You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. Robert A. Heinlein
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., born on January 17, 1954, in Washington, D.C., is a prominent member of the Kennedy political family and has led a multifaceted life as an environmental lawyer, activist, and more recently, a political candidate.
Kennedy is the third of 11 children born to Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. After his father’s assassination in 1968, he struggled with drug abuse as a teenager, leading to some legal troubles. Despite these challenges, he pursued higher education, graduating from Harvard University in 1976 with a degree in American history and literature. He later obtained a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1981 and a master’s in environmental law from Pace University in 1987.
Kennedy began his career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan in 1982. However, his early legal career was marred by a drug arrest in 1983, which led to probation and community service. This setback became a turning point, as his community service introduced him to environmental causes. He became deeply involved with environmental advocacy, serving as Chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, Senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance.
Kennedy gained recognition for his environmental work, with Time magazine naming him a “Hero for the Planet” in 1999. He has been involved in numerous environmental legal battles and negotiations, including the landmark New York City Watershed Agreement in 1997.
Around 2005, Kennedy began to promote anti-vaccine views and public health conspiracy theories. This marked a significant shift in his public advocacy. He started promoting the scientifically disproven claim of a causal link between vaccines and autism.
The entire anti-vax movement is disheartening. Organized medicine has 100 years of vaccination experience. There have been some monstrous missteps along the journey but now misinformation abounds. Here is my take in a published article Prestigious Journals, Predatory Publishers and the Tall Poppy Syndrome in Medicine: A Brief Overview.
Kennedy wrote articles and gave speeches questioning vaccine safety, including a controversial piece in Rolling Stone magazine in 2005 that was later retracted due to numerous inaccuracies. He founded Children’s Health Defense, an organization that has been criticized for promoting anti-vaccine views and COVID-19 misinformation.
In April 2023, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidential election of 2024, initially seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination. However, in October of the same year, he switched to running as an independent candidate.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the principal governing organization of the Democratic Party of the United States. It was founded in 1848 and is the oldest continuing party committee in the United States. In essence, the DNC is the central leadership and organizing body for the Democratic Party at the national level, working to elect Democrats and promote the party’s platform and policies.
The DNC is responsible for overseeing the process of writing and promoting the party platform every four years. It provides national leadership for campaign strategy, fundraising, and political activity and organizes the Democratic National Convention to nominate presidential candidates. Supporting Democratic candidates with research, polling, and funding in races across the country.
It consists of the chairs and vice chairs of each state’s Democratic party which consists of over 200 elected members from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. It supports Democratic candidates with research, polling, and funding in races nationwide.
Clinton, Sanders, and the DNC. The DNC showed favoritism toward Clinton in various ways. A fundraising agreement between the Clinton campaign and the DNC in 2015 gave Clinton’s team some influence over DNC operations and finances (this agreement was meant to apply to the general election, not the primary). The DNC leadership preferred Clinton and some officials criticized Sanders privately.
The DNC made other decisions that favored Clinton, like limiting the number of debates. Superdelegates heavily favored Clinton, but in the end, she had more pledged delegates from primary and caucus results.
Superdelegates are unpledged delegates to the Democratic convention, meaning they are independent of the results from primaries and caucuses who are pledged. They are mainly current and former Democratic politicians. They account for 15 percent of all delegates (714 out of 4,765).
Biden and the DNC. Biden’s path to the nomination in 2020 was initially challenging. He performed poorly in early contests like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Biden’s campaign turned around after receiving an endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina and winning that state’s primary decisively. After Biden’s South Carolina victory, several moderate candidates dropped out and endorsed him, which was seen as a consolidation of the party’s moderate wing.
As an incumbent president in 2024, Biden has enjoyed advantages including support from state party organizations in clearing or limiting the field of candidates on some state ballots. In 2023, Biden urged the DNC to reshuffle the primary calendar to prioritize states with more diverse voters, including moving South Carolina to the first position. Goodbye Iowa and New Hampshire who polled first and embarrassed him in 2020.
Kennedy and the DNC. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) employed several strategies to hinder Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ballot access efforts. The DNC has filed legal challenges in multiple states to invalidate Kennedy’s ballot petitions. These challenges have been lodged in battleground states and Democratic strongholds. They assembled a team of legal experts to examine Kennedy’s petitions in each state for potential violations of local petition filing regulations.
The DNC worked with Clear Choice PAC, a super PAC supporting President Biden, to oppose Kennedy’s ballot access efforts in eleven states. Democrats have attempted to portray Kennedy as a spoiler candidate who could benefit Trump, emphasizing his connections to Republican mega-donor Timothy Mellon.
The DNC has engaged in public messaging campaigns to discredit Kennedy’s candidacy, including using mobile billboards to highlight his funding sources. They have assembled a team of veteran operatives, including a former staffer of Senator Ted Kennedy, to focus on third-party candidates like Kennedy.
New York state has been one of the most contentious battlegrounds. Kennedy’s campaign submitted over 135,000 signatures, but Democratic Party supporters challenged 109,000, claiming fraud and challenging Kennedy’s residency. The DNC-aligned super PAC Clear Choice Action also got involved by contacting petition signers. In some states, like New Jersey, local Democrats have initiated legal challenges based on state-specific laws, such as the “sore loser law”.
The DNC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing Kennedy’s campaign and his aligned super PAC of illegal coordination in ballot access efforts. They alleged that Kennedy’s campaign violated state laws governing petition processes by misleading voters, improperly establishing minor parties, and committing procedural errors across five states.
While Kennedy initially won most legal battles, he faced a significant setback when a New York judge barred him from appearing on the state ballot. These legal battles significantly impacted JFK’s fundraising efforts and campaign finances, which went to defending lawsuits instead of campaign efforts and ads.
The DNC’s strategy limited Kennedy’s ballot access and influence while draining his financial coffers.
Media. Kennedy claims that in the 16 months between launching and suspending his campaign, he only had 2 live interviews across major networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN combined. This lack of mainstream media coverage likely hindered his ability to reach a broader audience of potential donors.
He further alleges that these networks ran “hit pieces” to smear his candidacy instead of balanced coverage, which could have negatively impacted public perception and, consequently, fundraising. Financial reports revealed a significant decrease in donations from small individual donors (those giving less than $200), which could be partly attributed to the lack of positive media coverage.
Vice President Kamala Harris. Kennedy lost about one-half of his voters when Biden dropped out of the race and Harris was nominated. Dwindling polling numbers and campaign finances forced Kennedy to face reality. He sought a meeting with Harris to discuss dropping out, endorsing her, and a cabinet post according to The Washington Post. It should be noted that The Post reported in the previous month that Kennedy had communicated with Trump regarding a possible cabinet post or a role in public health leadership, in exchange for his support.
After reaching out to Harris’s intermediaries with no response, Kennedy assumed Harris had no interest in talking with him. He then stated he had no plans to endorse Harris and had plans to defeat her. With his bruised ego he stated that Harris’s Democrat Party “would be unrecognizable to my father and uncle and I cannot reconcile it with my values.” The cut down was completed.
On Aug.23, 2024, Kennedy had run out of options and announced he was dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Trump. New York ruled that Kennedy could not appear on New York’s presidential ballot which could cause other states to remove Kennedy from their ballots. Kennedy will seek to remove his name from ballots in swing states to prevent taking votes away from Trump.
Most TPs are cut down sooner or later, some many times. Kennedy is such a person – professional (lawyer), competition, politician – and will likely be cut down again.
The path of awakening is not about who you are. Rather it is about becoming who you are not. Albert Schweitzer
