In this house we believe that science is real
(But also, we might be intrigued by RFK Jr.'s candidacy.)
I’ve never thought that Donald Trump was exclusively a phenomenon of the right. I’ve mostly thought he was a phenomenon of the right right now. A lot of progressives have seemed to think that Republican-slash-conservative voters might be uniquely vulnerable to hucksters-grifters-celebrities — it’s why all those “In This House” signs popped up during the Trump years — but I’ve always suspected that Democratic voters could be taken in if the right candidate came along.
The New York Times today reports on President Biden’s rivals in 2024:
Those upstart rivals include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist with a celebrated Democratic lineage who has emerged with unexpected strength in early polls even as he spreads conspiracy theories and consorts with right-wing figures and billionaire donors. Mr. Kennedy’s support from Democrats, as high as 20 percent in some surveys, serves as a bracing reminder of left-leaning voters’ healthy appetite for a Biden alternative, and as a glaring symbol of the president’s weaknesses.
Mr. Kennedy’s popularity in polls is largely because of his family, which has included three Democratic senators, one president and a host of other high-profile figures. A CNN poll late last month that showed Mr. Kennedy with 20 percent support against Mr. Biden found that the main reason voters liked him was because of the Kennedy name.
Twenty percent support in the polls isn’t nothing, but it’s also nothing to sneeze at. Which is nuts because — if you don’t know — RFK Jr. is a bit of a conspiracy theorist:
Prior to launching his 2024 campaign, the 69-year-old Kennedy spent well over a decade as a leading voice in the anti-vax movement, amplifying the falsehood that vaccines cause autism (including in the pages of this magazine, in a 2005 exposé that was later discredited) and, more recently, spreading conspiracy theories about injuries supposedly caused by Covid-19 vaccines.
Discussing the future of warfare, Kennedy said that there are bioweapons development labs “all over the world,” working on projects “including, you know, ethnic bio weapons that kill people from certain races, etc., that are designed to do that, and they already have them and they’re ready to escape.” For now, such weapons are purely hypothetical — the stuff of science fiction — but nobody challenged Kennedy’s assertion. “So now every country in the world, or many, many countries are now developing [bioweapons], and we should shut the whole thing down,” he continued, adding, “You know, Covid was clearly a bioweapons problem.” That false claim is conspiratorial misinformation that has circulated since the beginning of the pandemic.
It’s nice to presume that Kennedy’s support comes from his family name and that if Democratic voters find out about his wacko positions they’ll back off and vote more responsibly — but what if the branding matters more than the substance? It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in American politics. And that means RFK Jr. could play a spoiler in the 2024 election.
My former colleague Damon Linker recently conjured up the possibility that “Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr team up in a cross-partisan, populist-conspiracist presidential campaign that defeats the party of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in a landslide next year.”
Of course much of this is probably just opportunistic good cheer about President Biden’s political struggles. But there is also a real kinship between the anti-establishment fervor that currently animates the right and RFK’s recklessly sweeping dissent from the institutional deference that prevails among so many Democrats these days.
That opens up the possibility of a cross-spectrum, populist-conspiracist politics united in its hostility to any and all institutional establishments—and support, in its place, for post-ideological, charismatic-strongman leadership. Add 10 or so percentage points from the Democrats to the 47 percent Trump won in 2020 and it just might leave the ideological-institutionalists of both parties in the dust.
Now, I don’t think RFK Jr. will beat Biden in a primary, and I also don’t think he’ll team up with Trump next year. But I wouldn’t have thought that Trump could win in 2016 either. So: I’ve learned to be cautious.
Also: 10-20 percent of Democrats doesn’t equal the overwhelming fervor Republicans have shown for Trump despite everything. But it suggests susceptibility to crankery is not entirely a conservative phenomenon. Dems better make sure their own house is in order.
You may recall that anti-vax tomfoolery was largely a leftist phenomenon years before Covid. And during Covid, the most rabid anti-vax people I saw on my Facebook feed were longtime leftist Bernie supporter type people. That sample isn’t even remotely scientific, but it fits comfortably with your point here.
I was going to write about RFK Jr. at some point, and when I do I may or may not mention you. But I want to acknowledge here that you are onto something. I wish you weren’t!