Like a moth to a flame, another Kennedy is drawn to the presidency. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has announced his intention to run as a Democrat candidate for president. How many assassins are out there thinking to themselves I'm the instrument of destiny, with another Kennedy to kill? Morbid thought, I know, but still... the Kennedy Curse is a hard notion to shake. Ted survived the curse, only to be taken down, at the end of his life, by glioblastoma multiforme, the same aggressive brain cancer that took my mom.
From what I've seen, RFK, Jr. is a moderate Democrat who, like a lot of mainstream Dems, is unhappy with how his party has been hijacked by the radical left. I haven't examined his policy positions in detail, but he seems like a reasonable liberal, not an out-and-out leftie. He's a big-time environmentalist, but his efforts seem to have been focused on things like cleaning up rivers by preventing companies from dumping toxic chemicals into them. I see nothing wrong with that, frankly; I've been preaching the same sort of pragmatic, deal-with-what-you-see environmentalism on this blog for a while, now. I'd like to think that Kennedy could give Joe Biden a run for his money, but Kennedy has one major problem: he suffers from spasmodic dysphonia, which means his throat involuntarily contracts while he's speaking—sometimes multiple times per second, making Kennedy sound as if he's suffering from a weird semi-cough or a really bad case of the hiccups. The man has to fight for every syllable.
Can people see past that problem? We like presidential candidates who are smooth, eloquent speakers, which is why everyone fawned over Obama (who was, truth be told, better with a TelePrompTer). Kennedy is, in a sense, already saddled with his own curse, one that makes public speaking a difficult prospect. I understand that a lot of fellow Dems, seduced by the wacko far left, are against him and his fairly anti-woke candidacy (he's been anti-vaxx, too), but I'm quietly rooting for him to get out there, to make his moderate message known, and to reintroduce some sanity to the left side of the aisle. I doubt he can win if Biden chooses to run, or if Gavin Newsom is slotted into the primary position (greasy Newsom, the Mismanager of California, is a name being tossed around). Who becomes the Democrat nominee is subject to the will of the Machine. The DNC, corrupt to its core, is the entity that determines who the eventual Democrat nominee is.
But who knows? Maybe Kennedy can become a kind of wild card, with his vocal condition gaining him a sort of sympathy vote. We'll see.
ADDENDUM: then again, the American people have been sick of dynasties for a while. No more Bushes, no more Clintons, no more Kennedys.
ADDENDUM 2: headline:
RFK, Jr: I Don't Want the Democrat Party to be the Party of 'Fear, Pharma, War & Censorship'
I was thinking, "Nothing could be worse than Biden" as I was reading along, and then you mentioned Newsom. Can you imagine the insanity that is California unleashed on the rest of the nation? Yikes!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the fix is always in with the DNC, so the plebes will get what they are given. Still, Kennedy does seem to be one of the few sane voices on the (D) side of the aisle.
In talking with people on both sides of the political aisle (mainly those I consider moderates), the best
ReplyDeletecandidate to ensure a Democratic victory in 2024 would be if President Trump is the Republican candidate.
Biden did not win the 2020 election, Trump lost it. I would guess that more people voted against Trump than for Biden, and I don't think that will change in 2024. DeSantis is shaping up as a mini-Trump and that carries the same baggage.
There was a recent leaked transcript of group of Republican mega-donors discussing not wanting to back DeSantis, with the gist of the remarks being, "If we wanted another Trump candidacy, we would donate to Trump"
The problem with the US primaries is they reward the extremes of the various parties, who then have difficulty in winning a national election.
Brian
A lot of people mistakenly think Trump divided the nation, that he was a force for division. The more realistic take is that he revealed the fractures that already ran deep in the culture. So many institutions (and citizens) outed themselves as being nakedly pro-left when Trump acceded to the Oval Office. We already knew the media were a bunch of leftists, but academe turned out to be over 90% Democrat, Hollywood put aside all pretense of balance (conservative stars like Mel Gibson and Dean Cain used to be able to find work back in the day; now, everyone just gets "canceled" for saying something as innocuous as that men are different from women), and the same was true at most levels of American culture. It's been Trump Derangement Syndrome ever since.
ReplyDeleteI certainly don't buy that Joe Biden legitimately received 81 million votes in 2020 after essentially hiding in his basement during most of his campaign. When Biden did have the courage to have rallies, they were attended by dozens or hundreds, not the tens of thousands that came out for Trump. If you look at TV ratings for American news channels, the right-leaning Fox News (yes, it's biased) always comes out on top, which is a good indication of which way most of America really leans. But the American electoral system probably gives too much weight to population centers, i.e., cities, which all lean radically liberal/left/Democrat. The true voice of America is to be found in its heartland, but because the population density is so much less, the heartland, when it votes, has trouble being heard. The cities dominate.
If you've followed my blog for a few years, you know I'm not a personal fan of Trump, probably for some of the reasons you're alluding to regarding his unpleasantness. I've repeatedly said on the blog that I'd never want to sit at dinner for two hours listening to the man talk about himself. But I am a fan of the man's policies and priorities which, to me, aren't radical or divisive at all. What reasonable person doesn't wish for strong borders? For prioritizing a strong economy and maintaining military might while also avoiding unnecessary wars (Trump started no new conflicts, quite unlike his predecessors on both sides of the aisle). I'm in agreement with much of Trump's agenda.
(Part 2)
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that—and I've also said this on the blog many times—Trump isn't a Republican: at heart, he's a 90s-era New York Democrat. His prioritization of the American worker (compare that to Biden's begging other countries for foreign oil while shutting down fracking & other parts of our oil industry), his hatred of globalistic free-trade agreements that screw America over while giving away the store—these are all marks of a 90s Democrat, and it's why so many Republicans, who prefer cheap foreign slave labor to make American products, despise Trump. Trump's unwillingness to use overt military might in the way of our neocon war hawks also sets him against the likes of GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, and the rest of the neocon crowd. Trump's project—which his MAGA adherents won't admit to—is to turn the GOP into 90s-era Democrats. Sure, Trump mouths certain conservative platitudes, and lately, he's been on a tear about "Marxism" as related to wokeness, but at heart, he's an old-school liberal.
Those on the left irrationally hate Trump because of the "R" behind his name (a reference to adding the label "Republican" to names shown on TV chyrons). If the left could drop its hatred, it would see that Trump has basically been fighting for their values. Or at least, the values they once held.
So I reject the idea that Trump shot himself in the foot in 2020. If he's pugnacious, and if people find that offensive, then people are superficial and should look more deeply at his policies. The biggest mistake that people make about Trump, over and over, is to look only at his words and tone and never at his actual actions.
As for DeSantis being a Trump-in-the-making... no. Anyone who's paying attention knows this isn't the case. And that difference is only going to become clearer in the next few months.