Why Are RFK Jr. Voters Backing RFK Jr.?

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

 

There has been quite a lot of debate — for now, mostly academic — about what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s primary challenge to President Joe Biden says about this political moment. Matthew Scully wrote a detailed and passionate defense of Kennedy’s approach to politics and the marketplace for his heterodox ideas. Pradheep Shanker’s reply to Scully’s work exposes much of that heterodoxy as paranoia while not discounting the broad but hardly salutary public demand for irrationality. I come down on the side of the ledger that views Kennedy’s political outlook as, on balance, crankish.

 

And yet, all this talk fails to consider what the Democratic voters gravitating toward Kennedy’s campaign think about the candidate. It would be a mistake to cast Kennedy as a movement leader when his own supporters seem to view his candidacy as something more like the nearest weapon at hand.

 

A CNN/SSRS survey of Democratic primary voters published last Thursday found that roughly one in five self-described Democrats are backing Kennedy over the sitting president and head of their party. But when asked why they were backing Kennedy, those voters failed to ratify the effort to create a coherent political philosophy around the candidate.

 

Of the Democrats who were open to supporting Kennedy, 20 percent of them cited the “Kennedy name” and his “family connections” as the candidate’s most attractive trait. Seventeen percent said they “would consider supporting Kennedy” because they don’t “know enough” about him and “want to learn more.” Just 12 percent of Kennedy-curious voters said they support his “views/policies.” Beyond that, Kennedy’s tentative support comes from the notion that he “is a Democrat” and his voters are “open minded” and would “consider any candidate” — including, we must assume, Joe Biden. Every other rationale for supporting Kennedy languished in the single digits.

 

As a blunt instrument, Kennedy’s candidacy has a lot to say for it if you’re a disaffected Democratic voter who wants to broadcast displeasure with the party as an enterprise. In concert with mystic self-help guru Marianne Williamson’s candidacy (who is stealing away 8 percent of Democrats, most of whom support her because they “do not know enough” about her), these candidacies are telling a consistent story about Joe Biden’s presidency and his appeal to Democratic primary voters. What these alternative candidacies say about the candidate themselves, however, is too nebulous to constitute anything other than a negative verdict on the incumbent.