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RFK Jr announced this morning that he was leaving the democratic party and would continue his campaign as an independent.
I've spent a bit of time reading through articles and hot takes, and the overarching theme seems to be some variation of:
No real democrat would ever vote for him
He's more popular with Trump people anyway
This changes nothing, or maybe even hurts Trump
Taking as a given that Trump will be the GOP nominee as long as he is still alive - and therefore given the inescapable enemy-of-my-enemy dynamic of (Biden vs Kennedy) vs Trump up until this morning's announcement - some might consider this a fairly baffling take. Because it seems self-evident that democrats are less likely to approve of the guy who's mussing up their candidate's hair than the 'other party' would be, especially when that guy doesn't hold and has never held a public position. For me personally, this reaction makes more sense when read as a coping mechanism for what is the latest in a series of fairly not-great developments for the Biden campaign.
But more interestingly, this reaction completely dismisses the possibility that the election may have just changed quite fundamentally. Perhaps Kennedy will quickly fade into obscurity like most other third-party candidates do (anyone remember Lawrence Lessig?), but perhaps he'll be more like one of these guys. Joe Biden and Donald Trump's approval ratings are both hovering around 40% which suggests at least 20% of the electorate open to an alternative. Kennedy is also (relatively) young, spry, healthy, handsome, a household name (kind of), has a beautiful family, and independently wealthy. And the voice thing doesn't take all that long to get used to. This independent campaign could have legs
But even more interestingly, on the heels of Cornel West's announcement that he was ditching the green party to run as an independent, and with the open-secret that No Labels is planning to put up their own independent candidate, there is a chance for this to be an extremely unusual election. With Joe Biden and Donald Trump both unusually unpopular, there is a (admittedly very small) chance for this thing to blow wide open if Kennedy, West, No Labels, Green, and Libertarian all siphon off just a few voters each.
Now, again, this is all extremely unlikely to happen (if for no other reason than ballot access deadlines are all rapidly approaching), but the conditions are there for this to be one of those 'historical realignment' elections. If we stipulate there's a phenomena where voters don't support people they think have no chance, and that I'm about to make up these numbers and they have no probative value, let's imagine just for fun a poll comes out in the Spring that looks something like:
Biden 38
Trump 37
Kennedy 11
No Labels 5
Libertarian 3
West 2
Green 2
That's almost a horse race. It's a few bad bounces for the big guys away from the shape of a European-style election with multiple viable parties. And with some voters as disaffected as they are, maybe 'almost' is enough for some of them to rethink who does and doesn't have a chance. After all, if it's Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or This Guy...why not 'This Guy'? Just a thought.
Spry? I saw his announcement and from the way his voice sounded, you would have thought he was at Death's door. Now some people do just have those kinds of voices but it doesn't inspire me with confidence.
He has spasmodic dysphonia, it makes his voice sound like that. He has also within recent memory posted videos of himself lifting weights at tbe gym, which is probably more to OP's thinking.
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This is why people call him spry. He would be our first openly TRT-enhanced president, something that will become the norm in the future I predict.
His voice is like that from spasmodic dysphonia and it has the effect of making his voice extremely recognizable.
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