Biden, Eyeing the Menace From RFK Jr., Turns to the Kennedy Household for Assist

The frilly rollout of a Kennedy family endorsement of President Biden on Thursday — talk-show interviews, a marketing campaign occasion with the president, door-knocking by Kennedys throughout Philadelphia — was essentially the most highly effective signal but of rising concern within the Biden camp that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unbiased White Home bid presents a critical risk to the president’s re-election prospects.

Members of this outstanding Democratic household, together with most of Mr. Kennedy’s siblings, had already signaled their assist for Mr. Biden. Mr. Kennedy’s estrangement from much of his family had grown more and more obvious over time, as he grew to become a number one spokesman towards Covid vaccines and promoted conspiratorial theories concerning the 1968 assassination of his father, Robert F. Kennedy.

However this was the primary time Mr. Biden’s marketing campaign had been so aggressively concerned in selling the Kennedys’ robust backing of the president, making an open push to discredit any enduring Democratic credentials Robert F. Kennedy Jr. carries due to his household title.

After leaving the work to outside liberal groups, the Biden marketing campaign has now joined the hassle to outline Mr. Kennedy past the gauzy reminiscence of his father and two uncles, who for a lot of members of Mr. Biden’s fraying coalition, together with Black voters, Latinos and blue-collar employees, proceed to represent Democratic politics in America.

Democratic worries about Mr. Kennedy have grown as he has turned up his assaults on the president and labored to win poll strains in essential battleground states. Michigan election officers introduced on Thursday that he had secured a spot as a member of a little-known third occasion.

“I can only imagine how Donald Trump’s outrageous lies and behavior would horrify my father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who proudly served as attorney general of the United States, and honored his pledge to uphold the law and protect the country,” Kerry Kennedy, one of many unbiased presidential candidate’s siblings, mentioned as she stood subsequent to Mr. Biden, addressing about 150 folks at a recreation heart gymnasium in Philadelphia. “Daddy stood for equal justice, for human rights and freedom from want and fear. Just as President Biden does today.”

“Nearly every single grandchild of Joe and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden,” she mentioned. “That’s right: The Kennedy family endorses Joe Biden for president.”

Responding on social media, Mr. Kennedy averted participating together with his household’s rejection of his candidacy.

“I hear some of my family will be endorsing President Biden today,” he wrote. “I am pleased they are politically active — it’s a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other.”

Mr. Biden, thanking the Kennedy household for its assist, spoke repeatedly about how a lot the Kennedys — specifically John and Robert F. Kennedy — had formed his views and political profession.

“Today I sit behind the Resolute Desk where President John F. Kennedy once sat,” he mentioned. “I sit at that desk and I look in front of the fireplace. To the left is a bust of Martin Luther King. To the right is a bust of your dad.”

In fact, the controversy stays open about whether or not a Kennedy candidacy hurts Mr. Biden greater than it hurts former President Donald J. Trump. (One level of settlement between the 2 main candidates’ camps is that there’s little probability Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may win the White Home himself.)

Mr. Biden’s advisers argued that Democrats who could be drawn to the Kennedy title will drift away as they study extra about his promotion of conspiracy theories and the monetary assist {that a} main Trump donor has given to his super PAC.

Voters have expressed rising disapproval of Mr. Kennedy, according to 538’s polling average. As Mr. Kennedy has earned extra publicity from the information media during the last month, the share of Individuals with an unfavorable view of him has elevated by roughly six share factors. In Wisconsin, a key battleground, Mr. Kennedy is taking extra votes from independents and Republicans than from Democrats, according to an April poll by Marquette Law School.

Nonetheless, given the powerful re-election struggle Mr. Biden faces, his marketing campaign is transferring forcefully, and the occasions on Thursday have been the newest instance of that.

Whereas the Kennedy household shouldn’t be what it as soon as was in American politics, fading in relevance for a brand new technology of voters who could also be extra aware of the Clintons than the Kennedys, it’s nonetheless probably influential among the many sorts of voters in battleground states like Pennsylvania who seem susceptible to transferring to Mr. Trump.

“There’s a very famous tour that J.F.K. did of smaller western Pennsylvania towns in the ’62 midterms,” mentioned Conor Lamb, a Democratic former congressman from Pennsylvania. “There’s still pictures on the walls in every one of those towns of Kennedy being there and how much he meant to them.”

At 70, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems very very like his father and his uncles, John and Edward M. Kennedy. Within the Kennedy household, he had — earlier than his ideological drift lately — been considered as essentially the most politically gifted of Robert F. Kennedy’s youngsters, with essentially the most potential to embark on his personal profession in elective politics.

Now, although, a Democratic president’s marketing campaign is in search of to outline him as a candidate who, regardless of his title and legacy, is extra politically aligned with Mr. Trump than with the Kennedy whose portrait seems on these partitions in western Pennsylvania.

“You put the name Kennedy on the ballot and Democrats are going to feel torn,” Joseph P. Kennedy II mentioned in an interview after the occasion. “And we are trying to make them understand that this is an issue that they do not have to feel torn about.”

Requested if he would encourage his brother to drop out, he mentioned, “Of course I would.”

Nonetheless, if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stays within the race, Democrats hope that they’ll guarantee his assist comes primarily from voters who may in any other case have backed Mr. Trump, directly bolstering Mr. Biden and weakening his Republican rival. Mr. Trump appears cautious of this hazard, and has stepped up on his attacks on Mr. Kennedy, attempting to color him as a part of the “radical left.”

The primary tremendous PAC supporting Mr. Trump, MAGA Inc., launched a web site this week pushing these assaults, criticizing Mr. Kennedy over his insurance policies on taxes, gun management and local weather change. (The web site’s title makes use of Mr. Kennedy’s initials to name him “radical” and an epithet used to specific disdain.)

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has privately spoken with associates concerning the notion of selecting Mr. Kennedy as his working mate, although it’s unclear if he’s critical concerning the concept. When pressed at a marketing campaign cease in Harlem on Tuesday, Mr. Trump described Mr. Kennedy as a “nice guy” and a “good person.” Mr. Kennedy has mentioned he wouldn’t settle for a spot on a Trump ticket.

The blur of occasions on Thursday additionally highlighted one other distinction that would work to Mr. Biden’s profit: Because the president campaigned in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump was back in court in New York.