How much does RFK Jr. suck? His famous family showed up at the White House to celebrate St. Patrick’s day with a guy who also has Irish heritage. RFK Jr. wasn’t among the attendees from one of America’s most famous and beloved political families. He wasn’t invited by his own freaking family to join in the fun. However that wasn’t the worst of it for him. Nope. The Kennedy family endorsed President Joe Biden! And rather pointedly trashed their fellow Kennedy, a former Democrat who’s running as an independent against Biden.
RFK Jr. can pretend all he wants but this has to sting. A lot. As reported by The Independent it wasn’t just a couple of members of the Kennedy family but a pretty fair number who showed up to both shower praise on the President and talk trash about their own flesh and blood:
Multiple members of the famous clan joined the president for a St Patrick’s Day celebration over the weekend.
RFK Jr, who is currently running as an independent candidate in the 2024 election, was notably absent.
To add insult to injury, several Kennedy members – who have previously made it very clear they don’t support RFK Jr’s presidential campaign – took to social media to share photos of the event and to voice their support for Mr Biden.
How complete was RFK’s humiliation? Even his own freaking SISTER made a point of speaking out on social media:
“It’s not enough to wish the world were better, you must make the world better,” Kerry Kennedy, the younger sister of RFK Jr wrote in a post on X.
“It’s not enough to wish the world were better, you must make the world better” @POTUS President Biden, you make the world better. Happy St. Patrick’s Day ☘️@vradenburg3 @Mkennedycuomo @vickikennedy2277 @amykennedy715 @pjk4brainhealt @roryekennedy @maxeykennedy pic.twitter.com/UZBcUjtEDh
— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) March 18, 2024
It’s not the first time RFK Jr’s sister Kerry has trashed him either. (Nor other family members I should add):
Following his announcement that he was running for president, his family members released a statement denouncing him as “dangerous” and “perilous for our country”.
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” Kerry Kennedy wrote on behalf of four members of the illustrious political dynasty.
Coming from his own sister that’s GOT to hurt. And he can’t rationalize it away as her being the odd one out, and “jealous” of his political fame (of which there’s be none if he wasn’t named for an inspiring and beloved father) either. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, JFK’s daughter and RFK Jr.’s aunt AND now the famous family’s leader/matriarch has been in Biden’s corner from the beginning and not at all impressed by her nephew. Her son Jack has his own commentary on social media:
JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg also previously condemned his cousin, calling him an “embarrassment” to the family name.
“He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” Mr Schlossberg said.
Even Joe Kennedy III who before he tripped over his ambition and tried to early to win a Senate seat (Ed Markey’s) that would have been his for the taking had he had some patience got in on the action:
“Small family gathering this afternoon!” Joe Kennedy III, the independent presidential candidate’s nephew, chimed in.
He was of course being ironic as the tweet from Kerry Kennedy shows. That was more than a mere handful of Kennedy’s posing at the WH with President Biden. Not counting the kids there’s easily at least three dozen adult Kennedy family members in that photo! Again, RFK Jr. might try to rationalize Joe III’s comment as being from someone who “failed” but Joe III was already more popular before he blew it with the Marky thing. And he’s young enough to recover and if he wants restart his career in elected office and surpass RFK Jr. and both know it.
There’s a long way to go in this election. RFK Jr. supposedly isn’t going to be the No Labels candidate but ballot access is a tough nut to crack and he might not have much choice. If they’ll have him which might be doubtful with his own family taking potshots at him. His name will pull votes to be sure. Senior citizens who have nostalgia for his father who’s name he’s so lucky to have and who’s legacy he’s stealing, as well as a longing for a return to JFK’s “Camelot” WH will to a degree vote for him. However, while expected to draw votes from both Democrats and Republicans there are indications he’ll actually draw more votes from Trump than Biden!
Still, one has to think RFK Jr. is one bigly butt-hurt guy right now. His own family has again publicly disowned him, and accused him of trying to trade on his family name and worse his father’s legacy when in fact he opposes all his father and the family have stood for. I suppose there’s one asshat who’s feeling pretty good about all this. Like Kennedy, Representative Paul Gosar has had HIS entire family publicly speak out to voters to say “don’t vote for him – he’s full of sh*t” but hey, the Gosars aren’t the Kennedys. Everyone in the country, whether they love them or hate them knows the Kennedys. And they know the name Bobby Kennedy/RFK.
Bobby’s P.O.S. son knew he was unlikely to have family members out there offering support, much less showing up on the campaign trail with him. But to publicly TRASH him? And it’s only March. This is surely the beginning and if he persists with his bid for the Presidency you can be sure we’ll see a Kenney or two in prime time at the Democratic National Convention politically burning him at the stake. RFK Jr’s ego and delusions of grandeur will override all common sense and he’ll stay in the race. He can’t admit defeat any more than Trump can.
However, I have to say I’m looking forward to more ritual humiliation of this prick at the hands of his own family. And what they do to him at the convention will be must see TV.
