In case you missed it – and you probably did, because the mainstream media is determined not to cover him or his campaign – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. just announced a proposal for a “no spoiler pledge.” He suggests that he and President Biden agree to cosponsor a poll with a massive sample size in mid-October and for whomever of the two is then performing the worst in a hypothetical matchup against President Trump to drop out of the race. In other words, the country would have a straight-up, binary choice between Donald J. Trump and an anti-Trump – and that anti-Trump would be chosen based on popularity and viability. In this way, says Kennedy, the country could be spared a purely negative choice between Biden and Trump, with the possibility that a more hopeful, optimistic candidate (like him) would replace at least one of them. In addition, Trump would not win by default, i.e., because the anti-Trump vote was split. He would only win if he were more popular than the most popular of his rivals.
Of course, there is precisely zero chance that Joe Biden will accept this intriguing offer. The Democratic Party would never agree, under any circumstances, not to field a candidate for president, even if fielding a weak candidate, as they are, makes it extremely likely that one Donald J. Trump, whom Biden and virtually all Democrats absolutely despise, will thus be gifted a second term in the White House. If preventing a Trump victory – and, with it, a “fascist dictatorship” – truly was the objective of Democrats and progressives, they would seriously consider taking RFK, Jr. up on his offer. Alas, the actual raison d'être of the Democratic Party is, and long has been, the conquest of power for power's sake – and, now, secondarily, the stroking of one octogenarian ego, in particular. If “democracy” burns to the ground in the process... well, Democrats are prepared to take that risk.
Ergo, Democrats will treat RFK, Jr.'s proposed “no spoiler pledge” with the same contempt with which they've treated him, and, indeed, everyone in their own party who has dared to question the unsurpassed leadership skills of Joe Biden, or the moral imperative of masking and vaccines, or the nobility of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or the sacrosanct human right to abortion-on-demand. Straying from the approved narrative, running for office against an establishment-approved candidate, or any other sort of coloring outside the lines is simply not allowed in the modern left–period. And surely no one has come to understand that better than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who would by now have been stripped even of his Kennedy genes if DNC scientists could only figure out how that could be done.
Having said all this, RFK's no spoiler pledge should be seen for what it is – a stunt, designed to insulate Kennedy himself from the charge that he is, in fact, a spoiler. In all probability, RFK, Jr. is much more likely to play the role of spoiler than he is to be President of the United States. He knows it, I know it, and you know it. By generously giving Joe Biden an opportunity to remove him from the playing field, however, Kennedy can claim that, if indeed he ends up handing the White House to Trump, he is not morally culpable, because he was willing to step aside to prevent exactly that – but Joe Biden told him to take a hike. Not only would this be true, but it would be, in a sense, doubly true because Biden would have had two opportunities to dispense with Kennedy's candidacy in an honorable and direct fashion: by debating him and confronting him as an equal, in the Democratic presidential primaries, or, later, by agreeing to his “no spoiler pledge.” Biden would have – will have – given Kennedy the cold shoulder twice, thus sealing his own doom. And RFK, Jr., presumably, will offer him no solace, except perhaps a well-deserved “I told you so!”
How much does any of this impress the voters themselves? Probably not much because few of them will hear about Kennedy's pledge. What every American citizen has become very well-acquainted with, however, is the imperiousness that has come to define the presidency of Joe Biden and the absolute contempt that Biden and his fellow Democrats have for the opposition party, for third-party candidates, for the Supreme Court, for free speech, for political dialogue, for real journalism (as opposed to toadying), and for, broadly speaking, alternative points of view.
In the end, it will not be the Kennedy campaign that is Biden and the Democrats' undoing this November – it will be their own splendid isolation from political and democratic realities, scrupulously and scornfully maintained in the face of all opposition.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.