105 Comments

My prediction: RFK Jr will win ZERO electoral votes. Either Trump or Biden will absolutely get at least 270 votes. Biden will do better than he did in 2020.

Expand full comment

This is an absolutely awful take. The Lincoln Project is the spoiler. Anyone who believes ngo’s are a force for good needs to examine their role in government. RFK is a legitimate candidate with no secret service protection. Biden is being set up by his own party to be replaced, and Trump could very well go to jail. RFK might be the only serious candidate in the race.

Expand full comment

You're a fool and a tool.

Expand full comment

That is a monumentally conspiracist take with a load of unargued premises.

Expand full comment

RFK, wasn't a "counter culture icon" as you call them, in '68. It was McCarthy. He was the first anti-war candidate to run. He took on the "establishment" when he ran against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Kennedy was then urged to run based on seeing how well McCarthy did against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary and Johnson's announcement that he would not seek the presidency anymore. Kennedy didn't become a candidate until after Johnson decided not to run. He was anti-war but was supported by those who thought McCarthy too extreme and not winnable.

That boomers are alive and remember it NOW doesn't mean, as I already pointed out, were a voting part of it then. It is the voters who matter. Anyway, for teenagers, McCarthy's was the hip button to wear.

Those are the historical FACTS. I lived it. "Sorry, not sorry" if they clash with your florid story.

Expand full comment

Selective memory, or intentional ignorance?

Really doesn't matter, you're excused from factual conversation.

Expand full comment

That might be your memory (and I might be only a little younger than you are), but let's review the historical facts. Eugene McCarthy was a single-issue candidate who of course attracted the counterculture because of his bold and quioxiotic challenge to LBJ over the war. The antiwar poohbahs in the Senate wanted RFK to run instead and he declined, thinking that if he lost it would damage his future career, which opened up the space for McCarthy to begin with. This created a great deal of bad blood between the two camps, with McCarthy thinking Kennedy was being an opportunist for only tossing his hat in after Johnson had dropped out.

I haven't the slightest idea where you get "too extreme" from. McCarthy was a cipher on all other issues save the war. The people who would think McCarthy was "too extreme" were the ones who supported the war and they'd obviously oppose RFK for the same reason. RFK was no cipher on other issues. He ran on a platform of racial and economic justice. Earlier, he toured the Deep South and his reports of the grinding poverty was a spur to LBJ's War on Poverty and the Great Society. LBJ pooh-poohed the Kerner Commision report that laid much of the blame for black poverty on white racism. RFK was galvanized by the report.

RFK stood on the back of a flatbed truck in inner-city Indianapolis and spoke to a furious crowd of black people on the verge of rioting the day after MLKjr was assassinated. He averted the riot and this, more than anything, cemented his legacy in the civil rights movement.

But the important thing, of course, isn't who did or didn't vote for him in the 1968 primary (a small minority as all primary voters are), it's the RFK legacy and how it might affect supporters of his son. And nothing cemented his legacy for the Democratic left more than his tragic assassination. RFK was a full throated progressive in the Bernie Sanders / Cornel West mode.

Eugene McCarthy is barely remembered in comparison.

And if it was cooler to have Eugene's button as a teenager, that's only because he was the first to challenge a sitting president on the war. Clean for Gene and all of that. There's a parallel to my man Howard Dean (who I love), a pretty run-of-the-mill neoliberal Clintonite governor who came out strongly against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and provoked a youthquake who no doubt thought he was more progressive than he was.

Expand full comment

"Eugene McCarthy was a single-issue candidate who of course attracted the counterculture. . . "

And Kennedy was . . .

"The antiwar poohbahs in the Senate wanted RFK to run instead. . . "

The U.S. Senate the hotbed of the "granola eating counterculture."

Doink!

Expand full comment

Is this really the sort of game you want to play on Rick's Substack, milbank? Editing snippets of things I've said out of context for a cheap, fake gotcha? This isn't 4chan, broskis.

