The Vitriol of the Democratic Establishment
The New York Times and Washington Post ran multiple stories a day, some disguised as objective news articles, against Senator Bernie Sanders when the newspapers feared Bernie would win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. Back in 1984 and 1988, it was civil rights leader Jesse Jackson who drew the corporate liberal establishment's wrath when he challenged former Vice President Walter Mondale and later Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for the Democratic nomination. The mainstream media smeared Jackson every way they knew how (occasionally with his unwitting help).
In 1968, when Senator Robert F. Kennedy came out against the Vietnam War and threw down the gantlet against a sitting president in his own party, RFK was pilloried by the New York Times and the rest of the press as a political traitor and worse.
Now it's RFK Jr.'s turn.
No, Bobby is not "anti-vax." As he told me, he vaccinated himself and his kids against many diseases. But he is an opponent of Big Pharma, the industry that took Covid tax dollars and profiteered from the world's suffering, like it generally does. He is an opponent of the chemical industry, whose products have sickened and killed countless people. He is an opponent of the military-industrial complex, another industry that has grown as fat as a tick off the blood of the world -- namely the wars that have become a permanent feature of the U.S. empire. He is an opponent of the banks that are too big to fail, wondering why the federal government can't show as much generosity to our working people as it does to wealthy depositors and investors.
In other words, RFK Jr. is out of the political margins in this heavily policed, surveilled country -- and that makes him a political target.
That much is predictable. What is head-scratching is when progressive journalists distort and disparage RFK Jr. and his supporters.
The latest example of this unhinged hostility comes from David Masciotra, a Facebook friend of mine, but a friend who lacked the courage or civility to communicate with me before he published his screed against RFK Jr. backers like me in the New Republic.
Masciotra wants to portray the Kennedy campaign as a suicide bomb mission against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. But Kennedy -- whose very name is synonymous with the Democratic Party -- chose to run not as an independent but as a Democratic candidate in the party's primaries. This is the season when clashing views about the country SHOULD be aired. It's only the Democratic establishment that wants us all to fall in line now and keep whatever misgivings we have about the Biden-Harris reelection ticket to ourselves.
But, as too many of us fear, it is the creaky and unpopular Biden-Harris ticket that is the real suicide pact. Many of us Democratic voters fear that 82-year-old Joe (who his handlers didn't even trust to deliver a live campaign kickoff speech) will deliver the country to Trump or DeSantis in 2024, a truly terrifying prospect.
Should another progressive challenger to Biden have emerged from the Democratic bench? Of course! Bobby was probably hoping they would, so he wouldn't have to run. But no elected official had his courage. He deserves our admiration for standing up when no one else would.
One other comment about Masciotra. He authored a very favorable book -- some would say fawning -- about Jesse Jackson, I AM Somebody. Yes, THAT Jesse Jackson. The one who was widely vilified in his day for being a Democratic Party disruptor.
Masciotra chose to publish his screed in the New Republic, a magazine that's the voice of the Democratic establishment. Magazine owner Win McCormack, who inherited a fortune and went to Richie-Rich prep school Andover and then Harvard, has regularly donated to establishment Democratic candidates.. McCormack briefly hired the independent-thinking Chris Lehmann to edit the magazine, but quickly replaced him with the hack Michael Tomasky. NR now reads predictably and boringly like a house organ, Democrats-good- Republicans-bad. I still subscribe to the magazine (I guess I'm a creature of habit when it comes to periodicals), but I quickly flip through its party-line pages.
New Republic would never run the 2020 article that Masciotra wrote for Salon, praising the Bob Dylan song "Murder Most Foul," questioning the official line on the JFK assassination and even quoting me. That Masciotra article was too far out of the political margins, too skeptical of authority, for NR.
Speaking of Salon, didn't it recently run another hysterical anti-RFK Jr. article? I guess. I don't read the daily I founded anymore. I don't know anyone who does. We tried to make Salon surprising and provocative -- not formulaic click-bait. It was a must-read in its day. I don't know who owns Salon or edits it these days. I vaguely care.
A final word about the New Republic. McCormack allows himself to write a windy column each issue -- the privilege of ownership, I suppose. Among his favorite topics is the need to pull together the country, to unite our bitterly divided civitas. Memo to Win: Old Joe, who's stuck at 42% approval rating in the polls, or Kamala, who's even lower, will NEVER heal the country.
Someone like RFK Jr. -- with his following in both Red and Blue America -- could do that. He's already at 20 points and rising in the polls. Will they ever allow Biden to debate him? Don't hold your breath.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.