RFK Jr. has the potential to sway mothers to embrace the ‘Kennedy Republican’ ideology.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of former President Donald Trump is a classic example of Ronald Reagan’s famous explanation for the change in his political allegiance: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”

And it has the power to tip the election in Trump’s favor, especially in the swing states that will decide it.

Endorsements, while highly coveted by politicians, don’t usually change election outcomes, but this one feels different.

Kennedy, a blue-blood Democrat from the nation’s most famous political dynasty, is speaking to many fellow “former Democrats” — especially newly activated moms like me.

In contrast to the hasty anointment and enforced “joy” of Kamala Harris — who until a month ago was a historically unpopular vice president — Kennedy raises big issues and treats voters like adults whose votes must be earned.

He talks about topics that have traditionally galvanized liberal and progressive Democrats: free speech, protecting the vulnerable, championing the environment and fighting for the American family.

School closures, migrant surges, steep inflation and radical gender policies have created disgruntled Democrats and irate independents who might vote for a Republican — think of how in past decades Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg fared in deep-blue New York.

These voters have so far resisted Trump and the MAGA movement, but RFK has a shot at swaying them.

Last week the independent presidential candidate went all-in on a stirring explanation of what “Make America Great Again” really means.

“Troubled liberals,” he acknowledged, may think it signals a “return to an America before civil rights, gay rights and women’s rights.”

But RFK said that for him, Trump’s signature phrase “recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself . . . a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class and an idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice and democracy.”

His words resonate with me, a former Bernie Sanders supporter who has voted Democrat in every presidential election for three decades.

I even ran for office as a Democrat — for City Council in 2021 and Congress in 2022 — trying doggedly, and unsuccessfully, to pull my party out of the fringe left and back to the moderate middle.

But elected Democrats in New York, many of whom I voted for, have now lurched so far left that they’re punishing public school parents for merely suggesting that we discuss — just discuss! — school gender guidelines that allow boys in girls’ sports.

It’s hard to square the values that originally made me a Democrat with what I saw at the party’s national convention, top-heavy with rich, elite scolds who think they are better and know better. 

I saw self-satisfied censors comfortable with authoritarian edicts about our health care, hypocrites about public education, cavalier about our kids’ curriculum morphing into left-wing indoctrination sessions.

People who still prefer dangerous Defund the Police policies over law and order, and have a weird fixation on promoting abortion, rather than the “safe, legal and rare” framework most Americans support.

Ronald Reagan’s ability to speak to middle-class voters about their actual concerns created the “Reagan Democrat.”

Kennedy’s earnest articulation on real issues like solving childhood obesity, stopping expensive foreign wars and decrying the censorship that leads to totalitarianism now has the power to create “Kennedy Republicans” — a voting bloc that could decide our next president.  

The shameful efforts to wage lawfare against both Trump and Kennedy to keep both men off the ballot were meant to silence their ideas instead of offering better ones.

Moms who objected to school closures can relate: The Harris-Biden administration did the same thing to us, by pressuring media platforms. That’s why organizations like Moms for Liberty, which will host Trump this weekend at their national summit, have attracted so many former Democrats.

Kennedy may have started a trend: On Monday, Tulsi Gabbard, another former Democratic presidential candidate, announced her endorsement of Trump, citing foreign-policy concerns chief among her motivations. Both of them have joined Trump’s transition team.

Kennedy’s and Gabbard’s desire to talk about the big issues stands in sharp contrast to the “brat” veep who won’t articulate or defend her policies to the press.

And Harris has a record — she was named the Senate’s “most liberal” member in 2019, and has floated Marxist ideas like price controls and “equality of outcomes.”

For Democrats wary of radical left-wing policies, it’s time to reverse course. “Kennedy Republican” has a nice ring to it.

Maud Maron is a city public-school parent and president of the consulting firm ThirdRail.