Election Reflections 2024: The RFK Jr. Impact (2 of 2)
Part 7
How Did the Presidential Race Change in July 2024?
Well, the political bingo card went wild in July 2024. On July 13th, an assassin tried to shoot Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. President Trump was struck in the ear after just magically moving his head according to a video reply. He fell to the ground covered by Secret Service personnel, then rose triumphantly with his fist in the air, shouting “Fight, Fight, Fight!” This was the moment that galvanized a lot of support for Donald Trump, winning him huge endorsements from key billionaires, including Elon Musk. It showed his indomitable spirit to fight for his MAGA coalition.
On July 21st, Biden dropped out of the race. Vice President Kamala Harris announced her candidacy on the same day and signed her papers to run on July 27th. By August 5th, the DNC announced that Harris had clinched enough delegates to become the nominee. There were no primaries, no ordinary voters, no contests to vet a field of candidates. Only the selection of Harris allowed the Biden/Harris war chest of donor funds to be passed on for campaign use.
Where Did Kennedy Find His Audience?
While there are multiple demographics of voters that jumped out during polling when Kennedy was reaching somewhat maximum awareness, I want to highlight just three groups. The following groups stood out:
Young Voters: RFK Jr. performed particularly well among younger demographics. According to polls, he garnered significant support from voters aged 18 to 34, with some surveys indicating he held a lead in this age group over both Biden and Trump. His appeal to younger voters was often linked to his Joe Rogan interview, his anti-establishment stance (corrupt mix of corporate and state power), and his focus on affordability issues, like housing. His campaign tagline: Every American Who Works Hard Should Be Able to Afford A Good Life spoke to young people.
Ethnic Minorities: Kennedy had notable support from Hispanic and Black communities. Data suggested he performed better among Hispanic voters (33%) and Black voters (24%) compared to white voters (17%). This support could be traced back to the historical affinity of these groups with the Kennedy family, particularly due to the civil rights advocacy of his father, Robert F. Kennedy.
Medical Freedom Moms: There were indications that women were slightly more likely to support Kennedy than men, according to some polls. This likely stemmed from intense support from mothers dealing with children having chronic conditions. Some moms had vaccine-injured children; others saw the Big Food and Big Pharma industries as conducting business in ways that undercut human health. Kennedy’s focus on health issues and environmental concerns—the core of the MAHA movement—resonated deeply with many women who had never stepped into presidential campaigns before as volunteers.
These demographic trends highlight that RFK Jr.’s support base was complex, drawing from a broad cross-section of the American electorate, but particularly keying off those who could be reached through alternate media channels and micro-influencers.
Debates, Ballot Access, and Cash Flow
Debates
Kennedy was robbed of the chance to have an actual three-way debate on the campaign trail. The corrupt bargain instigated by Biden, and accepted by a desperate Trump to redeem his chances while being stuck in courtrooms around the country, backfired and knocked Joe Biden out of the race. Kennedy played the corrupt optics to his advantage as best he could, but the sense from the campaign was that only a major win on the national debate stage would give Kennedy any hope of a path to 270 electoral college votes. Remember, option #2 to pick off just a handful of states was not chosen (see Part 6). Time and resources made this plan inaccessible by July 2024.
Ballot Access
Team Kennedy pulled off the major feat. The campaign performed all the work to qualify for the ballot in all 50 states. This involved collecting over one million signatures from registered voters, building coalitions with third parties across the country, forming new parties in select states to give an enduring pathway to future independents, and filing lawsuits against unconstitutional state ballot access laws that punish independent candidates. The triumph galvanized the independent political movement across the United States and forced many election offices to dust off rules that hadn’t been used in decades.
Kennedy was removed from the New York state ballot, arguably one of the toughest for qualification, due to a lawsuit about his place of residence (not anything to do with his legitimate voter support and stellar organization). By the summer, Kennedy was qualifying on state after state using a combination of 200,000 volunteers and a paid signature collection effort. He did what many in the media and traditional two-party politics said could not be done.
Cash Flow
Team Kennedy and supporting political action committees (PACs) raised a combined $116 million for the 2024 cycle. It was barely enough to keep the race going due to two factors: ballot access and private security expenses. While ballot access cost more than $10 million, which was lightened by the significant volunteer efforts, the cost of personal security ate into campaign funds and significantly hindered the ease with which Kennedy could freely host events.
