Independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made headlines Friday when he suspended his campaign and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump.
The former environmental lawyer stated three “principal causes” led him to leave the Democratic Party and ultimately endorse Trump: “free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children.” Kennedy claimed he had attempted to reach out to the Harris campaign as well, but that the Democratic candidate refused to meet or speak with him.
“When you think of the Kennedys – I mean, the Kennedys are synonymous with the Democratic Party in a way that I don't know if younger voters necessarily appreciate fully,” said cartoonist Ted Rall, who appeared on Sputnik’s The Backstory program Friday. “It's absolutely shocking to Americans, I would say, over the age of, say, 45, to think that any Kennedy would endorse any Republican ever, much less Donald Trump.”
“It seems almost like treason if you're a Democrat… It's absolutely shocking.”
Rall recounted Democrats’ efforts to undermine Kennedy’s campaign and prevent other independent and third-party candidates from accessing the ballot. Democratic Party officials frequently employ legal tactics to prevent the Green Party from running in state and local elections throughout the country.
Kennedy and his running mate Nicole Shanahan have net worths in the millions of dollars but still faced major challenges in securing ballot access due to Democratic Party’s opposition.
“The Democratic Party spent over a hundred million dollars kicking him off the ballot so that he was forced to spend all of his time in court – not to mention a lot of his money paying lawyers in court – just to stay on the ballot while Democrats were trying to get him tossed from state after state on a technicality,” Rall noted.
“If a guy as rich as Bobby Kennedy Jr. and with a running mate as rich as Nicole Shanahan – she's supposedly worth a billion dollars… don't have access to the ballot in this country, that's a major issue that we need to talk about,” he claimed. “This is why we have a duopoly. This is the nature of the duopoly.”
Rall responded to reports that the Harris campaign refused to engage in dialogue with Kennedy despite multiple attempts. Democratic Party officials have a “take no prisoners” attitude to political challengers, the cartoonist claimed, pointing to the party’s failure to appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 as one reason the party lost the White House to former President Donald Trump.
Sanders enjoyed a fractious relationship with Democratic Party officials during that year’s primary campaign, with the party at one point suspending his campaign’s access to voter databases required to conduct canvassing operations. Leaked Democratic National Committee emails eventually showed party officials worked behind the scenes to undermine the insurgent candidate’s campaign.
“Look at how Democrats treated their own uncommitted delegates at the recently-concluded DNC, where they couldn't even find a five-minute spot at two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon for a pro-Palestinian delegate,” Rall noted. “When Bernie Sanders voters walked away in 2016 and decided to let Trump win in a sort of form of political chemotherapy, that teaches Democrats a lesson. And RFK getting into bed with Donald Trump also teaches them a lesson.”
“Democrats have a ‘take no prisoners attitude,’” Rall claimed. “And this is kind of showing the weaknesses of it. Even if it only costs Democrats one half percentage of the vote, 0.5 percent of the vote nationally, that's a dumb decision.”