RFK Jr’s long, slow slide
Byron York
RFK JR’s LONG, SLOW SLIDE. Recently some liberals became incensed at the actor Woody Harrelson. His offense was being photographed wearing a campaign hat for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while posing with Kennedy’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines. Left-wing Twitter soon became very angry, with one user declaring Harrelson “dead to me.”
An early comment on Hines’s Instagram page explained the reason for the anger. “You might as well be wearing a MAGA hat,” it said, “because that’s who a Kennedy campaign will elect.” In recent weeks, many Democrats have coalesced around the idea that support for Kennedy would equal support for former President Donald Trump, in that Kennedy’s candidacy could cut into support for President Joe Biden, therefore increasing Trump’s chances of regaining the White House.
It doesn’t help, for Kennedy’s support among Democrats, that some conservative news outlets have given him extensive coverage, while some legacy news outfits have been highly critical. “I’ve been really slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented,” Kennedy told Fox News in July. “I mean, listen, if I believed the stuff that’s written about me in the papers and reported about me on the mainstream news sites, I would definitely not vote for me.”
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The attacks in news outlets most read and watched by most Democrats have taken a toll. After peaking in April, Kennedy’s support, as measured in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls of Democratic voters, has steadily fallen.
Kennedy’s highest level of support was 20%, in late April. Then, in late May, it slipped to 16.8%, a substantial drop in the course of a couple of days. By June 22, it fell to 14% and has hovered around that level ever since. It is now at 13.6%. In all, Kennedy’s support has dropped by about a third since his campaign began to attract significant public attention. That is not the mark of campaign momentum.
Kennedy’s slide probably reflects a deep fear among Democrats that even a protest challenge to Biden could damage the president’s fragile support. Yes, Biden has a huge lead, 63 points, over Kennedy in the Democratic race. (Another candidate, Marianne Williamson, has 6% support.) But polls of head-to-head matchups between Biden and Trump look terribly risky for the current president.
Right now, Biden has a 0.7-point lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of one-on-one matchups. The last three polls of a Biden-Trump contest show Biden up by a single point in two of them and tied in the third. Why wouldn’t Democrats worry that any challenge to Biden could weaken him against Trump?
Friday morning, Politico published a report suggesting that the Biden team is becoming more hopeful about the president’s chances. The reason has nothing to do with Kennedy or any other challenger. Instead, Biden’s strategists, buoyed by the recent election in Ohio, “believe the voters’ enthusiasm about abortion rights could also unlock new roads to another term.” Perhaps that is true, but only if the president can ensure there are no significant challenges inside his own party.
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