At least $5 million was spent directly on security, but additional travel and other costs were also carried by the campaign. In fact, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was denied Secret Service protection five times during the 2024 presidential race. This fact created moral outrage for many voters watching the news unfold. To those well-informed, the irony was sickening. As a result of presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination (1968), Congress authorized the protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and nominees. (Public Law 90-331)
Somehow, RFK Jr. wasn’t considered major enough even as his polling met the highest thresholds in three decades for any independent candidate. Often, Republican and Democratic voters would sign petitions to put Kennedy on the ballot simply because of their outrage that he was not being protected.
By July 2024, the race had dramatically changed with the Trump assassination attempt and Harris jumping into the race to replace Biden. The campaign’s ability to raise increasing financial sums was getting more challenging as the poll numbers started dropping with all the shifting cross-currents. Having been denied the first debate stage, the prospects looked difficult.
Kennedy made phone contact with Trump following the assassination attempt. Few people in America know the personal cost of political assassination like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At the crucial moment, Trump’s new brush with death likely opened a unique opportunity for these two candidates to connect.
Playing Three-Way Chess—Kennedy A Grand Master
Three-way chess is challenging because it’s difficult to design fairly. One player can be at a disadvantage if two other players gang up on them. By mid-August, with Kennedy, and his running mate Nicole Shanahan, feeling that the race had been rigged against them in every conceivable way, the need to pivot for maximum gain was becoming urgent.
Kennedy had spoken with Trump on several occasions by this point, including in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention based on a leaked X platform video showing a call that had Trump and Kennedy talking about Big Pharma. Trump was also talking about unity, while Kennedy had already made a pitch the day before Trump’s assassination attempt to propose a Unity Government under Kennedy with the hashtag #AmericaStong.1
Kennedy reached out to the Harris campaign. We don’t know the exact intent of the conversation, but the media picked up on it and said that Harris rejected the opportunity to talk. Kennedy seemed prepared to play three-way chess with whoever would move the country to a better place and reduce the risk of political violence.
At this point in mid-August, Kennedy looked trapped in a losing position. He appeared to be the spoiler—meaning the deciding factor over which major candidate could win the necessary seven swing states that would decide the election for the White House. Shanahan, his running mate, gave an unusual TV interview during the early proceedings of the Democratic National Convention speaking of the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign in the past tense. It stoked questions everywhere. On the heels of the confusion, Kennedy announced a speech for Friday, August 23, 2024, to be given in Phoenix, AZ at a location not far from a scheduled Trump rally for the same day.
The Final Pivot—A Speech for the Ages
Kennedy was late to begin his own press conference on Friday, August 23rd. He was still huddled with close advisors making changes to his speech. He struggled to decide what he was actually going to do and say, and why he was making his decision, for history would be watching and judging the moment. In the final 10 paragraphs of the speech, Kennedy articulated his deepest logic for making a strategic gamble in the race for the White House. I quote the 10 paragraphs in full because these words will be remembered for changing history…
We’re going to bring healthy food back to school lunches. We’re going to stop subsidizing the worst foods with our agricultural subsidies. We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our food. We’re going to reform the entire food system. And for that, we need new leadership in Washington, because unfortunately, both the Democrats and the Republican parties are in cahoots with the big food producers, Big Pharma and Big AG, which are among the DNC’s major donors.
Vice President Harris has expressed no interest in addressing this issue. Four more years of Democratic rule will complete the consolidation of corporate and Neocon power, and our children will be the ones who suffer most. I got involved with chronic disease 20 years ago, not because I chose or wanted to. It was essentially thrust upon me; it was an issue that should have been central to the environmental movement. I was an essential leader at the time. But it was widely ignored by all the institutions including the NGOs who should have been protecting our kids against toxins. It was an orphaned issue, and I have a weakness for orphans. I watched generations of children get sicker and sicker. I had 11 siblings and I have 7 kids myself. I was conscious of what was happening in their classrooms and to their friends. And I watched sick kids, these damaged kids in that generation, almost all of them were damaged and nobody in power seemed to care or to even notice.
