In the context of a rumored future GOP debate moderated outside of the party structure by Tucker Carlson, an unhinged Cenk Uygur, progressive online host of The Young Turks, mused about why the DNC won’t allow any primary debates whatsoever — even if they could, as the historical record bears out, strengthen and harden the ultimate Democrat nominee through trial-by-fire.
Tough primaries make for strong nominees.
The answer is that the party knows that RFK Jr. would make mincemeat of its doddering dinosaur on the debate stage, which would garner massive support from the party base and compromise the party’s project to get its puppet re-installed in the Oval Office.
In fact, Democrat Party leadership would literally have anybody elected president besides RFK Jr. Call them Never-Kennedys.
They would — and admittedly this sounds counter-intuitive — rather see Trump in the White House than give Kennedy a fair shot at the nomination.
Here’s why: RFK Jr. has demonstrated, via his campaign announcement speech and myriad other public appearances, that he has an unrivaled depth of understanding about how the Swamp works.
Furthermore, he appears to be sincere about draining it, having not exhibited the kind of self-dealing tendency that hampered Trump’s ability to fulfill his #DraintheSwamp campaign pledge. Like a kid in front of a cookie jar, there was simply too much opportunity for graft for Trump to truly resist sticking his chubby fingers in it.
If RFK Jr. managed to get into office, all of those Swamp jobs would be compromised — the army of bureaucrats, the consultant class, the lobbyists, etc.
With Trump in office, their positions wouldn’t be in jeopardy and, in fact, they would be able to fundraise for four straight years off of #Resistance Round II hysteria.
Imagine the panicked emails from Nancy Pelosi, begging for money from suburban liberal women to fight the Orange Fascist.
The corporate media, for its part, would be nothing without the Trump boogeyman. Trump was the best thing that ever happened to them. Biden gets no ratings for anyone from his basement.
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This is just a cold, hard fact: Trump pledged to #DraintheSwamp, and millions of Americans voted for him in whole or in part based on that pledge. Four years after his inauguration, the Swamp was just as Swampy as ever.
I can’t think, actually, of any meaningful, lasting affirmative step Trump took to drain it. Even if he had tried his damnedest, it would have been a grueling, uphill battle all the way. But he appears to not have lifted a finger to even move the needle in the right direction.
This is more of the kind of all-hat, no-cattle tomfoolery that politicians often use to hoodwink an angry populace into voting for change that will never come — the bane of grassroots politics.
I reserve my political support for figures who have shown they’re serious about walking it like they talk it — a rare occurrence, unfortunately, in the business of politicking.
So far, RFK Jr. appears to be the closest thing to that ideal.
Time, of course, may bear out the opposite. I have watched this dirty game played too long and been disappointed far too often to full-throatedly put stock in any politician without reservation. Outside of Ron Paul, they have all disappointed sooner or later.
Even if RFK Jr. proves to be a charlatan, though, he will have injected his brand of populist politics into the mainstream, which would make convincing the base to hold their nose and vote for Biden that much more difficult come November 2024.
The Democrat Party, even more so in 2016 and 2020 when Bernie challenged Clinton and Biden, respectively, has a very serious problem on its hands, the optimal solution to which is not entirely clear.
So far, the Democrats’ predictable strategy of alternating between pretending that RFK Jr. doesn’t exist and smearing him as an “anti-vaxxer” is not paying dividends. He is currently polling exceptionally well, given the massive corporate media propaganda campaign against him and the immense pressure he is surely feeling behind the scenes to water down his message or, more likely, just drop out entirely.
This might sound hyperbolic, but I am convinced that if the Deep State exhausts all of its other options and feels backed into a corner, it will try to kill him or otherwise incapacitate him. They stand to lose entirely too much political power, accrued over decades of subverting democratic oversight, to simply allow the voters to elect him.
Speculatively, if the technocrats thought they could assassinate him and get away with it, he’d already be dead.