The promise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s independent 2024 campaign was always something of a mirage. His famous last name combined with the unpopularity of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump allowed Kennedy, for a time, to poll better than any third-party candidate had since Ross Perot in the 1990s \u2014 near 20 percent.<\/p>\n
But his steady decline since then makes it clear that this was never about firm support of Kennedy the candidate.<\/p>\n
And Friday, Kennedy\u2019s campaign effectively concluded with another mirage \u2014 one that epitomizes how unserious a candidate he proved to be.<\/p>\n
Kennedy announced that he is suspending his campaign, as expected, and endorsing Trump, as expected. There is reason to believe this could help Trump on the margins. That\u2019s because Kennedy\u2019s few supporters (he\u2019s down to about 5 percent in the polling averages) tend to lean more toward Trump and the GOP.<\/p>\n
But Kennedy didn\u2019t stop there. He insisted he is suspending but not ending his campaign. And he even fantasized about a scenario in which he could still become president.<\/p>\n
It is not a realistic proposal.<\/p>\n
Kennedy signaled that he would seek to withdraw from the ballots only in the swing states, while remaining on the ballots in firmly blue and red states. The idea is that he could still amass votes without being a spoiler in the states that matter.<\/p>\n
Why would those votes be important? Because he argued he could still be elected if Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris split the electoral college vote and there was no outright winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do vote for me, and neither of the candidates win 270 electoral votes, which is quite possible \u2014 in fact, today our polling shows them tying at 269-269 \u2014 I could conceivably still end up in the White House in a contingent election,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
What Kennedy is describing is indeed theoretically possible, but I can\u2019t emphasize \u201ctheoretically\u201d enough.<\/p>\n
The Constitution says that if no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the winner is decided by the House, with each state\u2019s delegation casting one vote. (There\u2019s a great primer on all this here.)<\/p>\n
The current makeup of the electoral votes in each state means there are some legitimate scenarios in which each candidate ends up with 269. It\u2019s why Trump has pushed for Nebraska to stop awarding electoral votes by congressional district \u2014 in hopes of winning a single electoral vote in a blue-leaning Omaha-based district.<\/p>\n
For Kennedy\u2019s idea to work, the electoral college would deadlock and the House would somehow skip over the top two finishers for him, perhaps because the state\u2019s delegations also deadlocked over which one they preferred.<\/p>\n
But even aside from the far-fetched idea that the House would skip over those two candidates for Kennedy \u2014 someone Democrats in particular have no love for \u2014 there\u2019s the small matter of how it doesn\u2019t appear that Kennedy would even be eligible in that scenario.<\/p>\n
The 12th Amendment states that, in a contingent election, the states would choose \u201cfrom the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President.\u201d In other words, from the top three candidates.<\/p>\n
But professor Derek Muller of Notre Dame Law School noted that the third-place finisher must actually win an electoral vote \u2014 not just finish in third place in the popular vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is a 269-269 tie, only Trump and Harris could be considered under the 12th Amendment,\u201d Muller said. \u201cIn order for Kennedy to be considered, he\u2019d need to win at least one electoral vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
What this means in practice? It wouldn\u2019t actually be a tie. Kennedy would have to snag an electoral vote somehow. His depressed poll numbers suggest he\u2019s not close to winning a state or a congressional district in one of the two states that divvy up electoral votes by district (Nebraska and Maine).<\/p>\n
So he\u2019d basically have to rely upon a \u201cfaithless elector\u201d to cast an electoral vote for him that was designated for someone else. But the vast majority of states have laws prohibiting faithless electors.<\/p>\n
To recap: We somehow wind up with a tie. He somehow gets an electoral vote. And the House somehow goes for a guy who didn\u2019t truly win a single electoral vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cKennedy seems to be going beyond reality in his quixotic quest to matter,\u201d said Paul Beck, an emeritus professor of political science at Ohio State University.<\/p>\n
The final point here is just how discordant this bank-shot-upon-bank-shot theory is next to the other things Kennedy was saying. In announcing his endorsement of Trump, Kennedy pitched the Democratic Party as being anti-democratic, including by citing the fact that Harris has become her party\u2019s nominee despite failing to win a single delegate when she ran in the 2020 primaries.<\/p>\n
But here was Kennedy pitching a scenario in which he would somehow be elected president apparently without winning a single electoral vote \u2014 or even running a campaign.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The promise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s independent 2024 campaign was always something of a mirage. His famous last name combined with the unpopularity of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump allowed Kennedy, for a time, to poll better than any third-party candidate had since Ross Perot in the 1990s \u2014 near 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}