RFK Jr. knows he won't be president — but he's already achieved his real goal: analysis

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a descendant of the Kennedy political dynasty and environmental lawyer turned anti-vaxxer and Alex Jones-style conspiracy theorist, has managed to attract publicity with his campaign for president, largely with the backing of Republican chaos agents like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson even as he ostensibly runs in the Democratic Primary against President Joe Biden.

But he knows he won't really be president. He doesn't actually want to be president, argued Jack Shafer for POLITICO Magazine. Rather, he has a different goal altogether — and in some ways, he's already won.

"Seeing as it is Democrats and not the press or tech billionaires who select the party’s nominee, and the fact that Kennedy shows no sign of exceeding the sub-20 percent level of support among Democratic voters, his candidacy is stillborn," wrote Shafer. Moreover, "One clue that Kennedy doesn’t crave the political power that comes with the presidency is that, unlike his siblings, cousins and other Kennedy offspring ... he has never sought public office. The closest he has ever come to serving in a legislature was in 2000 when he briefly considered running for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s open U.S. Senate seat ... and in 2008, when he appears to have been on the New York governor’s shortlist to fill the seat when Clinton vacated it to become secretary of State. Or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, it could be that Kennedy has always craved power but wanted to start at the top."

What Kennedy actually wants, wrote Shafer, is "public attention" — and he has tricked numerous national outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post into giving that to him. The fact that much of that attention is negative seems to matter little.

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"In just a couple of months, Kennedy has gone from 'that anti-vaccine guy' to a staple of cable news coverage, making him The Top Kennedy for now, even if much of the publicity is bad," wrote Shafer. "It’s always been a competitive clan, so he’s got to be happy that he now occupies a larger presence in the public mind than his cousin Caroline Kennedy, an ambassador to Japan and now Australia, larger than her brother John Kennedy Jr., who dominated the headlines until his accidental death in 1999. Because it’s been so long since his father and famous uncles died, Bobby Jr. might even have eclipsed them as The Top Kennedy among younger voters."

"The current Kennedy moment will soon be swamped by the Biden machine," concluded Shafer. "But every day this final heir to America’s second greatest political dynasty spends on the hustings, he will continue rolling up winnings like an undetected card counter in Las Vegas."