By Mark Andresen
Where rolling news brainwashing by the Media has fostered paranoia among the less politically committed, perhaps we should be less than surprised by the rise of a candidate who attempts to give voice to the concerns of both entrenched sides.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Zionist, a believer in private enterprise, and torn on the subject of the CIA, since his own step-daughter is a conscript. Therefore, it’s understandable that already committed US Communist groups will have no truck with a perception of him being any serious agent of change. What’s more interesting, however, from the point-of-view of an outsider, is a) what his own schizophrenic perspectives represent in the current intractable climate, and b) what effect these currently have upon former, obsessively committed, Red (Republican) and Blue (Democrat) states.
In the second week of May, a poll of swing voters in the Red US state of Georgia, asked the question: ‘If the candidates for the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination were Joe Biden, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who would you vote for?’ The result saw 36% for Biden, but a virtual tie with 35% for Kennedy, and only 11% for Williamson. (The once assumed ‘progressive’ choice for Liberals). After national polling during April of an initial 14% for Kennedy, then 19%, this was a gamechanging rise in one clearly perceived by constituents as more than just the latest stalking horse. Name recognition may have given him the instant PR advantage, but, clearly, there was more going on.
Why would an Establishment figure critique the Military Industrial Complex in the first place? Typical political cynicism and opportunism, eighteen months out from a Presidential Election? Or, something else? It is easy, yet necessary, to recall Kennedy’s past: an uncle, assassinated by the State in November 1963, and a father receiving the same fate less than five years later. So, his run has also to be personal. Alongside the name recognition, the ongoing backstory connects. Dissent on this broad topic – perhaps unique from within the Washington Establishment since the shameful selling-out by Bernie Sanders and the so-called ‘Squad’ ahead of the 2020 Election – also chimes with voter mistrust of the State that crosses party lines. Add to this, the wholesale turning away from social policy, in plain sight of voters, by both parties, in pursuit of endless war, and his rise among the disenfranchised working-class is almost inevitable. He also has a CV (or resume) of experience outside Washington that informed his stance against the war machine; specifically, a Liberal stance on environmental concerns.
This from his Wikipedia entry:
“In 1984, he joined Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) in 1986, two non-profits focused on environmental protection. He became an adjunct professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law in 1986. In 1987, he founded the Pace Law School’s Environmental Litigation Clinic, where he held the post of supervising attorney and co-director until 2017. He founded the non-profit environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance in 1999, serving as the president of its board. There was discussion in the press that the first Obama administration was possibly considering him as a candidate for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, but his controversial statements and arrest for heroin possession in the 1980s made him unlikely to receive Senate confirmation. Since 2005, he has promoted the scientifically discredited link between vaccines and autism and is founder and chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group.”
Where Kennedy crucially falls down is in an old-fashioned, romantic view of his party as one that harbours no actors of bad faith. A fatal naivete that will likely cost him achieving the top job, were he even allowed by the Dem leadership to reach it. Paradoxically, this might be the best outcome for him personally, since his own selling-out would represent a second consecutive voter betrayal (after Bernie Sanders) and reinforce accusations of ‘sheepherding’ tired, distrustful Dem voters back into the Democratic Party. Hence the call among some on the Left, who might otherwise have considered voting for him, that he should run as an Independent; something he has already dismissed out-of-hand. Then, Bernie Sanders ran as an ‘Independent,’ but, you’d never have known it from his voting record.
2020 saw Bernie Sanders betray his legion of young activist followers by folding to the Democratic Party Establishment rather than lead those followers out onto the streets. So far, there is no evidence that Kennedy won’t do the same. Yet, this time, there may be a difference, even if he does. Having been badly stung three years ago, there seems a greater understanding among the population today, across the USA, as to who the real enemy is, to which both Democrats and Republicans are beholden; it is this which Kennedy – bolstered by the double family tragedy of his own backstory – has tapped into, finding a receptive, cross-party audience; but, it is an appeal that his compromised position – remaining in the party – may ensure comes back to haunt him.
Finding polling figures on Republican voting intention proves difficult when most – if not all – search engines direct the researcher to the Group-Think opinion of newspaper editors hired to support the prevailing Democrat Government narrative. So, any objective study is currently inaccessible. Across the board, as of June, Kennedy is currently polling at 20%, nationally, confirmed by the Republican-leaning realclearpolitics.com. On youtube, a favourable Fox News audience typically comments; “I’m a Trump man, but RFK is a much better candidate than Biden.” Another writes; “Trumps alright, but RFKJ would be the best President we’ve had in years…” And again; “I’m Conservative and I can’t lie. I don’t dislike RFK at all.” Finally, “as a former Trump supporter, I would vote for RFK JR in 2024 if he can make the General Election Ballot.” (Fox News page, ‘Jack Dorsey endorses RFK Jr., says DNC becoming ‘irrelevant,” youtube, 6th June 2023).
Again, with no objective research to hand, it’s hard to say what these assumptions are based upon, policy-wise, beyond the continuing working-class disillusionment with the corporate uni-party system as a whole.
This side of the pond, it shouldn’t be underestimated just how mistrusted Kennedy is by the mainstream media ‘over there’; more than Sanders ever was. Indeed, the four-decades-long antipathy to someone perceived as ‘flaky’ mirrors that of the UK media towards Corbyn. Kennedy has been considered something of a crank; the black sheep of a family that, according to reports, has also distanced themselves from him since the publication of his two recent books on COVID: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (2022) and The Wuhan Cover-Up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19 (2023).
Yet, I would argue it is the mainstream media’s very covert protectionism surrounding this subject that has chimed as suspicious, as much with the working-class Republican voter as with the Democrat. Whatever its credibility, it is this issue, since 2020, allied to his familial backstory, that has given Kennedy a messaging advantage Sanders never enjoyed. Amongst the voters of both parties, there is far more suspicion of the pharmecutical industry than in the UK. The American working-class – consigned to private healthcare and a disgusting minimum wage of $7.50 (£5.81) per hour – has had sold back to them that they had an access to social services equivalent to that of the middle-class who’d set the lockdown rules.
Another PR self-inflicted wound by the Dem leadership has been their dismissing the idea of the once mandatory ‘live’ TV debates ahead of the General, clearly afraid that Biden’s cognitive malfunctioning would be too clearly on show, over an extended period.
Kennedy is no antidote to America’s problems, being too much of an adherent to the very Establishment he critiques. Equally, long-perceived as a ‘loose cannon’ by the MSM might, today, be to his advantage; just enough to open minds – across the country – for him to outrun that critique and be considered by both intransigent sides, disillusioned enough for any way out of the current political stitch-up. Even when, prioritising his career, Kennedy sells-out to the Democratic leadership, his message of mistrust, from within Washington, of the Military Industrial Complex and ‘Big Pharma,’ may well leave a more positive legacy in the minds of once unengaged sections of both parties voters.
Since announcing his candidacy, Cornel West – Socialist philosopher and political activist, couched in his Baptist upbringing – has now announced his own, crucially standing as a third party independent under The Green Party’s banner. Notably, he has also advocated the disbanding of NATO; a move, for one with his public profile, that singularly reaches beyond the confines of Kennedy’s well-meaning, but compromised, narratives. Only time will tell if the paradigm is beginning to fundamentally shift in tandem.