I had to confront a 20 something year old who told me proudly he was voting for Kennedy. I asked him why, and he just smiled and shrugged, as if to say he really had no idea other than the name, and the mistaken idea he was morally clear by not voting for Trump. I made it clear it’s a binary choice, and, by voting for Kennedy, he was really voting for Trump.
If the kid did not understand the consequences of his kennedy vote, he likely did not understand your explanation. Not sure what they are teaching in H.S./college but logic, civics, and math don’t seem to make the list.
” . . . ballot access is a tough nut to crack and he might not have much choice.”
If Kennedy really wants to, he needs to sue just one state with “difficult” ballot access requirements and take it to SCOTUS. And SCOTUS will find themselves hoisted by their own petard after declaring that a state CANNOT keep a candidate off the ballot. If Colorado can’t remove Trump’s name from a ballot that the STATE prints (with NO federal reimbursement, incidentally), then what reason does any state have in denying ANY candidate from being on a state’s ballot, regardless of that state’s own “requirements” for ballot access? I would love to see the right-wing morons who told Colorado they can’t keep Trump off the ballot to explain why Kennedy should not have equal ballot access and as easily as any other party. (In fact, it would make life a lot more interesting to see dozens of minor parties that have been forced to jump through hurdles just to get ballot access the first time wind up being put on the ballot by SCOTUS’s own decision.)
I’m a senior citizen now and have voted in what, a dozen Presidential elections? Anyway I’ve always been startled by the number of Presidential candidates from which to choose. It’s always been more than Democratic or Republican candidates. There’s Libertarian. Green Party and others I’ve never even heard of. It would be batshit crazy to have anybody who could get some arbitrary but fairly low number of signatures to gain ballot access.
But since you bring it up, one thing that’s always bugged me but especially since the 2000 election is having federal and state/local races all on the same ballot. I think there should be separate ballots. One for federal offices (including in midterm years) and one for state/local races. Yes, it would make counting slower to have to do two sets of runs through counting machines. Or, it could make the process more transparent by having precinct workers count the votes for the federal races right there with the press and other observers right there in the open before sending them to the county! Just like in the old days. And at the county that process could be repeated for federal races.
That would take the wind out of the sails of Trump and election deniers.
it would also prevent a repeat of the disaster in Palm Beach County in FL in 2000. Remember than infamous “butterfly ballot” that led to thousands inadvertently voting for Pat Buchanon. I could write an entire article about the debacle with that ballot and how it came to be used, but the bottom line is that at a meeting of county election supervisors that was discussing how to design ballots to accommodate so many candidates (including for President) Palm Beach’s Teresa La Porre skipped out for a while and missed the part where it was figured out. Back home, rather than consult with others to see what their county’s ballots would look like she elected to go with the “butterfly ballot” solution which, despite attempts to claim otherwise in the past had only been used for referendums and NOT for candidate races.
The “solution” solved the problem but there were two problems. The printed ballot was a bit off and didn’t line up properly with the proper spots on the punch cards underneath in the infamous Votomatic (that was the actual name for them) voting “machines.” Add in senior citizens with less than stellar eyesight and shaky hands and it was a disaster waiting to happen. Many worried after voting they might have voted for Bushanon instead of Gore but either didn’t speak up until they’d already dropped their completed ballot in the bin (IOW too late!) or were ashamed to do so in the precinct. However, many did call Democratic Party county HQ when they got home to alert them to the problem. Not that it did any good. No special instructions went out to precincts to have workers warn voters to be extra careful and/or ask for assistance if they needed it.
In the end Buchannon wound up with almost 3500 votes in Palm Beach County. Bush’s reps would try to claim the county was a “Buschanon stronghold” but even Buchanon and his campaign called bullshit on that one. While I’m sure ole Pat laughed his ass off over handing the election to Bush and at least keeping a Democrat from winning his own campaign said based on results elsewhere and their own efforts in Palm Beach they expect perhaps 400-500 votes, and his top aid said even 1000 would be “generous.” Bush wound up “winning” the state by a mere 537 votes.
Now imagine if federal and state races had separate ballots. There’s have been no problem of how to squeeze a bunch of candidates on to a single “page”. Gore wins FL by several thousand votes. Maybe there’d have been no 9/11 because all the initiatives Clinton had in place to monitor and disrupt Al Queeda would have remained in place. Even if it had happened the war afterwards would have been very different. We’d have gone into Afghanistan of course, and when Bin Laden and the rest were cornered in Tora Bora we wouldn’t have “outsourced” the job of finishing him/them off to the Afghans. No, we’d have killed him right then and there. Lesson taught to the gomers about fucking with us – we’ll find you and fast. And KILL you. And no wider war in Iraq and destabalization of the entire region.
It’s a lot to think about isn’t it? But a federal law mandating separate ballots for federal and state elections would keep something like that from ever happening again. And as I said could even allow for a counting process that would restore a lot of much needed trust in our elections. Even if counties didn’t automatically hand-count ballots the counting software could compare the tallies with the hand counts from precincts and flag discrepencies that would then trigger a hand count.
Well, this got a lot longer than I intended but once I got going I found it hard to stop.