I could respond to this as if you weren't responding to me in total bad faith (like that a tiny handful of antiwar senators is not "the US Senate"), but I'm not going to bother on an old thread. Have a nice day ;)

Hint: Wayne Morse and Allard Lowenstein (a congressman who led the Dump Johnson movement and tried to recruit RFK to challenge LBJ before he dropped out) did not epitomize the '68 US Senate.

Bonus Hint: Try Wikipedia. It may not always be 100% accurate on every topic, but it's apparently more accurate than your selective memory.

Expand full comment

"Selective memory." LOL ! Your junk history cracks me up! "Try Wikipedia." Whatever that's means.

YOU try Wikipedia. Try Wikipediaing up, who the "counterculture. candidate" was.

Bonus Hint: The "counterculture" candidate is the one who would and actually did run against the "Establishment," candidate, President Johnson.

My memory and more importantly, my facts are correct. Yours as usual are your generous mix of arrogant ignorance stated with authority.

Expand full comment

Of course I did use Wikipedia, which is how I checked my own memory (I remember his assassination clearly). You are attempting to have what is known as a pointless argument and you're doing it in bad faith, since we both agree that RFKjr is more likely to take from Trump voters than Biden voters.

You're trying to make it about 1968. It's not about 1968. I have said several times that Eugene McCarthy was the counterculture's darling for a hot minute because he took on The Establishment by challenging an incumbent president. But funny thing, nobody remembers Eugene McCarthy today with anything near the fondness they remember RFK, and that's probably putting it charitably. Why? Because Gene was a one-trick pony, a charisma-free antiwar nerd who had a lackluster political career. Meanwhile RFK put himself in harm's way by defusing a riot after MLKjr's assassination. RFK lit a fire under DC's butt about abject Southern poverty. And RFK ran on these things as well as being antiwar.

Do you remember even _a single thing_ Eugene McCarthy stood for aside from wanting to end the Vietnam war? I respectfully submit, milbank, that you do not. It's not what the former hippies remember from back then. It's what the Democratic left values _today._

Expand full comment

For you to say Gene McCarthy was a "one-trick pony" shows you are a slave to the media and the Kennedy myth. McCarthy was much more than the "anti-war" candidate. He ran because he had had enough of the Vietnam war. True. But you obviously know nothing of Gene McCarthy's career in Congress. That he is not remembered by lightweights like you is due to the fact that he wasn't named Kennedy.

Robert Kennedy didn't stick his neck out for anybody. He did what was good for him and the Kennedy name. He didn't lead, he followed safely behind while the Gene McCarthys of the world put themselves and their careers on the line taking on the, "Establishment." He didn't have to, he was a Kennedy. He didn't lead as the anti-war candidate. He didn't lead as the civil rights candidate. He did agree as Attorney General to let J. Edgar Hoover tap Martin Luther King, Jr.'s home phone and bug his offices and hotel rooms. Go look that up in Wikipedia. Hubert Humphrey when Mayor of Minneapolis was leader of a group that demanded that the Democratic Party at the 1948 convention add Civil Rights to their plank. Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats walked out of the convention over it. Humphrey was a leader. He stuck his neck out. The tragedy of Humphrey was that he got entangled being Johnson's V.P.

That Gene McCarthy isn't remembered and Robert Kennedy is venerated is one of the tragic ironies of the made-for-TV journalism the world had already become by that point. Jackie coined the expression, "Camelot" to her biographer after the fact to romanticize it even further. RFK's is where he is in peoples conscienceness because of the romantication of the name, "Kennedy." Not because of anything he actually did.

Nonetheless, that's how the world works. Good, bad or indifferent, It's all in the name. RFK. Jr exists at all in this election for the same reason. It's how journalism sells soap. That being said, I think journalists are going to be "shocked, shocked!" when the election is over and what few votes Kennedy got were mostly from Republicans.

