Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that President Joe Biden isn’t going to compete in the New Hampshire or Iowa primaries next year as he can’t “control the results” in those states.
Appearing on “The Michael Smerconish Program” on SiriusXM, Kennedy said that, historically, Biden struggles in those two states, which will lead him to focus elsewhere. The president will instead wait to put his name on the ballot where he has a better shot of clinching the win, like South Carolina, Kennedy suggested.
“I think that President Biden is not going to even put his name in Iowa and New Hampshire. So I think he’s not even going to compete,” Kennedy told Smerconish. “I think that he did not want to compete in New Hampshire and he wants to go to a state where they … can control the results more.”
Kennedy pointed to Biden’s performance in the 2020 primaries as evidence. In the Iowa caucus, Biden placed fourth, receiving 15.8% support, behind current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). In New Hampshire, Biden placed fifth, behind Sanders, Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Warren.
“I think that he has never done well in New Hampshire, and I think he came in fifth in New Hampshire the last time. That’s my memory,” Kennedy said. Speaking on his own path to victory for the 2024 nomination, Kennedy said, “I have to win the primaries.”
The first state Biden won in the 2020 election season was South Carolina, with 47% of the vote. This came after his losses in both Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as Nevada, in which Biden came in second. Many credit his win in the Palmetto State to Rep. James Clyburn’s (D-SC) endorsement, which helped turn his campaign around, according to The Hill.
While New Hampshire and Iowa are historically the first voting states in the country, the Democratic National Committee switched it up for the upcoming election season, moving Iowa out of its first-in-the-nation slot and replacing it with South Carolina.
Kennedy announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president in mid-April, vowing to “end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country.” While a longshot candidate, he appears to be polling well against the sitting president, garnering 20% support in a CNN poll released two weeks ago. In that poll, 60% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters backed Biden, and the president’s favorable views had declined in the previous six months.
Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic and founder of the nonprofit organization Children’s Health Defense, appeared on a Twitter Spaces on Monday with the social media site’s owner, Elon Musk. During the conversation, Kennedy spoke on the importance of free speech and said he was “pretty much a free-speech absolutist.”
“There’s never been a time in history when we look back and say that the people who are censoring free speech were the good guys,” Kennedy said. “They’re always the bad guys. It’s always the first step toward totalitarianism.”