WASHINGTON – Joe Biden And Donald Trump will face each other in June for the first presidential debate of 2024, but the former president said he wouldn’t mind facing another opponent on stage, which experts warn could be a spoiler for Biden are: independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Some critics have warned that Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and vaccine opponent, could act as a spoiler in the general election by taking away votes from the two front-runners. Both the Trump and Biden campaigns have also seen Kennedy as a political threat.
However, Trump said in a new interview with Scripps News on Thursday that he would have “no problem” debating Kennedy if he met the eligibility threshold.
And should he join the debate, political scientists and pundits argue that Kennedy, as an anti-establishment figure, will likely interfere with Biden’s message to voters and make for a much raunchier debate that could help Trump in some ways .
To qualify for the first debate, hosted by CNN, a candidate must “appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency” and receive at least 15% in four qualifying national polls before he qualifies. deadline, according to a press release.
So far, Kennedy’s campaign said it has gained access to ballots in six states, although his campaign plans to expand that initiative elsewhere. He also averages less than 15% in most national polls. It is unclear whether he will meet the criteria by mid-June.
Yet Biden wants this election to be a referendum on Trump. And so when you add a third candidate, it’s not as easy to tell a story,” says Aaron Kall, director of the University of Michigan’s debate program and author of the book Debating the Donald, which describes the success of Trump in the elections was analyzed. 2016 presidential primaries.
Biden could have problems with Kennedy
The only time a third-party candidate was involved in a presidential debate was in 1992, said Alan Schroeder, professor emeritus of journalism and expert on presidential elections at Northeastern University.
In particular, the candidate, Ross Perot, “was able to use the debates effectively to position himself as an interesting, unorthodox candidate who was nothing like the traditional politicians who shared the stage,” he said, adding that he thinks Kennedy doesn’t have nearly “that level of talent as a communicator or the intelligence to deliver a winning performance.”
But experts argue that Kennedy still has the ability to act as a bigger spoiler for Biden than Trump.
“RFK (Jr.)’s presence in the debate would almost certainly work against Biden, because both he and Trump would represent chaos candidates, i.e. candidates who were anti-establishment, which would portray Biden as the status quo” , said Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of political science and national security, at the University of New Haven. “And the status quo always has more vocal critics than supporters.”
Kennedy has previously criticized Biden for being a “far worse threat to democracy” than Trump and called on the Biden administration to work with social media companies to limit the spread of COVID-19 misinformation. He is too for which Biden was attacked are “his public blunders and his unwillingness to publicly debate and have unscripted conversations with voters.”
Schmidt said the bulk of Kennedy’s supporters are under 45, so he could draw on voters who tend to vote Democratic.
He said Kennedy could “create so much general antipathy toward the status quo, and therefore toward Biden, that he could deter Biden supporters from voting, creating a kind of ‘none of the above’ effect or turning enough voters toward the anti-establishment candidate could be pushed. , Trump.”
Kennedy also downplayed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and both Biden and Democrats made much of that moment by imposing themselves as the “party of democracy,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor. at Syracuse University.
Kennedy’s participation “could undermine that central message from Biden,” Reeher said.
What about for Trump?
But Kennedy could also pose a problem for Trump on the debate stage, experts say.
“There is reason to suspect that Kennedy will draw more from Trump than from Biden. He is best known for his love of conspiracy theories, and that is a constituency that overlaps a lot with the MAGA crowd,” said David Greenberg, professor of history at Rutgers University.
Greenberg also added that “Biden wants to frame the choice as ‘Me or Trump.’ This one-on-one framing reminds people of Trump’s chaotic and – some would say – destructive period as president. It is a direct contrast that plays in Biden’s favor.”
Sharon Austin, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said Kennedy has campaigned heavily recently to attract votes from Republicans looking for an alternative to Trump.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why Trump has ‘no problem’ debating Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
