Imagine a presidential contest between an octogenarian incumbent whose family received millions in payments from foreigners and who struggles to speak coherently, and a megalomaniac blowhard who has been indicted on 91 criminal charges.
That’s how many Americans, if you pore over the polls, might describe, rightly or wrongly, the looming rematch between Joe Biden, 80, and Donald Trump, 77, for president in 2024.
The proverbial drover’s dog would stand a good chance of winning if it ran as a third candidate.
Poll after poll shows large majorities of Americans, at least 60 per cent, want neither Biden or Trump to seek second terms, even if that’s the option America’s political duopoly will foist on them.
Almost half of US voters would consider voting for a third-party candidate, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
Enter Robert F. Kennedy – nephew of the slain former president, highly articulate, relatively youthful at 69, and having perhaps the most celebrated name in US political history.
A skilled orator, despite his chronic spasmodic dysphonia that leaves him with a gravelly voice, his announcement of an independent bid for the White House is a massive spanner in the works for the major parties.
Absent another third-party challenger, which is likely, Kennedy could win a substantial share of the vote, or even win if Trump goes to jail and Biden is incapacitated – far from impossible eventualities.
There’s even a rumour Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will bankroll his campaign, which veteran Democrat strategist David Axelrod rightly observed last week, “could be a significant factor in shaping the outcome of the race”.
Kennedy is difficult to pigeonhole ideologically, coming across as a Democrat transported in time from the 1960s: pro-abortion and anti-war but highly sceptical about the relationship between America’s biggest corporations and government and regulators. He is a strident environmentalist who hates censorship, positions at the opposite end of the prevailing political spectrum.
“It will be very hard for people to tell whether my administration is left or right. Is it right or left to implement a tamper-proof election system that also guarantees that everyone has the right to vote?” he told an adoring crowd in Pennsylvania.
He has a fresh approach to political debate, refusing to engage in name-calling or accusing large segments of American voters of being dangerous racists or totalitarian communists, which has become standard fare for the two major parties.
“These labels make less and less sense but out of habit we still group ourselves around the empty husks of those old alignments and threadbare ideologies,” he said.
The populist billionaire Ross Perot garnered almost 19 per cent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, allegedly causing incumbent George H Bush to lose by siphoning off right-wing votes.
It’s too early to tell which candidate Kennedy’s run will hurt the most. But whatever the intensity of hatred for Clinton and George H Bush it was nothing compared to the revulsion toward a Biden-Trump rematch.
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