Here’s the lead story at the New Yorker, late on Friday night:
If there are two things the media seem to agree on, it’s that:
* RFK Jr. has no real chance of beating President Biden in the primary.
* He must be covered obsessively.
This is just the tip of the last couple of days. And while I’m not privy to the internal numbers of any particular news outlet, the coverage really does seem disproportionate for a candidate who doesn’t seem to have much chance of winning any office. I suspect — though I don’t know for sure — that RFK Jr. gives good ratings.
And why wouldn’t he? He’s a Kennedy, and the Kennedys have been an American cottage industry for more than 60 years now. They’re glamorous! They’re tragic! They’re Kennedys!
I’m reminded of Donald Trump’s run for president in 2016. And if there were two things that the media seemed to agree on then, it was:
* He had no chance of becoming president.
* He had to be covered obsessively.
Whatever else he’s ever been good for, Donald Trump was great for ratings and clicks, both as a candidate and president. We know how that story turned out.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Yes. I can’t bring myself to read the New Yorker piece; I think I can guess what it says, and I don’t think there’s much about RFK Jr. that I don’t already know. He was irritating me before the Trump era.
And yes, it’s an open question as to whether the media coverage will be good for his numbers or not. Pundits I listen to think it won’t be, but as you suggest, it didn’t work out that way with DJT.
The dope I’ve heard is that his anti-vax flapdoodle mostly plays well with the right, and more visibility for him will shrink his numbers among Dems. But it ought to be remembered that anti-vax thinking pre-Covid clustered on the liberal side. Even 20% for RFK in a primary is a lot of anti-vax tolerance for Dems; maybe the number is more anti-Biden than anti-vax, but who knows?