RFK Jr. Pledges Cabinet Roles for Libertarians, Greens, and Others
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invoked President Lincoln's "team of rivals" in a pledge to include minor parties in his cabinet.
Last week in Las Vegas, Nevada, Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned attendees at FreedomFest that America has come to find itself in a “cold civil war.”
President Joe Biden’s administration, he argued, has “weaponized government beyond anything in our history.” Former President Donald Trump, he believes, poured fuel onto the fire with his 2016 campaign pledge to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton.
He decried “tampering” in the 2020 election by 51 former intelligence officials who dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian propaganda in an October letter.
All of this and more, in Kennedy’s view, amounts to a Republic in a state of cold civil war. The American people are pointing to the two-party system as a key culprit for our country’s descent into tribalism and lawfare.
For ten years now, Gallup polling has found strong majority support for the belief that both major parties have failed to such an extent that a third party is needed. In June, Gallup’s poll tracking Americans’ party affiliation found that, for the first time, over 50 percent identified as independent.
Just 23 percent identified as Democrats, and 25 percent as Republicans.
New political choices are gaining significant attention and support in 2024, most notably RFK Jr.’s independent campaign and the Libertarian Party, which welcomed Kennedy and former President Donald Trump to their May 2024 Convention.
These rising voices have a rare opportunity to liberate American politics from its corrupted two-party system.
During the 2024 Libertarian Party Convention in Washington, D.C, both Trump and RFK Jr. pledged to appoint a Libertarian to their cabinet if elected.
These pledges represent a major victory for a party riven by fierce debates over its strategy and vision. No major presidential candidate in modern history has attended a minor party’s convention, let alone pledged to include the party in their cabinet.
The unprecedented political environment the country finds itself in has created an opening for new parties to break into the mainstream, and the Libertarian Party is, thus far, most effectively seizing that opening.
Kennedy, meanwhile, has seized the unique opportunities of the moment to tremendous success.
National polls consistently find him carrying double-digit support, his alternative to the CNN debate which he dubbed ‘The Real Debate’ received more than nine million viewers, and his campaign is exceeding expectations in its push for ballot access in every state.
Additionally, four minor parties (Reform, American Independent, Alliance, and Natural Law) and one state Libertarian Party affiliate have officially nominated Kennedy.
Last week at FreedomFest, Kennedy extended an invitation for minor parties to join his coalition and pledged to appoint a cabinet with four or more parties represented:
“Four years of truly non-partisan government, representing all of our people and not just the victors.
In service to this end, I pledge to appoint a cabinet comprising members of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party, and people from the Green Party, and other parties.
I pledge to you to convene a cross-partisan advisory committee to propose and select Supreme Court justices.”
He invoked President Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” as a model for the administration he would lead and for national healing.
Currently, Kennedy has won the nominations of four minor parties: the Reform Party, the Alliance Party, the American Independent Party, and the Natural Law Party. The Libertarian Party of Colorado also rejected the national Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver and instead nominated Kennedy.
Most significantly, this coalition of parties boosted Kennedy’s campaign by securing his place on the ballot in several key states: California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and South Carolina.
His pledge of cabinet roles is not limited to parties that have endorsed him, however. Neither the national Libertarian or Green parties support his candidacy, yet he named both in his pledge. Members of other parties, such as the Forward or American Solidarity parties, may have opportunities to serve as well.
The Forward Party, founded by Andrew Yang in 2021, is attempting to build a framework for new parties from a different angle than Kennedy or Libertarians.
Forwardists are primarily focused on advancing state-level initiatives to adopt ranked-choice voting, open primaries, and independent redistricting commissions, election reforms that supporters believe will empower centrist and non-partisan candidates. The party does not plan to nominate any candidate for president.
The Forward Party is also employing a strategy of endorsing Democrats and Republicans who sign a pledge to advance shared values in office. A handful of Forwardist candidates are running at the local and state level.
Several months before Kennedy named tech entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, he called Yang to ask if the Forward Party co-chair would like to be considered for the job. Yang was reportedly unenthusiastic about the idea.
The American Solidarity Party, which describes itself as “pro-life, pro-family, [and] pro-worker,” is looking to build support from conservatives dismayed by the Republican Party’s attempt to distance itself from its ardent pro-life wing and liberals dismayed by the Democratic Party’s abandonment of the working class for Wall Street.
Each of these parties represents a segment of Americans who, for a myriad of reasons, feel unrepresented by our government and disillusioned by the political mainstream.
Kennedy’s Independent campaign offers a working coalition to all minor parties in service of ending the two-party stranglehold on power.
Many minor parties have nominated their own presidential candidates, but there is plenty of space to build coalitions even with parties that are, on paper, competitors.
Libertarians in Colorado went as far as replacing the national party’s nominee with Kennedy on their state ballot, but national chair Angela McArdle also announced this week that the party is set to form an FEC-approved joint fundraising committee with Kennedy’s campaign, a move that allows both sides to raise more money.
Kennedy, Libertarians, Reformers, and other parties will have plenty of points of disagreement on strategy, goals, and values in a coalition to end the duopoly. This is inevitable.
These disagreements, however, cannot get in the way of this coalition to topple the two-party system. Currently, no one who is outside of the two-party system has a seat at the table in Washington, D.C.
For 2024 and the foreseeable future, independents and new parties should work in one coalition towards the goal of giving us all seats at the table.
The details of such a strategy may include direct support for Kennedy, pushing for cabinet positions, advancing election reform initiatives, uniting to support independent or minor party candidates in winnable local, state, and federal races, and much more.
The details are not as important as the commitment to seize upon the historic opportunity that Americans have in 2024 amid widespread anti-duopoly, independent, populist, and libertarian momentum to bring the two-party system to its end.
The Union Forward newsletter is published under The Daily Independent: An Independent Report for Independent Thinkers.
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The better he does = the better the future of this country will be. This is such an important movement going on & he’s helping to move the political landscape in the right direction!