As previously documented, the Democrat Party has a major RFK Jr. problem to contend with, the summary of which is that his energetic, principled brand of populism presents a stark juxtaposition against the senile puppet they currently have installed in the White House.
Consequently, any public exposure of this juxtaposition would not bode well electorally for the puppet.
The Deep State isn’t going to let its proxy in the White House go without a fight. Biden was already highly corrupted and manageable before he went senile as a lifetime Swamp creature first in the Senate and later as vice president,
Now that he is senile, it’s all the better for them.
The mice will play when the cat is away.
In the pursuit of non-transparency, the DNC recently announced there would be no primary debates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential nomination, which is more accurately termed a coronation.
Many liberal blue-check types agreed wholeheartedly with the unilateral snuffing out of the democratic process, because they are more concerned with form than function. For them, the mere semblance of Democracy™ without any of the messy substance is sufficient to maintain their position atop their moral high horse.
However, for Democrats who have not been fully indoctrinated into the cult of insular, elite Democracy™, the move seems ironic for the party that literally never shuts up about the evil Republicans destroying marginalized minorities’ sacred voting rights or whatever.
This all presents a thorny rhetorical dilemma for the Party managers, who must somehow reconcile their constant refrains about saving Democracy™ from MAGA terrorists with their refusal to allow the democratic process to unfold in their own primary.
The current strategy they have apparently decided to A/B test is to argue that calls to host primary debates are “right-wing” — leading with the predictable smear of candidate RFK Jr. as “anti-vaxx” in the first paragraph, which by this point might as well be in the corporate media style guide.
Via Media Matters:
Many conservative media figures are celebrating longtime anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign as a potential spoiler against President Joe Biden’s reelection, using his entry into the primary to call for Democratic debates — which usually aren’t held when a party is running an incumbent.
“Why no Democratic debates planned,” some in right-wing media incredulously ask, complaining that “the Democrats would like to see” primary debates, “but Joe says no,” framing business-as-usual as a Democratic establishment plot to “pave the way for Joe Biden.”
There were no official Republican primary debates in 2020, because the party ran former President Donald Trump as an incumbent. There were no official Democratic primary debates in 2012, because the party ran former president Barack Obama as an incumbent (though there was one unofficial debate with minor candidates). There were no official Republican primary debates in 2004, because the party ran former president George W. Bush as an incumbent.
Despite the clear, nonpartisan precedent, right-wing media are still trying to force the issue to broadly destabilize Democrats — and using Kennedy’s campaign to do so. Prominent Trump ally Steve Bannon, who encouraged Kennedy to run, has said that he could be a “useful chaos agent” in the Democratic primaries, and right-wing media are trying to make Bannon’s vision a reality.
Aside from the most obvious counterpoint that survey results show that Democrats don’t want Biden to run again, the correct response to the claim that RFK Jr. is being embraced as a right-wing “agent of chaos” is: so what? Is that any reason to cancel democracy by the party that calls itself Democrat?
RFK Jr. either engenders popular support for his policies or he doesn’t, which primaries are supposed to serve as the gauges of. Let the demented puppet expose him on stage if he’s so terrible.
