President Joe Biden is all but assured to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024 as the incumbent. But one of his Democratic challengers, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is gaining a surprising amount of traction for someone who the national party views as a fringe candidate.
Kennedy, who announced his candidacy in April, is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. But that’s where his relationship with the Democratic political establishment ends.
Disavowed by members of his own family, the previously celebrated environmental justice lawyer who helped clean up New York’s Hudson River now peddles false conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccine, all while receiving the praise of prominent right-wing figures and Silicon Valley billionaires. His campaign is predicated on ending what he says is the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country,” he said in his announcement speech.
He sounds more like a MAGA Republican than a Democrat. And Kennedy himself has acknowledged that he holds controversial views. “I am not an ideal presidential candidate,” he said in April. “I’m not one of these people who said I have to be careful because one day I’m going to be in the White House.”
Despite all of that, Kennedy seems to have struck a chord with voters. A June poll by the Economist and YouGov found that he had a net favorability rating of 19 percentage points, compared to Biden’s minus-9 and former President Donald Trump’s minus-10 net ratings. Kennedy has almost 16 percent support among likely Democratic primary voters on average as of late June and as much as 20 percent support in a single poll, but is still well behind Biden.
That might be a reflection of the fact that Americans still revere the Kennedy name and are willing to give him…
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