One of the most unlikely political upsets in American history is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is attempting to pull off, and Democrat Party divisions may provide the underdog candidate with a much-needed early boost.
According to a report from Axios, it is becoming more probable that the incumbent president will not be on the ballots in the first two Democratic primary races in 2024 due to controversy about which states would be the first voters in that election. President Biden’s team stated that the sitting president will not place his name on those ballots if Iowa and the New Hampshire Democrats reject the DNC’s suggested changes to the primary timetable and go ahead with voting first, ostensibly ignoring the fact that they are going to hold both a caucus and a primary. In the event of a shakeup, RFK Jr. would emerge as the Democratic front-runner and most well-known name on each of the states’ ballots.
After President Biden stated that he preferred the Palmetto State to cast his ballot first, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chose to make South Carolina its opening primary state in February. In contrast to decades of custom, the DNC wanted to place “black voters at the forefront of the process,” breaking the pattern of Iowa and New Hampshire casting their ballots for the Democrat and GOP presidential choices first.
In a letter from last December, Biden stated that “although black voters mostly have been the foundation of the Democratic Party for decades, they have been marginalized throughout the early primary process. We rely on such voters in presidential elections, but we haven’t given them enough credit when it comes to our nomination process. It’s time to give these voters a stronger, earlier involvement in the process and to no longer take them for granted.”
Democrats in Iowa as well as New Hampshire were offended by the action. New Hampshire Dems. openly criticized Biden for moving them down in the primary timetable, and the state would have to change its laws to comply with the DNC’s proposal. The decision-making process, according to Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), was “flawed” because “top party officials had a distinct agenda from the beginning.”
The chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, Rita Hart, expressed some unhappiness with the DNC’s procedures even if Iowa Democrats weren’t as outwardly angry with Biden and the DNC. According to Hart, the choice revealed that Democrats no longer cared about rural people, and they had “turned their backs on Iowa and rural America.”
