RFK Jr urges Democratic Party to use ‘neutral polling’ to name new presidential nominee

WASHINGTON (TND) — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared to caution the Democratic Party Sunday against automatically naming Vice President Kamala Harris its new presidential nominee.

President Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the race in a letter shared to X Sunday. The president noted while he always intended to continue his campaign, he has realized stepping aside is best for both the Democratic Party and the U.S. as a whole.

In a follow-up post, Biden also formally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Kennedy wrote on X shortly after the announcement that he applauds Biden’s decision. He added that the president’s “progressive deterioration” and “abandonment of Democratic Party principles” are what motivated him to launch his own presidential campaign.

Yet the response of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] was to try and hide President Biden’s degeneration from the American public and disable democracy to ram him through to his party’s nomination,” Kennedy said. “Many Americans fear that the same DNC elites are about to rig the nominating process again to get a monumentally unpopular vice president to step into President Biden’s shoes.”

The independent candidate went on to caution the Democratic Party against “anointing a candidate hand-picked by DNC elites.” He urged the party to assess “neutral polling” numbers to determine who is best fit to beat former President Donald Trump in November.

“The delegates should then select a nominee based on this information,” Kennedy said.

“If they had done this to begin with, I would not have had to leave the Democratic Party,” he concluded.