A presidential historian known for his accurate predictions says Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. doesn’t have a chance at beating President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.
He also says Biden’s appearance of being disoriented has long been a characteristic, evident from Biden’s times as former vice president and a U.S. senator, and believes it has nothing to do with his actual ability in leading the country.
“He’s always been that way, for decades and decades,” Allan Lichtman told The Epoch Times, “It doesn’t mean he’s not functioning well or has some kind of impairment.”
For more than four decades, Lichtman, who is listed among the 100 most influential experts in politics, has been hailed as an expert on predicting outcomes of bids for the presidency.
His fabled system, known as “Keys To The White House,” has correctly predicted the outcomes of all U.S. presidential elections since 1984.
Under the theory, Lichtman applies 13 key factors, or what he calls “true/false” conditions, to determine the electoral college winner of the presidential elections.
The keys include the status of the economy, any existing scandal, the charisma of the sitting president versus challenger, the state of military affairs, and social unrest at the time of the campaigns.
In applying his theory to the 2024 elections, Lichtman said that Democrats will jeopardize their own party ticket “right off the bat” merely by choosing a candidate other than Biden because it compromises the “incumbency advantage” under his system. By not nominating Biden, it creates “an open seat”—another major key in Lichtman’s theory.
“The last thing you want is an open seat and a party battle,” he said, “No White House party has ever survived an open seat and a party battle.”
In disputing ageists, Licthman compared Biden to the late President Ronald Reagan who was 77 when he was reelected. Reagan had also drawn speculation during his second term about his mental competency.
However, that comparison has its folly.
In 1994, four years after Reagan left office in 1989, Reagan penned a letter to the American people announcing he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He was 81, around the same age that Biden will be starting his second term if he is reelected.
In furthering his position that Biden is mentally fit for a second term, Lichtman also pointed out that 76-year-old former President Donald Trump is not too far behind in age than Biden.
Lichtman said he is certain that the final showdown for the presidency will be another faceoff between Biden and Trump. Lichtman said that “so far,” he also doesn’t see any GOP challengers “having a chance” at “out rivaling” Trump.
In singling out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as somebody he thought had potential to nudge Trump off the ticket, Lichtman said he’s changed his mind after seeing him talk on a national scale outside of state politics. “It turned out the run is better than the reality,” he said.
For Lichtman, the same goes for Biden’s short-list of challengers, which right now includes Marianne Willamson, former spiritual advisor to Oprah Winfrey, and RFK Jr.
Name recognition, said Lichtman, is all the 69-year-old Kennedy has going for him.
“He’s such a minor candidate that he will be a ripple rather than a wave,” Lichtman said. “In my view, this is just a way for him to spread his bogus anti-vax ideas.” Lichtman added that “if he wasn’t a Kennedy, you wouldn’t be covering his ideas and nobody else would either.”
There have been some indicators that, despite the Democratic party’s interests to back their incumbent and not a RFK Jr. ticket as Lichtman confidently predicts, RFK Jr. has some sway among Biden voters.
According to a recent USA Today poll of 600 Biden voters, 14 percent of them indicated that they favored Kennedy with another five percent saying they supported Williamson. The poll found that 67 percent of the president’s supporters “are still behind him”—meaning 33 percent were not.
The poll was concluded the day before Kennedy’s April 19 inaugural campaign announcement in Boston. Since then, his Kennedy24 campaign has more than tripled its social media followers and Kennedy has garnered an endorsement from popular NFL Football player Aaron Rodgers, a known conservative and fellow vaccine skeptic.
Despite being pro-vaccine, New York City Council James Gennaro also recently endorsed Kennedy in a social media post. He attributed his support of Kennedy, who he identified as being a friend since the 1990s, to Kennedy’s track record of fighting for better environmental protections.
Early polling has also been favorable for Kennedy.
Just five days after Kennedy’s highly-attended announcement of his run for presidency, The Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School released results of a national poll it conducted of 18 to 29-year-olds.
The results of the 2023 Harvard Youth Poll showed that Biden’s approval readings have steadily dropped since he assumed office, down to 36 percent in its poll.
Preceding the findings and Kennedy’s 2024 bid, CNBC released a poll in December showing that 70 percent of Americans indicated they didn’t want Biden to wage a reelection bid, largely citing his age.
