We are in a perilous time in our nation, and the upcoming November election is not going to make things any better. Between the two viable candidates, neither exactly presents hope for the next four years. What America needs right now, perhaps more than ever, is a candidate who is willing to not only disregard the partisan media, bloodythirsty lobbyists, and the greater demons of their own party and bring our country together in a spirit of compassion, compromise and unity. Neither President Biden nor former President Donald Trump come close to checking those boxes, and it’s gonna be rough living here for the considerable future.
“But Matt,” you might be saying, “you said there were only TWO viable candidates. What about this Robert Kennedy Jr. I’ve been hearing about on social media and some of my weirder friends? I’m sure you just forgot about him and now you are going to go back in real time and change your column because it’s only fair to include everyone with a realistic chance of becoming the next President of these great United States.” If this is you, I have a simple response: Shut up. You are wrong. RFK Jr. has no chance of becoming the next leader of the free world.
Well, that’s not exactly true. There is one path…
Before we talk about how the son of Bobby Kennedy (and nephew of both Teddy and John F. Kennedy) can get into the Oval Office, let’s take just a moment to talk about everything he has going against him. Because if you think he has a legitimate chance of winning… hoo boy, you have not been paying attention.
In April 2023, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president, and it’s probably fair to say that at that point, the thing most people knew about him was that he a member of American political royalty. If you took a moment to look closer, however, you would see that there was a lot going on with him and not a lot of it was great. The environmental lawyer had decided to jump into anti-vaccine and COVID conspiracy theories, and you can pull up stuff from him saying that vaccines cause autism (they don’t) and then referring to vaccines causing an “autism epidemic” and also calling that a “holocaust”, which is about the shittiest thing you can say short of a racial slur. However, that kind of talk appeals to a very specific type of person and those people fucking ate that shit up in their sleep. The fact that he said you couldn’t find a link between HIV and AIDS was also the kind of thing to make him a darling of the conspiracy theory crowd, and that kind of fame was just what RFK Jr. needed to believe he could make a run at the highest office in the land.
Originally filing as a Democrat, Kennedy changed to run as an Independent in October of last year, and that was probably the smartest thing he has done this entire campaign. Realizing he would never be able to challenge Joe Biden, Kennedy knew his hope lied in what we will call the “Ross Perot lane”. This would be an apt comparison if, like in 1992, our entire nation felt like neither major political party had a candidate worth a damn or if Kennedy had a campaign that ran the way Perot’s did. And neither of those things are true. Getting convicted on 34 felonies seems to have only made Donald Trump more popular in the recesses of the GOP, and most democrats seem to be content holding their nose this November to cast a vote for Biden. And Kennedy does not have the campaign Perot had.
Before we talk about the failings of the RFK Jr. campaign, I need to take you back to 1992, because Ross Perot did something that I don’t think we’ll ever see a third party candidate do again. Spending a whole ton of his own money, Perot bought airtime to run informercials and bullied his way into the debate stages. Here is how popular Perot was: He dropped out of the 1992 race for three weeks in July while saying Republicans were threatening to ruin his daughter’s wedding, only to re-enter the race under the guise of being looney toons, and the dude still got almost TWENTY percent of the popular vote. In comparison, Jo Jorgenson, who ran as a Libertarian in 2020, got just slightly over one percent of the vote and she didn’t even think anyone was after her.
While Kennedy has Perot’s craziness (he has already claimed the CIA might try to assassinate him), he does not appear to have the resources to make a successful run, or if he does, he doesn’t know how to use them. A Politico article from earlier this year told a story of a campaign in shambles, with operatives in major roles leaving left and right saying the operation was rife with corruption and incompetence. According to a New York Times article, if the election were held today, Kennedy would only be on the ballot in six states, and in case you didn’t know, America has fifty of those. So he’s a little short on that. And we haven’t even talked about he has a collective polling number of something like 9 percent, and that number has gone down since earlier this year.
So yeah, he doesn’t know how to run a campaign (weird considering his family). And yeah, he has said that Jewish people in World War 2-era Germany are more free than Americans are today. But, despite all of this, I still see one (and only one) path in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can be our 47th president. And I will lay it out for you right now.
It is July 11th, two weeks after the presidential debate that Kennedy was not able to participate in because he did not meet the guidelines. Today is the sentencing date for Donald Trump in New York. Now, even if Trump is sentenced to jail time, the way the appeals process plays out, it does not seem likely that Trump would be made to start serving his sentence until after the election. However, due to quick appeals (or, more likely, incompetence on the part of the Trump legal team), Trump is told he must report to prison by August 1. Instead of preparing for prison, however, Trump chooses to flee to Florida and lock himself in his Mar A Largo estate. Emboldened by this decision, a group of Trump’s loyalist supporters decide to surround the compound and they are armed. On August 1, a warrant is issued and law enforcement shows up outside of the Trump resort and it doesn’t take long before the first shot is fired. Within hours, the militia has been easily cast aside, with the majority choosing arrest over a fire fight. However, as police make their way inside Mar A Largo, they find a horrifying site: in watching the chaos, Donald Trump suffered a cardiac arrest but did not want outside medical attention in fear it would lead to his imprisonment. The 45th president is dead on the floor, and it’s kind of weird how big Melania is smiling.
Also, Joe Biden has also died from… I dunno. What do old people die of? Strokes? The vapors? Light breezes? It doesn’t matter.
With both major presidential candidates dead, the nation is in a state of turmoil as both Democrats and Republicans are scrambling to get someone on the ballot with only months to spare. Who will hold the party nomination now? For Democrats, resistance is made by Bernie Sanders supporters who say they will not vote for Kamala Harris after she chooses some boring old milquetoast white dude to be her running mate. Republicans are even more in disarray, but eventually Nikki Haley wins out after beating Ted Cruz in an arm wrestling competition. However, the American public is tired of it and looking for something new.
Under these extreme circumstances, if his candidacy gets it’s shit together, then yes: I could see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becoming the President.
Or maybe Ye wins. Who knows?
Fancy Boys Club 