Why RFK Jr. Endorsing Trump is the Second Biggest Disappointment This Year
It’s a setback for those of us who want to destroy the left-right dichotomy
When I heard the news that RFK Jr. was effectively dropping out of this year’s US Presidential race by withdrawing from battleground states, and endorsing former President Trump instead, I felt unexpectedly disappointed. I mean, I’m certainly not a fan of Kennedy, and I honestly think many of the things he says are nonsense. Still, I felt like something was lost with his dropping out, and especially his endorsement of Trump. Thinking about it, while I didn’t agree with Kennedy the man and his ideas, I did like something he represented. And that something is forever ruined with his endorsement of Trump. Let me explain.
While I have many disagreements with Kennedy, I respect the fact that he is a genuinely independent thinker who has resisted getting recruited into the cults of both the left and the right. I believe we really need more of these people to disrupt, and ultimately discredit, the artificial social construct of the left-right divide. The left-right duopoly is not necessarily the same as the two-party system, because both parties actually have several different elements in them, some of them truly anti-establishment and transcending left-right boundaries. However, it is usually third-party and independent candidates who are best positioned to challenge the false dichotomy of left vs right, because they don’t have to pander to the left or right ‘base’. The fact that his campaign was taking votes about equally from both Trump and Biden/Harris also means that he is not just a spoiler candidate for one side. For all these reasons, while I didn’t personally support Kennedy, I was sort of happy to see that he was doing well in the polls. It is also the reason I’m disappointed that he’s endorsing Trump.
Kennedy and Trump are fundamentally different, despite superficially sharing an anti-establishment vibe. What you need to understand is that not every so-called ‘anti-establishment’ campaign challenges the duopoly of ‘left vs right’. For example, in the UK election earlier this year, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party performed unexpectedly well, and came in third place. However, Reform UK is strongly identified with the right, and it is indeed positioned to the right of the Conservatives. Therefore, it has taken votes mainly from the Conservative Party, and has only served to further polarize British politics along the left-right axis, by forcing the Conservatives to move right to defend their right flank. This is why the rise of Reform UK has only served to further worsen the polarization and toxicity of British politics. Similarly, in France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has effectively supplanted the more traditionally conservative Les Republicains as the major party on the right, but again this has only entrenched, rather than challenge, the left-right divide, especially with an equal but opposite reaction occurring on the opposite side in the form of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left movement. On the other hand, in the 2022 Australian election, the new Teal movement took votes from traditional conservative and center-left voters alike, to create a voting bloc that truly transcended the left-right divide. This has had the positive effect of disrupting the traditional left-right axis in Australian politics. It is no surprise that right now, Australian politics is much less left-right polarized than British or French politics. The point here is that, all ‘anti-establishment’ movements are not equal. Only those that attract people from the left and right approximately equally have the potential to truly dent the illusion of the left-right dichotomy. And this year, Kennedy’s campaign was at least able to do this. (In contrast, candidates like Stein and West are strongly identified with the left and therefore can’t break the duopoly at all. In fact, their strong identification with one side of the left-right divide further reinforces the divide, more so than the major parties.)
Here, I want to talk about Trump, and why I am calling him the ‘fake anti-establishment’ candidate this time around. I’ve never been a fan of Trump (can’t stand his personality), but I have to admit that, back in his first campaign in 2015–16, there were signs that he could be a genuine disruptor of the left-right dichotomy. His largely non-religious campaign, the fact that he didn’t care much about issues like gay marriage, and the fact that he wasn’t a fan of the neoconservative foreign policy establishment, provided several areas of common ground with those left-of-center. He also wasn’t as into traditional right-wing economic policies like cutting and privatizing social security, repealing Obamacare and replacing it with nothing, and anti-unionism. However, over the years, Trump has moved to embrace right-wing politics more and more, likely out of his own self-interest. As President, he appointed three hardline right-wing Supreme Court justices, while making things all about Republicans vs. Democrats all the time. He has not offered any olive branches to Democrats, which makes him more partisan than even Bush-43. Also, while Trump has criticized Bush’s Iraq War, his whole worldview is just as based on the stuff of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, if not more so, which makes it right-wing by definition. Even if he didn’t start any new wars, it clearly wasn’t because he was a peaceful dove like most libertarians and many progressives are. Meanwhile, he has increasingly embraced the religious right, to the point that they are at least as powerful as, if not more powerful than, during the reign of Bush-43, widely considered to be one of America’s most religious presidents ever. At least abortion and public drag shows were legal across all 50 states during Bush-43’s reign. We can’t even say the same today, unfortunately, and Trump and his supporters have a lot to do with it. If in 2016 there was some hope that Trump would be able to transcend the left-right divide at least on some issues, today there is no doubt that Trump has become a consistently tribalist team player for the right, on basically every issue. He has effectively become the nightmare version of Bush-43.
The truly anti-duopoly Kennedy endorsing the fake anti-establishment Trump is a major disappointment for those of us who want to break the left-right mirage. There’s still the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver of course, and I’m confident that he’s not going to endorse Trump (or Harris) anytime soon. However, not enough people know about him for his campaign to be able to make enough of an impact to counteract Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump, by showing that not everyone has to choose one side or the other. I guess we really need to have Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) everywhere if we wanted more truly ‘not left, not right’ voices and options, and most importantly, more people willing to support these options. Therefore, I hope that there can be a serious discussion about RCV going forward. Unlike Trump, and sadly Kennedy now, we can’t just give up and give into the left-right dichotomy, and those who want to play the game to reinforce it, when we know very well that it is ruining everything for us.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
