The last several weeks have been a veritable cornucopia of crazy events in politics. From the debate about golf handicaps to the attempted assassination of President Trump at a rally, it seems that this year’s election will remain filled with drama and strangeness. Interestingly, despite the blatant attempts to mitigate the Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign to the sidelines, his voice continues to rise in prominence with many. Seeing the vitriol, division and hatred espoused by so many partisans that culminated in an attempt on former President Trump’s life seems to have been a final straw for many in relationship to the two party politics that has left the American electorate in disarray and divided like no time in recent history.
Many Republican and conservative minded people have moved in the direction of Mr. Kennedy for his defiant voice during the pandemic, how he spoke out against the governments authoritarian response and the draconian mandates imposed on the people related to vaccines.
They have also come to appreciate his stance on war, money and a sensible approach to helping create a good environment both ecologically and within the citizenry. He proves himself over and over, to those who are listening, as the most thoughtful and reasoned candidate. Conservative people, who have struggles with how President Trump handled many things within his term in office, have found a salient voice of reason and one that speaks to the good nature of the American citizen in Mr. Kennedy.
Strangely in this cycle however, a political brand that has been above reproach in American politics, the Kennedy name, is struggling to pull votes from the traditional party of his family. His attack upon the political funding machine and corporatized Washington have made him a pariah amongst many of his fellow Democrats. It’s a strange phenomenon that in any other time, would never have happened. Robert Kennedy Jr. has always been the voice in their family, that matters significantly. His work as an attorney, fighting against the most amalgamated behemoths on the American business landscape was one that most from his party admired. They saw him as a reformed person, who cleaned up his life after many difficult struggles that resulted from his own fathers assassination, and went on to do much good for the things that he saw as wrong and unscrupulous.
He took on things that people on the traditional left championed. Environmentalism, crony capitalism, the war machine, and Big Business. He was the most consistent voice about the ills he saw - from the Hudson River, to the ruination of democratic discourse in the Citizens United decision, Mr. Kennedy spoke up and was championed by his party.
He turned down the chance to be a senator from New York to do the work he loved doing - advocating through law, the betterment of the environment. He stayed away from political office in order to accomplish the goals he saw as more important that legislating.
But he took on something within the state and business machine that changed how people perceived him. When he questioned the experts in the field of western medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, the entire world he had been celebrated in, was rug pulled from underneath him. He lost beloved friends and jobs, all because he remained dedicated to staying the course in the fight, against the injustice he had always been battling, the capture of government by corporations.
The fundamental of government is that it must be good. It must give people a voice, or it is of no use. Bad government is even more detrimental than just being a nuisance. It is punitive and vindictive. What Mr. Kennedy had been asking of the government we have, is that it be a good one - filled with integrity, honesty and decent people who saw public service as the highest calling. He believed that by allowing government to run roughshod over the people, is is breaking trust with them. Furthermore, by allowing that marriage between the corporations and government, you were ruining the spirit of what makes America the unique model of self governance in the world. He wasn’t the typical authoritarian asking for the defeat of capitalism or for more top down control, he was asking the people in the government to do the job that it has always, theoretically, been commissioned to do; set the boundaries for a safe and civil society.
Yet as Mr. Kennedy describes, the party moved away from the ideals he held. Those same ones that were passed down to him by both his uncle and primarily his father.
The ones that said that the poor and disenfranchised within the system are the ones who need the most attention. That a healthy middle class is the backbone to a civil and kind society. That living for the next generation is more important than that of personal gain. All of which drove Mr. Kennedy to the ends he lives out now.
All of those years of work within the field of law, where he took on the most powerful of entities and won, are finally at the culminating moment of his life and of the times. Mr. Kennedy is saying the things that people who supported Bernie Sanders, can get behind and support. He is saying the things that Donald Trump supporters can rally around and advocate for. His message is clear when he speaks, but comes across as an enigma for the partisan because they don’t know where to place him on the political spectrum. At times he sounds like a Republican. Other times he sounds like a Democrat. Most of the time he sounds like a populist. The appeal about him is not in his rhetoric but in his capacity. He has stayed dedicated to the same objective for his entire adult life; to create and demand a good government that is worth having.
If there were a chance to appeal to Democrats within the party to wake up and realize what has happened to their own partisans, it is now. Mr. Kennedy is the voice Democrats have been asking for.
He’s also the champion of democratic ideals, with real world accomplishments that the party has lacked in its candidates. He has been wrongfully accused by the very entities he knows need to be retrained if the republic is to have any chance at survival. If the last two weeks have proven anything it is that our politics are broken, nearly beyond repair. Joe Biden is frail and failing. Donald Trump is now more character than man - and has now been elevated in a martyrdom style coronation because of the attempt on his life. Mr. Kennedy is the only voice, that in a sea of troubled waters, has stayed steady to his way of thinking and his adherence to the values of his ideals. Democrats should take a much longer look at him than they have. They should also give the benefit of the doubt about what is being said about him, given the track record of an ever corporatizing media..
So many will recall what vilification was done to Sanders and Obama by the captured media. They would be wise to realize that perhaps the same thing has been done to Mr. Kennedy and that perhaps he is the sane voice in our moment. The party has been overrun with overly educated experts who have bought into the machine they once had skeptical disdain for. The former hippies and rebels from the 60’s have traded in their tie-dies for power and money and have corrupted the party beyond repair. Surely there are average American democrats who don’t want to go to the polling booth simply to block a second Trump administration. There might still be enough people left in that party who can wake up to see the damage that the power brokers have done and vote from a place that comes from the spirit of what might have been in an average democratic party voter’s type administration rather than out of fear of Donald Trump. Mr. Kennedy provides that avenue - and he does so by the convictions he has always carried with him in his actions and beliefs.
Essay 63 - An Appeal To Democrats