THE DISRUPTER?  Will the unexpected event shake up the Democratic Party?  Probably.  From Reuters: 

(Reuters) - U.S. presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce he is running as an independent instead of pursuing his long-shot bid to oust President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party nominee, a shift that could complicate the 2024 election.

Anti-vaccine activist Kennedy, a member of a storied U.S. political dynasty, posted a video on YouTube on Friday asking Americans to join him for a "major announcement" in Philadelphia on Oct. 9.

"I'll be speaking about a sea change in American politics," he said, decrying corruption in "both parties."

"How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?" he asks. "It's not through playing the game" by the current rules, he said.

Kennedy is nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and the son of former U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his own presidential bid.

Kennedy said in April he would challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination to run against the Republican nominee, expected to be former President Donald Trump.

Since then, Kennedy has complained that the Democratic Party has "essentially merged into one unit" with the Biden campaign, denying him a fair shot in the nominating contest. Several opinion polls put Biden way ahead of Kennedy in single digit percentages or low double digits.

COMMENT:  Bottom line, if Kennedy actually goes through with this, and runs a full-length campaign, he is likely to get some percentage of the vote, even if it's only four or five percent.  There's always room for a protest vote out there.  Then the question is, where will those votes come from in the general election?  From Biden?  From Trump? From a newly registered pool of voters?

Chances are that Kennedy will take more votes from the Democrats, meaning Biden.  And even a drop of two percent in Biden's vote can cost him some key states in the Electoral College.  You can be sure professional Dems are taking Kennedy seriously, even if he has no real chance of winning.  They will probably try to picture him as a crackpot conspiracy theorist, and that might just work.  It's all speculative at this point.

October 1,  2023