In a piece by seasoned political reporter Peter Baker of The New York Times, the big takeaway is clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not just running against Joe Biden, but also running against his family.
Baker recounts how Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s only grandson, leveled a scathing indictment against his cousin’s ambitions, calling his run a “vanity project” and saying that he was sapping “Camelot, celebrity, and conspiracy theories” to fuel his longshot Democratic bid. His positions about COVID-19, vaccines, and far-fetched conspiracies have led several others to formally denounce him over some of them.
Equally difficult to know is how close the Kennedys and the Bidens are, ever since Ted Kennedy visited Joe Biden’s sons in the hospital after they got into a car crash that killed Biden’s first wife and unborn child. Biden calls Ethel Kennedy, RFK’s widow, and RFK Jr.’s mother, every year on her birthday, and the president has appointed several Kennedys to various posts in his administration.
“Everybody in our family loves Joe Biden, and Joe Biden has been very good to my mother and I think genuinely loved my father, probably as much as anybody who has held that office in the past 50 years,” Douglas Kennedy, a brother of RFK Jr., said to Baker. “That’s certainly a factor in everybody’s individual feeling about Bobby running.”
To be clear, RFK Jr. is nothing more than a nuisance for the Biden team. There are no Democratic debates this cycle and the DNC is behind their incumbent (why else would they shift the primary order for him?) all the way. Aside from polling in the teens, the black sheep of the Kennedy clan is getting a good chunk of support from Republicans who praise him as an “old-school Democrat.”
That the right would support a rival to Biden makes perfect sense. Ron DeSantis is even considering a federal appointment for him should he be elected.
Since Robert Kennedy has no realistic shot at winning, it will not matter in the end.
Still, it doesn’t help his chances when even the people closest to RFK Jr. will not support him. And when they are the equivalent of Democratic royalty, then that says a lot.
