THE KENNEDY NAME has long been associated with the highest echelons of United States politics.
From Joe Kennedy, the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, his sons President John F Kennedy, Attorney General Robert ‘Bobby’ Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy, through to Joe Kennedy III, the former congressman who currently serves as the US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, it’s a dynasty that now stretches back almost a century.
Presently, the most notable scion of the clan is Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of Bobby Kennedy, and challenger to President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee for the 2024 Presidential Election.
What is RFK Jr’s background?
RFK Jr has never held an elected post himself, but became a prominent public figure as a result of his campaigning against the official account of the assassinations of both his uncle John F Kennedy and father Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy was 14 years old when his father was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan while running for the Democratic nomination ahead of the 1968 presidential election.
In 2021, RFK Jr wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle detailing what he called “overwhelming evidence” that Sirhan Sirhan was not his father’s killer.
RFK’s campaigning on the assassinations was followed by a leadership position at an organisation seen as one of the key sources of health misinformation in the United States. Since 2015, Kennedy has been the chairman of Children’s Health Defence, an organisation that propagates the myth that vaccines are related to autism, ADHD, allergies and even cancer.
In this capacity, RFK Jr has appeared on podcasts hosted by Joe Rogan and Jordan B Peterson, as well as a recent Twitter Space with Elon Musk. It was during his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience that Rogan offered $100,000 to vaccine scientist Peter Hotez to debate Kennedy on the merits of vaccination. Kennedy has no medical or scientific qualifications, having won degrees in law from University of Virginia, and Pace University in the 1970s and 1980s.
Why is he running as a Democrat?
A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed that Kennedy makes a better impression with Republicans than he does with Democrats, where his unfavourability rating is 47%, compared to a 21% favourability rating.
He is way behind Joe Biden in New Hampshire state polling (70% to 10%, with only 4% naming him as their second-favourite option), which is significant due to the state’s status a pace-setter in the primary elections.
Last week, Kennedy floundered as he was grilled intensely by Democratic parliamentarians during a congressional hearing on the ‘Weaponisation of the Federal Government’. During his testimony, he was asked about previous remarks he’d made comparing the treatment of unvaccinated people to the treatment of Jewish people during the Holocaust.
During this hearing, Kennedy accused congresswoman Deborah Wasserman Schultz of “slandering” him, when she brought up a remark he made at an anti-vax rally in 2022, wherein he said: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
All of this begs the question: why is Kennedy running as a Democrat?
Throughout his public life, Kennedy has taken several positions that more closely align with what one would typically expect of a Democrat. Kennedy has long been critical of the use of fossil fuels and coal, is on record as having opposed the Iraq War, and represented indigenous peoples and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People while working as an environmental attorney. He endorsed Hillary Clinton’s run in 2016.
So what’s going to happen?
These days his public pronouncements tend to focus not on broader political issues, but on his pet obsession: conspiracies in medical science.
Last week, he was caught on camera at a Manhattan dinner party telling fellow guests: “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people… The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese”.
During a Twitter Space hosted by Elon Musk, Kennedy appeared to baselessly blame the rise of mass gun violence in the US on anti-depressants, saying: “Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events.”
Members of Kennedy’s own family have publicly rebuked him for these comments. His sister Kerry, who is president of the human rights organisation bearing their father’s name, tweeted: “I STRONGLY condemn my brother’s deplorable and untruthful remarks last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting.”
It is this kind of incendiary looseness with fact and truth that appears to be costing RFK Jr with the voters, while guaranteeing him regular slots on podcasts hosted by the kind of people who make their money indulging that looseness.
RFK Jr registered 15% support among Democrats in a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll. It is still well short of Biden’s 62%, and his chance of remaining in the race to any great effect seems a very long shot. It could be much worse for Kennedy, though. Unlike many US politicians – such as some of those vying with Donald Trump for the Republican nomination – Kennedy is not nowhere.
High profile Republicans like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott – all polling in the single digits – have far less support among their party than Kennedy has within his. As such, Kennedy is unlikely to drop out of the race, or throw his hat into the Republican primary instead.
JFK’s nephew is unlikely to follow his uncle into the Oval Office, but his campaign will continue to grab headlines and gather steam as long as his last name is Kennedy.
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