On April 19, 2023, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. launched his long-shot presidential bid as a Democrat.

On October 9, 2023, he declared himself an “independent” and began courting (and in some states, creating) “third parties” for their nominations. He received 19 votes for the Libertarian Party’s nomination at its 2024 national convention over Labor Day weekend.

Three months later, on August 23, he “suspended” his campaign and called for a “unity party” with the Republican candidate, former president Donald Trump.

I didn’t see  that last part coming, but color me un-surprised that his campaign struggled, grasped at various life preservers,  and finally  drowned.

All Kennedy ever really had going for him was his family’s name. He knew that was his biggest asset — he even ran a Super Bowl commercial reprising his uncle’s 1960 television advertisements — but nostalgia can only take one so far, especially when the family in question comes out hard against you.

Independent and third party presidential campaigns generally enjoy success (relatively speaking) in proportion to one or two factors.

The first, the one Kennedy leaned on, is identity.

Theodore Roosevelt didn’t knock down 27.4% of the vote in 1912 because of his Progressive, AKA Bull Moose, party’s platform. He did so well because everyone knew Theodore Roosevelt was and many  remembered his previous terms fondly.

It was Ross Perot’s personal legend — up-by-his-bootstraps billionaire businessman who flew Christmas gifts into Hanoi for America POWs and orchestrated the rescue of his company’s employees from post-revolution Iran — more so than his hammering on the national debt and opposition to NAFTA — that drove his vote totals of 18.91% in 1992 and 8.4% in 1996.

The Kennedy name was a big deal … once upon a time. But the US median age is 38.9 years. Most people alive today weren’t alive when Ted Kennedy unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 1980, let alone when RFK Jr.’s father and uncle were assassinated in, respectively, 1968 and 1963. Young people know the name, but they don’t feel the vibe.

The second factor is the issues. Most third party campaigns are either “single issue” or more generally “ideological.” They’re about the candidates’ platforms and policy positions. When voters go for a Libertarian, Green, or Constitution Party candidate, it’s because they care deeply about an issue or set of issues that the “major” parties either get “wrong” or ignore completely.

Kennedy’s policy suite was a dog’s breakfast of contradictions (anti-war on Ukraine, “pro-Israel” on Gaza), flip-flops (“pro-choice” early in the race then supporting a federal ban at the 2023 Iowa State Fair; calling for  prosecution of “climate deniers” back when then supporting free speech as a candidate),  and too-niche obsessions (he’s more generally “anti-vaccine” than the significant voter bloc outraged by COVID-19 mandates).

As Stewart Lawrence puts it at CounterPunch, he’s “a man with no enduring allegiance to an ideology, a party or even a platform who is willing to sell his campaign and his support to the highest bidder — in exchange for his own personal and political advancement.”

He saw, and seized, his opportunity to sell out.

Supporters who thought he was the “real deal” got conned.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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As Democrats whoop it up at their somewhat vestigial (they’ve already nominated Kamala Harris for president in a “virtual vote”) national convention in Chicago, they seem relatively enthused by her economic platform — far more enthused than American consumers will be with its results if implemented.

Two features in particular stand out for their combination of economic ignorance, likely disastrous results, and, unfortunately, political popularity.

First, Harris proposes a federal ban on “price gouging” by sellers of food and groceries.

Second, she touts $25,000  in “down payment assistance” for first-time homebuyers.

Yes, “price gouging” sounds like a bad thing (that’s why it’s called “gouging,” to make it sound bad.) The real term for laws against it is “price controls.”

We’ve tried price controls in the past, and the results are in: They always result in shortages.

Maybe you’ll pay less for that head of lettuce or package of ground beef … if you can find it. But you’re a lot less likely to find it.

Holding prices artificially low by government edict tells producers — at least those producers who aren’t just wiped out of business entirely — that their money is better invested in something other than the price-controlled products.

By all means, enjoy that $3.99 ribeye that isn’t on the shelf in the spot marked “ribeye” when you do your shopping.

As for handing out $25,000 checks to millions of home-buyers, the main effect will be to drive up the price of that house you want to buy … by about $25,000. The word for more money chasing the same amount of goods is “inflation.”

Sure, more houses might get built (especially since Harris also proposes tax credits for homebuilders), but they’ll be more expensive houses.  A government check on the front end won’t reduce your final cost on the back end. Maybe the $25,000 will get you closer to your down payment, but your mortgage payments will be higher or go on for longer.

Not that her major party opponent’s plans make any more sense.

Donald Trump’s “Tariff Man” act, which Harris criticizes even though Joe Biden just continued the Trump-era tariffs and even added some new ones, has been jacking up your cost of living for several years now … and he’s promised to put that on steroids.

Nor does either candidate offer any serious proposals to cut federal spending and balance the federal budget. It’s all tax and spend, all day long, in every direction.

OK, not EVERY direction. If Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver wins in November, he’ll whip out his veto pen and push Congress to cut its spending, pay down its debt, and get its grubby hands out of your pockets.

Yes, I know how unlikely that is. But a man can dream.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“If voting could change anything,” Robert S. Borden wrote in 1976,  “it would be made illegal.” That’s just one variation of a claim enjoying continuous popularity — and common  misattributions to Mark Twain, Phillip Berrigan, Emma Goldman and others — among the politics-skeptical commentariat.

It’s popular because it embodies a self-evident truth. Libertarian podcaster Tom Woods put a finer, more foreign policy specific, point on it: “No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.”

Even after so-called “change” elections, policy shifts tend to be minor and occur at the margins, no matter how revolutionary and game-changing they may sound.

It’s always about raising or lowering income tax rates, never about getting the government’s hands out of our pockets.

It’s always about tweaking, never eliminating, government control of healthcare.

It’s always about “managing” international trade with tariffs and regulations to supposedly benefit domestic firms, never about getting out of trade’s way so as to maximize prosperity for everyone.

It’s always about which “allies” to support or “enemies” to attack abroad, and how generously or violently, never about how to wind the war machine down completely and get the US government back to minding its own business.

None of those results are your fault because you voted for the “wrong” candidates.

Nor, for the most part, is it really the fault of the particular candidates themselves, though it might feel that way.

Remember when many Americans voted for Barack Obama in 2008, convincing themselves he was a “peace” candidate? Heck, he may have even believed that himself. But he turned out to be, per Woods, mostly John McCain, keeping the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and embroiling it in (among other impending wars) Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

Whatever Obama really wanted to do, he found himself a figurehead strapped atop a very large machine with controls — steering wheel, gear shift, accelerator, brake pedal — disconnected from the engine, transmission, throttle or brakes. The horn worked quite well, and he could and did blow it loudly, but that was about it.

If you’re discouraged, I’m doing my job well here. No matter how hard you vote, you’re really just one of millions of judges in a beauty pageant.

Sure, someone will get a bouquet of roses and a fancy sash before embarking on a tour of pep talks, but no matter how well they did in the evening gown or swimsuit competition, none of their gum-flapping about world peace and mutual understanding in the interview section will result in world peace or mutual understanding.

The point of these competitions is to keep the sponsoring organizations going with maximum donations, ad revenues, etc.

The contestants, winners, and fans being made to feel they’re part of something bigger themselves by watching, are mere means to those ends.

Ditto politics. Politicians and voters are just means to the state’s built-in end of, as philosopher Anthony de Jasay put it, maximizing its own discretionary power.

Vote? Sure, why not? But don’t convince yourself you’re making an earth-shaking difference by doing so.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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