Kennedy family members endorse Biden in rebuke of RFK Jr.
PHILADELPHIA – More than a dozen Kennedy family members endorsed President Biden for re-election at a campaign event on Thursday, saying he reflects the values and “moral leadership” of their clan’s most celebrated members, a move intended in part to counter the independent campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The family members – including siblings of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – were on hand during Biden’s remarks. The event came at the end of the president’s three-day sprint through the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he has tried to paint himself as a champion of the American middle class in the Kennedy mold.
The endorsement from members of America’s most famous political family was intended to showcase Biden as the torchbearer of the legacy of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), who was killed as he sought the presidency in 1968. It was an unusually personal rebuke of the senator’s son, who is portraying himself as the true heir to the Kennedy tradition, and it reflects the Biden campaign’s concern that he could siphon at least a small number of votes from the president.
Kerry Kennedy, a sister of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., delivered the endorsement, flanked by five of her siblings.
“We want to make crystal clear our feeling that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” Kerry Kennedy said. “President Biden has been a champion for all the rights and freedoms that my father and uncle stood for.”
She also said there was a stark choice between Biden and former president Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, that was both political and moral.
“A vote for Joe Biden is a vote to save our democracy and our decency,” Kerry Kennedy said. “It is a vote for what my father called, in his own presidential announcement in 1968, ‘our right to the moral leadership of this planet.’ “
The Kennedys did not mention their family member’s candidacy, and the endorsement is in line with the clan’s long, if informal, support of Biden. On St. Patrick’s Day, Kerry Kennedy posted a picture on X showing Biden surrounded by a sea of Kennedys.
Biden was a senior in high school when John F. Kennedy became president, and he sometimes traces his interest in politics to the former president. He also has a bust of Robert F. Kennedy in the Oval Office.
The echoes between JFK and Biden are notable. John F. Kennedy was the nation’s first Irish Catholic president; Biden is the second. And both contended with questions about how their faith would inform their role as commander-in-chief. Kennedy was asked whether he felt he would answer to the Pope, while Biden faced questions about where his political views veered away from Catholic doctrine, particularly on abortion.
Biden also had a long friendship with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), John and Robert Kennedy’s younger brother. The two served together for decades in the Senate, including on the high-profile Judiciary Committee. Years later, as Biden sought the presidency in 2020, he modeled his effort to eradicate cancer on President Kennedy’s push to put Americans on the moon, calling it the “cancer moonshot.”
On Thursday, Biden told the Kennedys and the crowd that he had been moved by Robert F. Kennedy’s example, and that he remembered the senator’s calming words to the nation on the night Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
“He inspired me,” Biden said. “And his passion and his courage inspired my generation.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to the endorsement with a post on X.
“I hear some of my family will be endorsing President Biden today,” he wrote before the event. “I am pleased they are politically active – it’s a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other.”
He added: “I hold this as a possibility for America too. Can we disagree without hating our opponents? Can we restore civility and respect to public discourse? I think we can.”
Biden’s campaign hopes Thursday’s endorsement gives the president a boost in Pennsylvania – a state he sorely needs to win in November – and beyond.
The candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has thrown an unexpected twist into this year’s presidential battle. He is the son and namesake of a legendary figure in the Democratic Party, one who spoke passionately about injustice, was brother to an idealized president and was martyred by an assassin’s bullet.
His ultimate effect on the presidential race remains unclear, including whether he will draw more votes from Biden or Trump, but his candidacy makes many Biden supporters nervous. He has embraced unorthodox and even conspiratorial ideas, for example, questioning the efficacy of vaccines and the role of those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Democrats, meanwhile, have developed a deep-seated fear of third-party campaigns. Some in the party believe that Green Party candidate Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000, and that Green Party candidate Jill Stein cost Hillary Clinton the White House in 2016.
This year, Biden faces not only Kennedy and Stein, but also Cornel West, a scholar and activist.
Thursday was not the first time Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s effort has run afoul of his liberal Democratic relatives. During the Super Bowl in February, a pro-Kennedy PAC aired an ad comparing RFK Jr. to former president Kennedy, prompting angry responses from some family members.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologized at the time, noting that the PAC was independent of his campaign and saying he was “sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain.”
On Thursday, however, the Kennedys did not focus on the dissenting member of their family. Rather, they aimed their fire at Trump, who Kerry Kennedy said is “attacking the most basic rights and freedoms that are core to who we are as Americans.”
“I can only imagine how Donald Trump’s outrageous lies and behavior would have horrified my father, Robert F. Kennedy, who proudly served as attorney general of the United States and honored his pledge to uphold the law and protect the country,” she added.
Among those who attended Thursday’s event were Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland; Rory Kennedy, a documentary filmmaker; and former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.) – all children of the elder Robert F. Kennedy and siblings of the current candidate. Another former congressman, Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.), was also there.
Although the Kennedy family has faded from its former political glory, it retains a powerful hold on the imagination of some voters, especially older ones, who remember the days of “Camelot” and the glamour of John F. Kennedy. His brother “Bobby,” with his mix of passion, idealism and tragedy, still embodies martyred American hope to a segment of the population.
Edward M. Kennedy took a different path, sponsoring numerous Senate bills over more than four decades in Congress. He had good friends among his colleagues of both parties until his death in 2009. Like other members of the family, however, the senator’s career was marked by sexual scandal.
While several members of the next generation of Kennedys – including some of those onstage Thursday – have held political office, they have not risen to the same level of political and cultural power as their parents.