For 19 years I prayed every morning that God would put me in a position to end this calamity. The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president along with ending the censorship and the Ukraine war. It’s the reason I’ve made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife, and my children, and my friends, but I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do, and that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.
If I’m given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years we will watch the chronic disease burden lift dramatically. We will make Americans healthy again. Within four years America will be a healthy country. We will be stronger, more resilient, more optimistic and happier. I won’t fail in doing this.
Ultimately, the future, however it happens, is in God’s hands and in the hands of American voters and in those of President Trump. If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that now demoralizes and bankrupts the country will disappear. This is a spiritual journey for me. I reached my decision through deep prayer, through hard-nosed logic, and I asked myself what choices must I make to maximize my chances to save America’s children and restore national health.
I felt that if I refused this opportunity, I would not be able to look myself in the mirror, knowing that I could have saved the lives of countless children and reversed this country’s chronic disease epidemic. I’m 70 years old. I may have a decade to be effective. I can’t imagine that a President Harris would allow me or anyone to solve these dire problems.
After eight years of a President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever. President Trump has told me that he wants this to be his legacy. I’m choosing to believe that this time he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, his closest friends, all support this objective. My joining the Trump campaign will be a difficult sacrifice for my wife and children, but worthwhile if there’s even a small chance of saving these kids.
Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country and our children is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other. That’s why I launched my campaign, to unify America. My dad and uncle made such an enduring mark on the character of our nation, not so much because of any particular policies that they promoted, but because they were able to inspire profound love for our country and to fortify our sense of ourselves as a national community held together by ideals.
They were able to put their love into the intentions and hearts of ordinary Americans and to unify a national populist movement of Americans—blacks and whites, Hispanics, urban and rural Americans. They inspired affection, love, and high hopes, and a culture of kindness that continued to radiate among Americans from their memory.
That’s the spirit on which I ran my campaign and that I intend to bring into the campaign of President Trump. Instead of vitriol and polarization, I will appeal to the values and goals that we could achieve if only we weren’t at each other’s throats. The most unifying theme for all Americans is that we all love our children. If we all unite around that issue now, we can finally give them the protection, the health, and the future that they deserve. Thank you all very much.2
And with that speech, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement was fully born. Hours later at a Trump rally, Kennedy would appear on stage to cement the MAGA + MAHA alliance for the 2024 election.
Once Kennedy embraced Trump for the good of children’s health, Americans everywhere were given the opportunity to question the narrative, look past former President Trump’s flaws, and decide which candidate would reform the status quo for a better and brighter future.
And Where Did Trump Achieve His Biggest Gains in 2024?
My simple answer: from Kennedy’s base.
Where did Trump gain his greatest margins? From the key Kennedy cohorts who had been taught to see the Democratic Party corruption through a new lens, particularly Black men (+25 points), Hispanic men (+19 points), and young voters (+21 points). [Note: women swung to Trump, but teasing out the Medical Freedom Moms is not easy based on this group not being isolated within any categories of women voters that are traditionally tracked.]
It is also noteworthy that Trump began to accelerate his use of the podcast circuit, much like Kennedy did earlier. Barron Trump advised his father to reach the younger voters through podcasters. On October 25, 2024, Trump appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience with a show that had 53 million views on YouTube.
MAHA micro-influencers made the message percolate through social media.
According to Ryan Davis on Substack:
If you're like me, you didn’t see much of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) conversation on your social channels. However, analysis by Joe Drymala at Disinfo For Democrats highlights just how influential these discussions were in the weeks leading up to the election.
MAHA allowed Trump to position himself as an independent, anti-corporate crusader. Examining the conversation—excluding openly right-wing accounts—you'll see that MAHA overshadowed Harris's price-gouging messaging.
On Instagram, this messaging particularly resonated with women, with 62% of the accounts posting being women, most of whom were between the ages of 35 and 55.
By leveraging these creators, Trump and RFK Jr. generated a significant amount of conversation, with microinfluencers amplifying the message to both larger and smaller creators. This messaging particularly resonated with women and helped position Trump as an anti-corporate, pro-health candidate despite his horrible record.3
Team Kennedy, now MAHA, helped swing the tide. Elon Musk came charging in with funds and ground game to seal the deal. Republicans certainly did a lot of swing state groundwork to register voters and shift people to mail-in ballots. But Kennedy brought a whole new alliance to the table.
