Photo courtesy of Oregon Public Broadcasting

The American 2024 presidential election is proving to be unlike any other in the nation’s history. One reason for this unusualness is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an Independent candidate for president who had recently secured official ballot access in Michigan.

Kennedy, a Democrat turned into an Independent, has been making a splash in the political scene. Recent polls show Kennedy is beating both Biden and Trump in terms of favorability— averaging around 7% and getting as much as 22% of the expected vote for the 2024 election.

President Biden and former President Trump have low approval ratings, and self-identified Independents are, for the first time, a larger group than either self-identified Republicans or Democrats. These facts give credit to the possibility of a third-party victory.

“All I need to do… is get 34% of the vote and I can walk away with 270 electors,” Kennedy said in an interview with PBS.

Kennedy has a large variety of stances that spread him across the political spectrum, some of these stances bring controversy to his name and others are a source for the candidate’s popularity. Here is a rundown of Kennedy’s stances and beliefs on abortion, the economy, Big Pharma, foreign affairs and the environment going into the presidential election.

Abortion

Kennedy has said that he is personally in favor of lessening abortion restrictions. However, he has not decisively stated whether or not he would support any federal action on the matter. Kennedy also highlights the respect that he has for the belief that life begins at conception, while still disagreeing.

“I don’t think anything is a satisfactory solution, but ultimately we have to trust the moms,” Kennedy said in an interview with Breaking Points.

Economics

In reference to the economy, Kennedy also talked about his plans to relieve the housing crisis in the U.S. so that young families could more affordably purchase housing. This highlights RFK’s goal to revive the middle class.

Kennedy has attributed the housing crisis to large corporations, like Black Rock, purchasing single-family homes so that the housing can be rented out for profit. Kennedy said that he wished to break this system.

“I’m going to offer a law that will penalize large investment firms from owning multiple units of single-family housing so it will no longer be profitable,” Kennedy said in a podcast with Howie Mandel.

A large part of what Kennedy sees as a problem for poor and middle-class Americans is inflation which also contributes to the rising house prices. Kennedy sees things like military spending and high healthcare costs as things that cause inflation to increase rapidly.

“Inflation and high-interest rates are just medicine and they’re both poisonous medicines and so we need to get spending under control,” Kennedy said in an interview with Fox News.

Kennedy’s relationship with those in power was strenuous. Much of Kennedy’s appeal has been his anti-establishment positions — being against the corporate influences of pharmaceutical and defense industries on politics.

Pharmaceutical Industry

Kennedy was a vocal opponent of the pharmaceutical industry, specifically the vaccine industry in the U.S. He explained that the industry lacked safety protocols, instead chasing profit and using the U.S. government as a means of securing permanent customers.

“A lot of these products were added to the schedule because they enriched the companies,” Kennedy said in an interview with CNN, in reference to vaccines.

Kennedy has stated that he does not believe in mandating any vaccines in any way and that most vaccines are not proven safe. These beliefs have caused some to call Kennedy conspiratorial and dangerous, but he denies this.

Defense Industry 

Kennedy departs from many mainstream positions on foreign involvement. Kennedy has expressed a desire for peace in Ukraine and expressed his criticism for the large amount of military aid spending that the U.S. is engaged in.

“I would do everything differently, I would negotiate with the Russians, which is what they wanted from day one,” Kennedy said at the Iowa State Fair.

Despite Kennedy’s anti-war stance with Ukraine and elsewhere, he has been an avid supporter of Israel concerning the war in Gaza. While Kennedy supports peace in the region and wishes to see a solution, he has stated that first and foremost Hamas needs to be destroyed.

“Hamas is oppressing its own people, it’s stealing from them… it has one purpose which is to annihilate Jews,” Kennedy said in an interview with Breaking Points.

On a grand scale, Kennedy is supportive of consolidation efforts and reducing the role of the U.S. militarily. Kennedy said that the U.S. projection of military power abroad has built resentment of the U.S. amongst foreigners, which is contributing to constant wars.

“I believe that our military around the world is stirring up hatred of America,” Kennedy said in an interview with The Free Press.

Kennedy is also a critic of the military industry in the U.S. declaring that he will stand up to the military-industrial complex and bring home American soldiers. 

“As long as our major exports are weapons and war, we will never have a middle class in this country,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy instead believes that the funding and effort spent abroad should be focused internally in areas such as the U.S.-Mexico border. Kennedy declared that he would close the southern border after visiting it. Kennedy described how he changed his mind on border policy — going from believing that an open border would be humanitarian, to now being staunchly in favor of heightened border security.

“The Mexican drug cartels are running immigration policy in this country, no American wants that,” Kennedy said in an interview with NewsNation.

Environment

Kennedy’s career prior to entering the political race was being an environmentalist lawyer. Kennedy was involved in many lawsuits against large corporations to prosecute corporate malpractice when it came to environmental cleanliness and public safety.

Despite his environmentalist past, Kennedy has explained that he does not believe in government intervention on climate change. Kennedy, perhaps trying to appeal to more Libertarian right-wing voters, has said that the market would be best capable of deciding these changes.

“I believe in free market capitalism… you can build a solar plant for a billion dollars a gigawatt… a coal plant will cost you about three and a half billion dollars a gigawatt,” Kennedy said in an interview on the All-In podcast.

Kennedy’s wide array of stances make him a complicated figure, and one hard to categorize. Is Kennedy a right-wing or left-wing candidate?

According to Trump, in a recent statement, Kennedy is more left-wing than Biden is. Trump stated that Kennedy was more aligned with the Democratic party than Biden. This all takes place after Kennedy supposedly denied becoming Trump’s vice presidential pick. 

“If I were a Democrat I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden,” Trump said in a recent video.

In contradiction to this, many Democrats have denounced Kennedy as a right-wing candidate. Many have called him a right-wing conspiracy theorist, while others claim that Kennedy is a Republican plant meant to spoil the election for Trump.

The Democratic National Committee has been using a number of tactics to slow Kennedy and his campaign.

Kennedy responded to these contradictory views on his politics with his own statement. In his response, he denounces the whole concept of right versus left and says that he sees himself as a candidate for the entire nation.

“We’re here to change the political conversation, entirely replacing partisanship and tribalism,” Kennedy said in a recent video.