He’s had a challenging life already. I feel sorry for him because he’s clearly not right in the head and I don’t think can comprehend what he is saying or how much of a clown he appears to be. You are right though, he’s brought all this on himself.
Why do you feel worse for her? I don’t understand. How do you know she isn’t either in on the grift, or believes all this crap? Is there a basis for why you think she’s not smart enough to divorce him?
Because I’m a human being and I can feel some sympathy for someone who ends up having the whack job they married turning the bizarre dial to 11 and then switching on offensive hate mongering mode.
I think she’s in on the Kennedy name grift and he’s ruining that for her.
She seems to be smarter than a tree sloth so I don’t think she believes it.
I mean, if that’s the case, then we’ll talk… but for “straight dope”, this seems like a lot of assumptions.
It occurred to me that as she has campaigned to help fight cerebral palsy, she could have been convinced by her husband that vaccines caused it.
She is cagey about her own views.
“I see both sides of the vaccine situation… There’s one side that feels scared if they don’t get the vaccine, and there’s the side that feels scared if they do get the vaccine, because they’re not sure if the vaccine is safe. And I understand that.”
“So if Bobby is standing up and saying, ‘Well, are we sure that they’re safe and every vaccine has been tested properly?’ That doesn’t seem too much to ask,” she continued. “That seems like the right question to be asking.” Ms. Hines tried to dodge several questions about her views on vaccines, including “Do you think vaccines are dangerous for children?,” eventually answering in a manner that didn’t criticize her husband or reveal much about her own opinion.
She certainly used to be in favor of vaccines.
Hines had her own daughter vaccinated as a child and appeared in a 2006 vaccine PSA—the same year she was introduced to Kennedy by Curb creator Larry David.
I wouldn’t have a ton of sympathy for her, she’s complicit in what her husband is doing.
But that’s not the “question” her husband is “asking”.
MAGA Jr. has said: “Vaccines are the only medical product that is not safety-tested prior to licensure”, which is one of his many lies and deceptions.
Hines has pushed back on a bit of this stuff, but still tolerates getting drenched by his firehose of misinformation.
An armed man tried to pass himself off as part of RFK Jr’s security team and asked to meet with him. I have two theories: genuine unbalanced person looking for fame, or RFK trying to make himself seem important by getting Secret Service protection? I know the second is very unlikely, since who would agree to be arrested just to pump up a minor campaign?
All in all, if t was legit it had to be a little disturbing for RFK.
Junior is ditching his attempt at the Democratic nomination and running as an independent, which is probably not what the Bannon crowd were hoping for.
In spite of predictions by some Dems that MAGA Jr. will draw more votes from Trump than Biden (see following article), I find it easier to believe that significant numbers of dumbass Democrats enamored of the Kennedy name, past environmental cred and “rebel” image will abandon Biden, handing the election to Trump.
Hope I’m wrong.
I am quite confident that Kennedy will be getting significant donations from Republican sources.
That’s key because obtaining enough signatures for swing state ballot access is hard.
As to whether this candidacy will help Republicans, I’m on the fence.
One aspect I’m going over in my mind is how it fits in with Cornel West also running. Democrats who are looking for someone who refuses to arm Ukraine will have a purer play voting for West.
Given how unpopular Trump and Biden both are, Kennedy should have an impact.
It will be very interesting to see which states the RFK campaign works the hardest for ballot access. If he’s working all 50 he’s a candidate. If he’s working only the marginal swing states, he’s an R stooge where the R’s have a clever plan to use him to apply just enough battle damage to Biden to make Trump the winner in those states, and thereby the EC as a whole.
I remember being worried in 2020 that they were going to successfully implement the “use Kanye West to strip off the Black American vote” strategy. I was thankful that that went absolutely nowhere - with any luck, this will be just as “successful”.
Yeah. For the folks who’ve actually voted for president a time or two before, the idea that 3rd party votes are a total waste of your vote is pretty well ingrained.
To the degree any of these “plots” can succeed it would only be by pulling away potential first time voters, or very very very low information voters. Who aren’t negligible, but probably aren’t decisive either.
Now that he’s running as an independent, it seems like a waste of money to donate to a stunt candidate. May as well spend on your preferred GOP candidate. It’s one thing if you think he can make it into the Dem primary and debates. It’s another if he’s just trying to get on state ballots.
At least RFK Jr has the stellar guidance of Kucinich hot off the successes of his own presidential campaigns. I sure misjudged him back in the early days of this board.
People’s Party Leadership Now Seems to Support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for President
Some good news here. The People’s Party seems to have had zero success in gaining ballot access in 2020. At least, that’s what Bard AI says.
There’s some evidence that MAGA Jr. is more popular among Republicans than Democrats.
However, a Rasmussen survey reportedly found that 33% of Democrats might vote for him as a third-party candidate.
Among the things he has in common with Trump is that he inspires devotion no matter what crazy, destructive things he says and does.
RFK is an anti vaccine nutter. While there are anti-vaxxers who usually vote D the current cycle has most of them in the MAGA camp. Some I guess could be upset that Trump waffles some on this, that Trump is not quite crazy enough for them. Biden though was never getting the anti-vax vote.
We know now that even a very few votes in the important state can make the difference, so I wouldn’t say it is impossible for any RFK vote to be of impact. But the presumption that his being nominally D means anything is I think incorrect. He draws a couple of Trump voters to the more pure anti-vax candidate.
Watch those videos where Trump stood in front of a bunch of followers, touted his success getting the vaccines made, and got some boos.
Those people booing are who I see supporting RFK.
If RFK does end up getting even a few points of traction as an independent, I hope Biden and his team will highlight these kind of differences – something like “With all the flaws of Trump, at the very least I can give him credit for working with Congress and private enterprise to get COVID vaccines developed as soon as possible. Unlike RFK, I stand with Trump and support the efforts to vaccinate the American public to protect against COVID.”