RFK Jr. isn’t a serious candidate, but he is a serious threat

The debate terms agreed to by the campaigns of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump still include a wild card: whether independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will participate.

Whether Kennedy manages to qualify is one question. He needs to garner 15% support in four high-quality national polls and make the ballot in enough states to conceivably get 270 electoral votes. This week, Kennedy's running mate, Nicole Shanahan, pledged to pour $8 million into the campaign's ballot access efforts.

To date, Kennedy has confirmed ballot access in just three states—Michigan, Utah, and Oklahoma—worth 28 electoral votes and claims to have access in nearly a dozen other states worth 131 electoral votes. 

But regardless of whether Kennedy meets the criteria, there's no world in which he has any chance of winning the presidency. In fact, his running mate admitted they have no path and instead hope to influence "policy."