On all counts save for one (the COVID vax), the progressive left should be lining up behind RFK Jr. His message is as anti-corporate, anti-war as it gets, and certainly, on that score, he’s to the populist left of Biden.
Yet progressive media organizations either totally ignore RFK Jr. or go out of their way to smear him — which only serves to turn me on to his candidacy more.
The Young Turks, the MSNBC of the internet, has apparently instituted a total blackout policy on RFK Jr. There isn’t a single video in their archives this entire year about the candidate. They simply pretend he doesn’t exist.
David Pakman, one of the worst sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome, lamented RFK Jr.’s “off-the-rails” campaign launch speech (which was actually very good) and smeared him by associating him with Tucker Carlson.
Krystal Ball of Breaking Points (formerly of MSNBC) attacked RFK Jr. as an “anti-vaxxer” and then refused to explain what he got wrong about vaccines and, in fact, wouldn’t even let him answer at all.
This is how the Blue-No-Matter-Who-Except-RFK sh**lib class is going to handle things from here on forward. On the surface, this might seem like a damning prospect for RFK Jr., given his blackout on corporate media as well. But I don’t think it necessarily is.
I have seen some pundits pontificate that RFK Jr.’s candidacy is a hopeless moonshot. This is not true.
Donald Trump came out of nowhere in 2016, propelled by voters usually too disaffected to vote at all or begrudgingly voting for the Party standard-bearer out of sheer opposition to the Democrat Party.
Related: WATCH: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Reuters Propagandist Attack RFK Jr.
What is true about RFK Jr.’s candidacy is that the deck is stacked preposterously in Biden’s favor on purpose. The Party machine is going to try to lock Kennedy out by hook or by crook — just like it did to Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020.
The difference between RFK Jr. and Sanders is that the former has massive, perhaps unprecedented in the modern era, cross-party appeal — a truly rare thing in this increasingly polarized political climate. If Kennedy stands a chance, he’s going to need independent and even conservative voters to show up in the primaries. In closed primary states, this would require changing party registration. In open primary states, all it means is showing up on primary election date and ticking the vote box. Learn which one your state is.
There are other institutional impediments, of course. The Democrat Party, ironically for the party of Democracy™, employs an undemocratic tool it calls “superdelegates.” These are apparatchiks appointed to vote as they see fit in order to thwart any hostile populist takeover of the Party.
So it’s going to be a slog. But if you believe in RFK Jr. as a potentially transformative, once-in-a-lifetime kind of politician with integrity and a true vision for the country, and you’re inclined to reluctantly vote Republican-no-matter-who or simply abstain, consider showing up for RFK Jr. in your state.
Even if he doesn’t win the nomination, his candidacy could potentially expose the true depth of Biden’s corruption and fecklessness to a wider audience not normally plugged into politics, which could only be a net benefit for the country.