Expand full comment

RFK ACTUALLY LOOKS HATEFUL! IT SHOWS IN HIS EYES AND FACE! WHY SO HATEFUL TO PRESIDENT BIDEN?!!

Expand full comment

The beady blues or whatever the are look grade A loonatic.

Expand full comment

And then there's the three-packs-a-day of unfiltered cigarettes voice. And the torso that's so buffed for a guy his age you have to believe he's juicing.

Expand full comment

I dislike RFK immensely. He suffer from a rare medical condition known as spasmodic dysphonia.

I pray he does not tank Biden's chance to be re elected.

Expand full comment

I think he'll take more votes from the MAGA conspirazoids.

Expand full comment

Who is this woman??? How ignorant!!!!

Expand full comment

Any previous presidential campaign, even Trump's, would have immediately cut this woman loose. But have a look at some of the whackadoodle things his VP pick (who funded his Super Bowl ad that ripped off his uncle's presidential ad) has said, and you'll realize the campaign is kooks all the way down. She ain't goin' anywhere is my strong bet.

Expand full comment

So the Dems should just call out RFK as a BIG TIME MAGA and for being a Trump wannabe …over and over and over and over and over and over and over………

Expand full comment

Is he eligible for the Kennedy Curse?

Expand full comment

Biden must be hoping so, because RFK has been refused secret service protection.

Expand full comment

Care to flesh out that conspiracy theory?

Expand full comment

Heh ;)

Expand full comment

What up with his voice? Irritating, I can’t understand a thing he says…he’s just another sabatour, a needy egotist that craves attention spewing vaccine misinformation all bought up with billionaire Tom Mellon. So much for integrity ….and I never considered the “ Kennedy family” as a Camelot or some kind of American royalty.

Expand full comment

He suffers spasmodic dysphonia.

Expand full comment

It’s a disease with no cure. He didn’t used to sound like that. His vocal cords spasm when he tries to talk. Anyone who can get this far in life with a voice like that has my respect, even if I don’t agree with what he’s saying.

Expand full comment

I have great sympathy for RFK, Jr.. Appears to me as an outside observer, his physical health has greatly deteriorated in the last several years. Appears to me as an outside observer, his mental health has greatly deteriorated as well.

He is a vulnerable person, I’d say. We know exactly who has come in to offer him major support and assistance. He is now weaponized.

It is my opinion, most people in this country are fighting tirelessly to keep DEMOCRACY afloat. Evident RFK, Jr is NOT. He is a DEMOCRACY SPOILER! Others can speak to how secret service works.

Expand full comment

Vulnerable people with both a degree of charisma and a degree of mental instability make the ideal useful idiots for forces beyond their control.

Expand full comment

Anyone who has made a career out of claiming for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism has lost my respect for all time.

Expand full comment

Little Bobbie has been an out-of-control drug & sex addict for most of his life. Like most hard-core drug addicts, he only thinks of himself. Didn't his wife commit suicide?

He's like the burnt-out, bastard child of Donald Jr & Mr Pillow, with the worst of both of them

"What in the world ever became of Bobbie?

He lost his sparkle, you know he isn't the same

Living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine

all a friend can say is "ain't it a shame"

Expand full comment

Can't you disagree without being disagreeable? Your tone does not help.

Expand full comment

I was holding back on a most disagreeable person who does nothing but hurt what he touches.

Expand full comment

RFKjr was a longtime heroin addict and while I know nothing of his personal life, knowing something of his uncles I'm not inclined to doubt these allegations.

Expand full comment

Don't dis on the Kennedy family. They've all publicly disowned RFKjr.

Expand full comment

I've begun to think that with RFK, Jr.'s more and more bizarre statements, he would siphon, more voters from Trump than Biden. I can see him more as an alternative for those who are Republican but can't stand Trump than for those who are Democrats but can't stand Biden.

