Although he's largely been ignored by the leftist establishment media, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains undaunted and is forging ahead with a grassroots campaign he hopes will catch fire soon. On Aug. 21-22, he is stumping for votes in South Carolina using a town hall format. Taking a page from Donald Trump's 2016 handbook, RFK Jr. hopes his end-run around the Fourth Estate will catapult him to respectable poll numbers when it comes to taking on incumbent Joe Biden.
The so-called mainstream media continually refers to Kennedy as a long-shot candidate. The hallmarks of his message to Americans are truth-telling and economic hope. If this narrative sounds a lot like that of another candidate from a different party, it's because there are certain similarities in the campaign style of Kennedy and Trump.
Message and Methods of RFK Jr.
Indeed, the former president and the scion of an iconic Democrat dynasty differ in public policy. Still, it is surprising how much they have in common. Both men are/were considered pariahs by their party establishment. Both are/were treated with disdain by their party apparatchiks. Neither man seems to give a hoot about what the power pooh-bahs of his party think, and both appear to march to the beat of a different drummer.
In the case of Trump, his message resonated with the American public, and, before long, he was filling up public venues across the country. This is precisely what Kennedy aims to do. Yesterday he appeared in Greenville, SC, and took questions for two hours from residents there. Today he heads to Spartanburg, SC, for much the same thing. This kicks off "a five-stop tour across the First-in-the-Nation state, where he will attempt to woo voters with a message of 'economic hope.' A press release said the Democrat will 'address food prices, energy costs, credit card debt and how to tackle the affordable housing crisis,'" according to the Greenville News.
RFK Jr. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
One would be hard-pressed to find any mainstream press coverage of RFK Jr.'s Greenville town hall, and it's been this way for some time. A month ago, Vanity Fair went out of its way to stick a knife into the Kennedy camp. With an article titled "RFK Jr.'s Town Hall Was Full of Misinformation — And Barely Covered By the Mainstream Press," the highbrow publication twisted the shiv with this subtitle: "In a sit-down with NewsNation, the Democratic candidate said he was 'proud' to have Trump's support and doubled down on his vaccine conspiracy theories, raising further questions around whether his campaign should be treated seriously."
RFK Jr.'s campaign aims not at the intelligentsia but the middle class, much like that of the former president. Reminiscent of Trump, the amount of animosity directed at Kennedy by those on the extreme left is almost breathtaking. His rhetoric is "baseless," his claims are “outlandish,” and his remarks are filled with “conspiracy theories." When he uses common sense, they grit their teeth. Referring to an earlier town hall, Charlotte Klein of Vanity Fair wrote:
"At another point in the town hall, asked by an audience member how he would use federal resources to slow gun violence, Kennedy said he does not believe ‘there's anything we can meaningfully do to reduce the trade in the ownership of guns,’ and that he's ‘not going to take people's guns away.’ He also reiterated the debunked claim that antidepressants are linked to mass shootings, and said — without citing evidence — that we ‘should be looking at video games and cell phones’ and ‘social media’ as potential explanations for gun violence."
RFK Jr. is not a darling of the left, but Democrats are increasingly boxed in as more and more influencers within their party say Joe Biden is a non-starter for a second term. To date, Kennedy sits at 13.2% in the national polls, while Biden enjoys a whopping 64.4% according to the RealClearPolitics average. It may be too much of a hurdle for the son of the slain senator from New York, but stranger things have happened in American politics. Just look at Donald Trump.
