The Kennedy name is part of a popular political mythology about events more than a half century ago; they’re thought of as heroic seekers of justice in the years after the dark funk of the McCarthy era.
I could go into an extended rant about how many inaccuracies are baked into popular assumptions about those days, with one huge consequence getting conveniently ignored. The bad guys mostly won. Nixon ultimately became president. The stage was set for shedding elements of social welfare in favor of billionaire welfare.
I guess you could call the candidacy of Bob Kennedy, Jr. the ‘best defense is a good offense’ move on the part of the movement to force the end of representative democracy with a learning curve.
Step one in getting his popularity to fall into fringe candidate status is to stop calling the man. RFK. Call him “Bob” and avoid the family surname in conversations and commentary. Personally I favor “Famous Name Bob,” but trust that people will come up with other creative approaches.
Famous Name Bob is the perfect sucker for Steve Bannon’s flood the zone with shit theory of warfare. Wishy-washy about Biden? Concerned about The Donald? Our 21st Century Rasputin has got a deal for you!
The facts about Bob K. and his candidacy are indisputable. As for the man himself, his legacy has led Bob to believe he’s so special that anything he says or does doesn’t count against his credibility. I liken it to Trump’s claim about shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it.
While the shrinks of America haven’t codified fame/wealth as a critical factor in this flavor of mental illness, we’ve got decades of cases to study waiting in the wings. (How about that Howard Hughes fellow, completely unhinged and unconstrained by societal norms? Or Diddy? Or Sadam?)
Building on his (just asking questions/I never said that) statements about COVID vaccines, fellow travelers on that road have become his base. If Donald Trump is repulsive to these privileged suburbanites, Famous Name Bob will be there to carry the torch of nihilism.
Mother Jones just published an article about a couple intimately involved in his candidacy with a story starting in San Diego.
On March 23, Steve and Tracy Slepcevic hosted a fundraiser for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the San Diego area. Tickets started at $575, and those who paid $2,750 were to be treated to a “private sunset reception” before RFK Jr. would chat with the assembled and pose for photos.
It was hardly surprising that the Slepcevics were supporting Kennedy, given that Tracy is a long-time anti-vaxxer prominent within the autism community. But the personal politics of the Slepcevics illuminate the weird currents propelling Kennedy’s White House bid, for the pair have hobnobbed with QAnoners, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and other pro-Trump extremists.
Steve, who has a checkered past as a businessmen that includes an arrest (but not a conviction) for allegedly defrauding victims of Hurricane Katrina, was in the crowd of Trump devotees outside the Capitol on January 6.
I get it that all national stage politicians are more-or-less forced by the (lack of) rules of the game to suck up to ultra-wealthy donors looking for favors or recognition. But Famous Name Bob’s big daddy is also a major funder of the MAGA candidate.
Reclusive heir Timothy Mellon, is that big daddy. For a concise bio, I turned to Wikipedia:
In the 2018 election cycle, Mellon was a major political donor, especially to the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund. According to OpenSecrets, in 2020 and 2022, he was the 6th and 5th most prolific donor in the US, spending $60 million and $47 million respectively to support Republican candidates and causes.
Mellon's self-published autobiography describes his political views. Mellon called social safety net programs "Slavery Redux," adding: "For delivering their votes in the Federal Elections, they are awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on, and on.
Vice-Presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who funded the controversial Super Bowl ad cross-posting dropping her guy’s image in with JFK. The Kennedy family demanded and got an apology for the video, with the weak sauce excuse that funding was through a Super PAC rather than the campaign.
Who dat, you say? Mark Sumner has some answers:
Shanahan is the former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth Forbes estimates at $120 billion. In divorce proceedings after just under four years of marriage to Brin, Shanahan reportedly sought over $1 billion from her ex-husband. That might seem like a relatively tiny fraction of Brin’s fortune. After all, Mackenzie Scott walked away with an estimated $38.3 billion in her 2019 divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
But the $1 billion figure seems generous considering that Brin and Shanahan’s marriage fell apart after Shanahan reportedly slept with Elon Musk.
Shanahan appears to share Kennedy’s disdain for vaccines, falsely linking them to long-term diseases and a widely debunked theory that they cause autism in children. She also expresses beliefs that people are being negatively affected by “electromagnetic pollution” from cell phones. Despite the Associated Press insisting that the 38-year-old Shanahan “brings youth” to RFK Jr’s ticket, what she really brings is her bank account.
So far it appears that the VP candidate is absent from the campaign trail.
Via NBC News:
Kennedy and Shanahan are currently only on the ballot in Utah, but according to the campaign, they have gathered enough signatures in multiple other states including Nevada and North Carolina.
Shanahan is not a known national figure. But the campaign leaned strongly into her personal story during the rollout, including her background as a one-time Democrat now urging people to leave the party.
Readers may have noticed by this point that I haven’t included Famous Name Bob’s platform. It’s my perception that his campaign is banking on many voters imposing their own values on Bob’s candidacy.
Via Politico:
In a bizarre sequence yesterday, ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.’s campaign said in an email blast that those rioters facing charges over the Jan. 6 Capitol attack were “activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.” But soon after, the campaign claimed “that Kennedy did not approve of the wording in the email, blaming the ‘error’ on a contractor who the campaign later said has since been terminated,” WaPo’s Meryl Kornfield and Rachel Weiner report. But, of course … “Kennedy himself has previously downplayed the Jan. 6 attack and said he is open to pardoning convicted rioters.”
He sorta sounds like a Democrat on the issues outside of whether January 6th was actually a bad thing, until he doesn’t. Like all outsiders running for the top job, he makes loophole-filled promises that are logistically impossible to achieve.
Does anybody really think the collection of codgers in the US Senate is going to buy into a primarily defensive military-industrial policy? Does anybody really think Vladimir Putin will agree to withdraw troops from Ukraine in exchange for withdrawing US forces and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia's borders?
The only America that can come out of Famous Name Bob’s campaign is the christo-autocracy envisioned by the people and institutions backing the Former Guy’s attempt at a comeback.
