Independent analysis of the US democrats and Kennedy Jr. by one of swed
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Dear mnid fans,
I thought this might be interesting for you. It's an analysis of the
democrats and Kennedy Jr. from on of swedens better and more independent journalists.
As a consequence of her independence in analyzing the election, she choose
to leave her job at one of the two mainstream newspapers in sweden, since
they insisted on rewriting her articles so much, she could no longer agree
with the content.
Enjoy!
🇺🇸 Democrats’ Realignment End with RFK Endorsing Trump
Auspicious outmanoeuvring of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. illustrate how
Democrats changed over the past half-century.
Malin Ekman
Sep 10
This article was originally published in Swedish on September 8.
It’s been over two weeks since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK)—nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy—announced he would suspend his campaign. Instead, he now supports Donald J. Trump.
Attempts at analysing RFK's reasons why have by and large been
unremarkable.
Most journalists simply note the sensational aspect that a member of the nation's most famous political family has chosen to embrace the enemy.
RFK, a prodigal son of the Democrats. An aristocrat who allowed himself to
be seduced by the wrong people and ideas. A sign of the times, they say,
that even a Kennedy may lose their way these days. All the more reason to
make a firm stand against the forces that now threaten the party's
cohesion.
This is how the Democrats approach their defectors—as victims to external forces, rather than as individuals questioning the party’s internal contradictions. If a person deviates from the party norm, it is the person
and not the party norm that is in the wrong.
The Democrats are aided in promoting this narrative about RFK by their
allies in established media. Instead of taking his political ideas
seriously, or his criticism of the party with which he identified himself
with for seventy years, the focus is on what is sensational.
Among the recurring examples highlighted in American media are RFK’s
claims about side-effects of COVID-vaccines, in addition to that time he
dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park (a so-called roadkill Kennedy
intended to butcher and cook, but later realized he didn't have the time
for, and so he instead attempted to stage the roadkill as a bicycle
accident). The latter episode is often cited as part of attempts to
illustrate RFK's personal character.
These descriptions are predictable how they reduce politics to
personalities, and also fail to explain why RFK arrived at conclusions
very different from those of his former party colleagues. And why, despite this—or perhaps because of it—he has become so popular.
What’s relevant in RFK's story, which the Democrats struggle to
acknowledge and the established media are reluctant to convey, is that it
is not he but the party that changed. Breaking with the Democrats is then
not about abandoning but to honor the political tradition his family
fought for. The party his uncle represented as president and his father as attorney general—and for which both died when they were assassinated in office—is no longer what it once was.
In his speech in Phoenix on August 23, RFK was direct.
"Back then, the Democrats who were the champions of the Constitution, of
civil rights. The Democrats stood against totalitarianism, censorship, colonialism, imperialism, and unjust wars. We were the party of labor, of
the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency
and the champion of the environment. Our party was a bulwark against big
money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy," he said.
In October 2023, he left the Democratic Party to continue as an
independent presidential candidate after party members obstructed his candidacy.
The Democrats still hold the image of a party that stands up for the
little guy against big and powerful interests. At the same time, it is
accused of being top-down and authoritarian beyond what is considered
standard for a political party seeking to govern a democratic society.
RFK has repeatedly described how the party worked against his candidacy.
During his Phoenix speech, he explained how arbitrary rules for collecting signatures were enacted so as to make it harder for other candidates. He
also accused the Democratic Party of abandoning “democracy by canceling
the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president”.
Challenging decisions and questioning the rules requires an army of
lawyers and millions of dollars. Kennedy knows this, since he tried to
overcome these obstacles through the legal system.
One could interpret RFK’s critique as outbursts of personal disappointment from a candidate who was forced to quit. Regardless of the truth to that
claim, his criticisms against the Democratic Party are significant for the upcoming US election.
In a healthy democracy, it is the voters who decide who can appear on the ballot, and the threshold for running for political office should be
fairly low, regardless of that candidate’s name.
The criticism of what the Democratic Party is important for understanding
both why new segments of voters and politicians now support Donald Trump despite disagreeing with him on several issues.
They do so because they find that the issues they agree with Trump on are
more important than those on which they disagree with him. It is about precisely the things RFK highlights: media tendencies to increase
censorship, lawfare via biased courts, and a government that prioritizes foreign wars over addressing problems at home in the U.S.
Essentially: the state of American democracy itself is now being debated.
When RFK speaks of how the Democrats "used to be" the party that defended ordinary Americans' interests against big corporations and opposed war and imperialism, it is a direct critique of how the party has changed, but
also an indirect nod to the Republican Party as profiled under Trump. The
party that is "anti-war" and represents the common American. That more
often than their opponents fights for free speech and against identity politics.
This shift in what the parties represent is rarely documented in-depth by
the established media, which prefer to scandalize political statements and actions—or bear dumps in Central Park—rather than put things in context to reinforce an entrenched image of establishment opponents as dubious
figures.
RFK said in Phoenix that the Democrats have become a party of “war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Money.” With that critique, he strikes at far more than just the party.
The former candidate (who clarifies that he remains on the ballot and
urges his supporters to vote for him in states where that will not affect
the electoral outcome anyway) says he believes he would have won—if the system had been like it was in his father and uncle's time. When the media
were “truly independent and untainted by government propaganda and censorship.”
It’s impossible to know if RFK is right in believing that the American
people would have chosen him as president had he not been opposed by the Democrats and the media. What is relevant for the presidential election, however, is that RFK now supports his former opponent, Trump, because he believes his own party has become a far greater enemy to the political
values that the Kennedy family believed in and fought for.
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© 2024 Malin Ekman
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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