Not Your Father’s Democrats
On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced that he was suspending his campaign for the presidency. Even more momentous was his announcement confirming the fact that he had left the Democrat Party and was enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump. His reasons for switching are my focus here.
Up until last October, RFK, Jr. would have been considered a “dyed in the wool” Democrat, from a family that had been Democrat stalwarts for generations. Accordingly, he would be in a position, probably better than anyone else, to have observed the strange morphogenesis of the Democrats from working class advocates, free speech advocates, supporters of a strong police and military and strong supporters of our primary ally in the Mideast, Israel, to today’s Democrats who no longer represent the working class, no longer tolerate free speech and now carry water for defund the police groups, domestic terrorists like Black Lives Matter, and anti American militants like Antifa. They now favor decreasing support for Israel, and are cozying up to Islamist terror groups like Hamas. He has stated that he no longer recognizes the Democrat party of today, a feeling that many of us share.
With this in mind, I think it’s important to recap portions of his speech:
“I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote,” he said, adding that he attended his first Democratic convention in 1960 at age 6.
“Back then the Democrats were champions of the constitution, of civil rights; the Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars,” Kennedy began. “It was the party of democracy.”
“As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag and big money,” he went on.
“When it abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president, I left the party to run as an independent. In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it,” Kennedy asserted.
The Democratic National Committee, Kennedy charged, “ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden. Then when a predictably terrible debate performance precipitated a palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election.
I’m sorry to say that while Democracy may still be alive at the grassroots, it has become little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for our media, and for our government, and most sadly of all for me, the Democratic party,” he said, taking aim at new nominee Kamala Harris.
“Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity of Vice President Harris based on … well, nothing.”
I think that Kennedy’s message could not have been better said. One would hope that such scathing criticism from such a knowledgeable INSIDER would prompt some soul searching among the Democrats. Perhaps that is too much to wish for from these doctrinaire zealots, but, maybe, just maybe, the independent voters will take note.