotten, that they are not represented, and the establishment candidate could care less. That makes them angry enough to take the step to vote against them.” The second is that there needs to be “a two-man race.” The third is that the candidate has to have “an issue or two that appeals. It’s got to be a populist. He’s got to reach out and grab the hearts of those who feel nobody speaks for them.”
At that point, once an insurgent has consolidated those voters as well as the small segment of the electorate who will be voting against an incumbent for temperamental reasons, it’s simply a matter of winning the expectations game. This means doing better than the polls and pundits predict in a key early state like New Hampshire.
Kennedy does not seem well positioned to do this at present: The most recent Emerson poll of the Granite State in early August showed Biden with a 53-point lead over him. However, it is not likely that Biden’s name will be on the ballot in the…
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