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Biden has been enlisting the Kennedy family to disavow one of their own and prop up himself as the ultimate and only possible candidate for Democrats recently, to the point where Bobby Jr.’s own brother has rejected him and has said on record that he will to the best of his ability attempt to persuade his sibling to drop out of the race. This does seem pretty harsh, especially with Biden saying he will to the best of his ability attempt to attain Bobby Sr.’s dreams in his continued Presidency—essentially a shot at Bobby Jr.—given the fact that not only does the President of the United States not believe that Bobby Jr. can fulfill his own father’s hopes, but the entire Kennedy family doesn’t, and rather they believe a probable dementia-sufferer has a safer chance of doing that.
It does seem to me that Bobby Jr. might be the last one in the family to at least hope for a fulfillment of Camelot, given the rejection of such a concept by the rest of the family, to the point where King Arthur has been succeeded by the court fool after all these years of the seat being vacant. Biden as coming from the same stock (Black Irish “Catholic”) and the same era is basically an imposter adopted by the Kennedy’s, yet they would rather have him instead of their own flesh-and-blood, given their total allegiance to the modern Democratic Party (which Biden probably doesn’t really understand himself, given the fact that he, along with all the other Kennedy’s of old, would have had a probable heart attack if they were able to see where everything else is now back then—even with all of Jack Kennedy’s lapsed Catholicism and infidelity, I doubt he would have been such a phony to host pride parades at the White House).
Which raises the question: what was the ultimate act of treachery by Bobby Jr.? There’s a lot of possibilities, and as far as I know he’s the only one in the family to doubt the government-approved stories of how his family members were killed, and as Bobby Jr. would probably pardon Sirhan Sirhan (and maybe Oswald) if he ever wins, that would probably be a huge instance of disrespect in their eyes.
It's really not that complicated - they agree with the Democratic Party and think their anti-vaccine kook of a brother/uncle/etc. would be a terrible choice to be President?
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Feels like the ultimate act of treachery is obvious. Possibly being a spoiler candidate and allowing Trump to beat Biden. If that ended up happening he and his entire family probably never hears the end of it and may never get a seat at the Dem table again.
Bobby at least would be banished to the Kennedy kids' table at every Thanksgiving from here to eternity...
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Maybe he's just viewed as the crazy uncle you tell the kids not to talk to? Every family already has that guy and it's hardly a stretch that a family as sprawling as the Kennedys would have bad apples the batch prefer isolated. They did lobotomize one of their own after all.
Right, but the mode in which he was regarded as the ‘crazy uncle’ was through… distrusting the government that ~ 80% of the country believes killed his family as well as wanting to recreate an idealistic version of the governance his family had when at the peak of their power in modern America, which the family has decisively rejected as a fantasy (even though JFK’s whole thing was this fantasy being possible through effort, ‘not that it’s easy, but because it’s hard’, etc.)
The entire family seems to have abandoned this desire and rejected their predecessors’ skepticism towards the institutions of this country (especially in intelligence) and traded it off for simply being a name to aim to have on your donation lists. It’s a shame.
I would imagine it as reversion to the mean, where most of the Kennedys regressed to mediocre politicos with no special ambitions or purpose. Denouncing Bobby and endorsing Biden is very rational if you're "normal" in many senses of that word.
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When someone/thing with that sort of power kills a family member you got to be a little bit crazy to not fall in line and just accept whatever they get payed for the endorsements though.
True, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they drank the Kool-Aid so hard that they don’t actually think their lives are in danger; the Kennedy’s just accept the standard stories (because it’s ‘the Science’ TM), so that they become their own perfect self-propagandizers. Basically just a perfect showing of the capturing of American aristocracy for the purpose of the empire above all else. You won’t even need to be afraid!
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...Why is this news?
Family ties aren't all that strong anywhere, and they certainly aren't that strong in any political dynasty anywhere on either side of the aisle. RFK Jr. is a pretty fringe dude, he has a roughly zero percent chance of actually winning the presidency, and a much higher percent chance of acting as a spoiler against the Democrats.
There is no concievable world where his own family don't prefer Biden to him.
Also, how does "black irish" apply to either biden or the kennedy family?
This would be news in any country outside the WEIRD west, where family ties tend to be a lot stronger than political ideologies!
I think it's still true everywhere but in cities even in the WEIRD west.
Once you enter the halls of power family ties are, pfft. So much smoke and mirrors. This is not a modern or simply European phenomenon either. History is replete with brothers killing brothers over power. Just to rattle some off from a cursory google search, there was Edward and George Plantagenet, Garcia and Ferdinand Sánchez, the amusingly named War of the Three Sanchos, Atahualpa and Huascar Capac, Harold and Tostig Godwinson, the Xuanwu Gate Incident, Gao Yan and Gao Yin, Gao Zhan and Gao Bainian, really just the whole history of Chinese Imperial Families is just endless repetition of "and then he ordered the deaths of his brothers, nephews, cousins, and their entire families", Cambyses and Smerdis, Caracalla and Geta, hell Mehmed II actually legalized royal fratricide in the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed III killed nineteen of his brothers. Shah Jahan had his eldest brother Khusrau Mirza killed, Ashoka the Great killed all of his brothers, Shaka Zulu (yes that Shaka) was killed by two of his brothers, etc. etc.
Endorsing another candidate instead of simply murdering your brother is practically a warm and loving embrace.
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AFAICT, the modern democrats and their elite backers- the Kennedies very much included- really value having a team player(translation, not RFK jr) in command at the top, and prefer the predictable lower middling performance of an incompetent team player over having a wild card like Trump or RFK.
I mean let's be real here, RFK also can't win. But democrats are the party of status-quo predictability, managed decline included if necessary, and republicans are the party of out of left field high variance ideas. RFK might be on the left, but he's also definitely a supporter of variance ideas.
Strong disagree. The past 60 years have been Dems instituting sudden breaks with the past, and the Repubs begging for a chance to slow down and catch their breath.
I mean, can you predict what Dems will platform next, denial of which will be a fireable offense in 2030?
After the trans thing? They'll continue to advocate for diminishing parental rights. Instead having the state/school be the ultimate authority in how your children are raised.
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Regulations for AI/automation. Maybe not as a "core" platform, but getting at least as much attention as student loan forgiveness has since ~2020.
Support for that seems broadly bipartisan.
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