Who are the declared candidates running for president in 2024?
2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the slain 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of the assassinated former Democratic President John F. Kennedy, mounted a primary challenge to Biden last April. His campaign announcement video drew upon the legacy of his uncle and father and outlined his desire to “scale down the war machine.”
Kennedy’s campaign website elaborates on his desire to “bring it home,” specifically highlighting the need to “stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another.” He said a Kennedy presidency would work to “end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations [and] coups” in addition to seeking a “diplomatic solution” to the Ukraine-Russia conflict that does not involve using “Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia.”
The Kennedy campaign has identified freedom of speech as “the capstone of all other rights and freedoms,” vowing to “dismantle the censorship-industrial complex, in which Big Tech censors deplatform, shadowban, and algorithmically suppress any person or opinion the government asks them to.” Additionally, the campaign has decried “the Covid-era suspension of the right to assembly, trial by jury, and freedom of worship,” insisting that the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic will “never happen again.”
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On the polarizing issue of abortion, Kennedy has taken a more nuanced tone than most Democrats who remain outraged over the overturning of the United States Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. At the beginning of his campaign, a section of his website devoted to “reconciliation” illustrated how Kennedy “has clear positions on most of today’s divisive trigger issues like abortion, guns and immigration.”
However, the campaign stressed that “he knows that both sides have legitimate concerns and legitimate moral positions.” Asserting that “no one is deplorable,” the website declared that “few relish the thought of dead fetuses, nor do they want to force women to have unwanted babies.” It cited abortion as one of several areas where the candidate would “draw on the broad moral agreements beneath our divisions, model careful listening, and create conditions where each group can hear the stories of the other.”
A year into the campaign, Kennedy released an updated position on abortion that vowed to “safeguard women’s reproductive rights” while working to “dramatically reduce abortion in this country” by establishing a “massive subsidized daycare initiative” and strengthening “adoption infrastructure” by increasing the child tax credit.
While Kennedy was polling at 14.6% in the RealClearPolitics average of Democratic primary polls as of Oct. 9, he has now dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination and announced that he is continuing his candidacy as an independent. On March 26, he named Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. As of May 10, Kennedy has secured ballot access in 13 states that boast a combined 147 electoral votes: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah.
Join Me For A Historic Announcement https://t.co/O8a3TDaPus
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 9, 2023
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