Expand full comment

On paper, he looks like a 60s New Left activist: antiwar, pro-environment, anti-corporate, a message aimed for crunchy granola boomers who venerated his father. But he also went down the antivax rabbit hole decades ago, going after not just the covid mRNA vaxes but routine childhood vaxes and helped spread the pernicious lie that vaxes cause childhood autism. This has essentially erased all the good work he did earlier in his career as an environmental lawyer.

He is a dark, troubled soul. He was traumatized by his father's assassination and spent many years as a heroin addict. He has many former admirers on the left (Keith Olbermann is one of them) who are shocked and saddened by what he has become, including his entire family.

Because his worldview is so conspiracist, I agree with you that he'll pull more from MAGA but less from Republicans who can't stand Trump than from the new voters who aren't very ideological (or well-educated, or successful in life) who Trump pulled in.

Expand full comment

"On paper"? What the heck is that? As for that snarky "a message aimed for crunchy granola boomers who venerated his father." His father was "venerated" by much more than, "crunchy granola boomers " who, not to make too fine a point of it, weren't, except for a very small amount, even old enough to vote when his father was alive.

Why would, "new voters who aren't very ideological (or well-educated, or successful in life) who Trump pulled in" go and vote for Kennedy instead of Trump since, to your terms, Trump pulled them in?

Never mind. I don't really care. It's not important.

Expand full comment

Certainly no one who cares would respond as you did, but I'm going to take you at face value because others read here. First, if you're going to wilfully misinterpret common figures of speech in political discourse, there's nothing I can tell you because you will quibble with virtually anything I might say. That's on you, not me.

RFK became a counterculture icon for two main reasons, his civil rights leadership (he famously talked down an angry inner city crowd after MLKjr's assassination) and of course he opposed the Vietnam war. Eugene McCarthy was the more centrist antiwar candidate in that primary. So he's beloved by the Democratic left and the largest number of those who remember him, whether or not they were old enough to vote at the time, are boomers. Sorry not sorry if "crunchy granola" offended you.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are serious progressives who have concrete legislative agendas. RFKjr is a progressive "on paper," but in reality he's a conspiracy theorist. His views of corporations are so scabrous that I don't think it's a good ideological fit for Trump-loathing Republicans who are looking for a home. The Obama / Trump voters might be open to him, though, the occasional voters Trump (and Obama) pulled in who get their news from social media, fall down Internet rabbit holes and aren't reflexively repelled by conspiracy theories. For these voters, it's not about agreeing with an ideological worldview, it's about taking down the whole system.

Maybe RFKjr could do a better job at it than Trump? It also makes him attractive to MAGAloids that he's made some egregiously antisemitic remarks lately and argues that vaxes were designed to protect specific ethnic groups while intentionally killing others.

Expand full comment

Maybe somebody should let RFK Jr’s conspiratorial base know about how he was on the Epstein flight logs…. Sounds like a project for Lincoln!

Expand full comment

Seems pretty centrist to me. /s

Expand full comment

RFKjr isn't doing the No Labels dance. He's running what he's at least fronting as a left-wing, anti-corporate, anti-globalist, anti-global warming (he spent years as an environmental attorney), antiwar campaign, trying to ride off the enduring nostalgia for his father.

But he went down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and at the top of the horseshoe you've got Qanon. This is why he's gonna draw way more MAGAloids than crunchy granolas.

Expand full comment

A vote for anyone but Biden is a vote for Trump.

Expand full comment

Excellent post. This story needs to be hammered home until it's 150% certain that those considering voting for RFK Jr. really "get" that they could tank democracy in the U.S. by doing that.

Expand full comment

What a vile pos.

Expand full comment

Wow. That's quite the collection of unhinged lunacy, right there. What the hell are they ingesting, and keep it the hell away from me and everyone I know!

Thanks, Rick. Ahead of the curve, as always! Sharing!

Expand full comment

OMG…. That was a lot of crazy S^*%t!

Fast work Rick Wilson! Thank you for enlightening us.

Expand full comment

Credit to Rick always, but I think there is just that much shit. and that’s terrifying!

Expand full comment