Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has become more than just a political irritation to President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party establishment.
The Kennedy family scion and anti-vaccine activist is roiling the waters of Biden’s bid for a second term. The environmental lawyer a long shot yet to be sure, but a troubling presence in what is supposed to be incumbent Biden’s glide into an unquestioned run for a second term.
RFK Jr. has said his hope lies in taking his case directly to the people. It doesn’t get any more direct than the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
“Thank you to all people of New Hampshire for keeping democracy alive, and particularly retail politics, which is what we need in this country,” Kennedy, son of the late New York U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy said this week in opening his “peace through diplomacy” speech at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. The foreign policy address commemorated the 60th anniversary of his uncle President John F. Kennedy’s famous peace speech in June 1963.
“We need our politicians, instead of taking billions of dollars from billionaires and airily bombing our country with advertisements, we need a place where politicians have to come and be vetted in barbershops and diners and gas stations and nail salons and be asked real questions by real people and have to interact with real Americans,” Kennedy said. “We need to bring the primaries back here … New Hampshire is a place where that happens.”
It was an unveiled criticism of the Democratic National Committee, which has, in the name of greater “diversity and inclusion,” stripped New Hampshire and Iowa of its first-in-the-nation nominating status. Instead, the DNC has reworked the primary schedule, making South Carolina the first state to play in the 2024 presidential race.
It’s no coincidence that South Carolina embraced Biden’s 2020 run, putting the party’s anointed back on track after his miserable showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. He finished fourth in the Hawkeye caucuses, and crawled away from the Granite State with a fifth-place finish.
Kennedy has said he doesn’t believe Biden will compete in either state.
“I think that President Biden is not going to even put his name in Iowa and New Hampshire. So I think he’s not even going to compete,” told Michael Smerconish on SiriusXM earlier this month.
Biden’s campaign has suggested the president won’t appear on the ballot in the two states if they jump ahead of South Carolina.
That could open the door for some real momentum building for an incumbent challenger polling at a respectable 14 percent more than seven months out from 2024 primary season.
But pundits say Kennedy will have to be in Iowa and New Hampshire if he stands a chance in 2024. So far the candidate hasn’t done much in the way of ground game campaigning and being present in either state. Time noted as much earlier this month in a piece headlined “Inside the Very Online Campaign of RFK Jr.”
“So far, the candidate has spent more time chatting on podcasts and livestreams than visiting with voters,” the outlet noted. “Instead of dropping in on New Hampshire coffee shops, he’s given a speech at a Miami Bitcoin conference, appeared on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk, and is slated to be interviewed on June 14 on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast.
The Iowa Star reached out to Kennedy’s campaign, asking when the candidate intends to be in Iowa. The campaign has yet to respond.
“Iowa is the first place a candidate can win something and that makes news. That’s potentially huge, depending on how this plays out,” said veteran, Iowa-based pollster J. Ann Selzer.
Of course, party politics could make Iowa much less meaningful. As Selzer notes, the “huge caveat” and “uncharted territory” is the fact that the DNC could strip Iowa and New Hampshire of delegates if they jump the new line, which could negate any influence the states have in the Democratic Party nominating process.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who took himself out of the Republican Party presidential primary chase, told the Dispatch earlier this year, “It doesn’t matter what the Democrat Party says, it matters what New Hampshire says, and we’re going first.”
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee recently punted, giving New Hampshire until Sept. 1 to fly right, or be booted off of the early state lineup, which currently has New Hampshire following South Carolina.
The Iowa Democratic Party did not return a call seeking comment, but earlier this month the party’s central committee approved a plan that creates a presidential preference card system instead of the traditional and storied in-person caucus process. Cards could be mailed in over time and the tally wouldn’t be released until Iowa’s turn on the new nominating schedule.
“Iowa Democrats are united in moving forward with the most inclusive caucus process in our history,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said in a statement. “No matter what, we will continue to do what’s best for Iowa, what’s best for our Party and what’s best for democracy.”
But Iowa law demands Iowa hold the first presidential nominating caucus in the land each election cycle — emphasis on caucus. On June 1, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law a bill requiring the parties to hold caucuses in person.
As the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported, Republican lawmakers have said the law is necessary because the presidential preference card system is too similar to a primary, and would force New Hampshire to move its primaries ahead of the Iowa caucuses. And as Sununu has declared, New Hampshire isn’t budging.
So what do all these moving parts mean for Kennedy and his quest to knock out a very unpopular Democratic incumbent? Things are subject to change, but being in Iowa and New Hampshire and practicing the “retail politics” he says are so critical remains so critical.
“It’s very difficult to say for sure what all of this means until it starts happening,” Selzer said. “I don’t assume that not having trips planned or events scheduled [in Iowa] is the end of the story. It’s not too late, but every week that ticks by it’s going to be hard to assemble all of that together.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Robert Kennedy Jr.” by NTD.