Kennedy declared checkmate on Kamala Harris. He invited everyone else with eyes to see to do the same.
The Democratic Strategy Backfired in Many Ways
Trump won the popular vote in 2024 by a margin of 1.5% (49.9% vs. 48.4% for Harris). The Ballot Access News dated December 1, 2024, ran with this headline:
Democratic Hostility To Robert Kennedy, Jr. May Have Cost Kamala Harris The Presidency
In the lead article, Richard Winger points out the following stats:
Between Kennedy’s announcement in October 2023 that he would be an independent candidate and August 1, 2024, his poll numbers varied between 20% and 8%, according to The Hill’s compilation of presidential polls…. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris led in 29 of the 37 polls released in August.4
Winger makes four points that highlight the Democratic hostility:
Democrats had attacked Kennedy’s ballot access in Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. [Note: Winger left off Washington state where Kennedy was also sued.]
Democrats worked with CNN to set debate criteria for the June 27 debate that made it impossible for Kennedy to qualify for the debate. They did this by saying his ballot access had to be confirmed in states with at least a majority of the electoral college votes by June 20. This ignored the fact that states simply do not check signatures that early.
The Biden administration denied Kennedy Secret Service protection until the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13 motivated a reversal of that denial.
Democrats also challenged the right of an independent PAC to handle petitioning for Kennedy in the most difficult states, even though there is a long tradition in U.S. history of independent groups handling ballot access for minor party and independent presidential candidates.5
Winger drove home the point with this comment:
When Democrats attacked Kennedy so fiercely, that alienated Kennedy supporters. There is a movement that terms itself the Medical Freedom movement, and it was solidly behind Kennedy. When Kennedy dropped out of the race, members of that movement followed his lead and switched their support to Trump. It is not sensible for a party that is trying to win a close election to behave that way. But Democrats have long been in the habit of attacking minor parties and independents.6
While on the campaign trail, Kennedy often referred to a spiritual concept about human nature:
An individual, like every nation, has a darker side and a lighter side. The easiest thing a politician can do is appeal to our dark angels—to our greed, our anger, fear... That is the most potent instrument for manipulation. It’s much harder to do what my dad was trying to do. Which is to get people to transcend their narrow self interest and find a hero inside themselves and say we are part of a community here, we are a part of something larger.7
While Democrats painted the darker side of Trump as hard as they could, Kennedy reminded people of ways that Trump could be effective—ending war, ending censorship, and fighting the chronic disease epidemic. The Democratic Party treatment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump backfired for both similar and different reasons.
The Final Tally on Kennedy
In the end, Kennedy removed his name from as many states as he could that were swing states or strongly red states. Kennedy appeared on ballots in just 31 states, less than Green Party candidate Jill Stein (37) or Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver (46+DC). Kennedy gained 0.5% of the popular vote.
Conclusion
We will never know what would have happened if the media played fair and lawfare wasn’t ruthlessly used to hinder democratic competition. We also won’t know what would have happened if Kennedy ran to the finish line fighting against both contenders. Kennedy’s impact on the growing independent movement will need to be addressed in later posts after more transpires in the Trump administration.
What we do know:
Kennedy waged a war to challenge the party of his fathers, which he felt had lost its way.
He pivoted independent to run for office in the biggest challenge to duopoly power in three decades.
He built a unique multi-racial, multipartisan coalition.
He suspended his campaign to champion the cause dearest to his heart while calling upon the nation to love our children more than hate our political opponents.
Kennedy ultimately picked and sided with the winner of the 2024 election.
In my opinion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. caused the victory to go to Donald Trump. He was the factor that made the critical difference.
Notes:
The Common Sense Papers are an offering by Common Sense 250, which proposes a method to realign the two-party system with the creation of a new political superstructure that circumvents the current dysfunctional duopoly. The goal is to heal political divisions and reboot the American political system for an effective federal government.
Richard Winger, “Democratic Hostility To Robert Kennedy, Jr. May Have Cost Kamala Harris The Presidency,” Ballot Access News, December 1, 2024, Volume 40, Number 7, 1.
Ibid.
Ibid.