Apr.02

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

RFK Jr. Wants to Defeat "Threat to Democracy"

We don't particularly want to write about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because he's very annoying, and he also appears to be a few bricks shy of a load. But while he's never going to be president, he could be in a position to serve as spoiler. For example, his campaign said yesterday that he has qualified for the ballot in North Carolina. So, write about him we must.

Yesterday, Junior was on CNN, and he uncorked yet another wild "insight," this one unrelated to vaxxing, or AIDS, or Lizard People. The newest wild pitch from the son of Bobby is his view that while Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, you can "make an argument" that Joe Biden is an even bigger threat. Here's the explanation:

President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy. And the reasons for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech.

This is a reference to the Biden administration's request that RFK Jr.'s social media accounts be restricted due to COVID misinformation, in particular a false claim that baseball star Hank Aaron died from complications of the COVID vaccine.

We have several thoughts here, which we will now share:

• Anytime anyone says "an argument could be made..." there is an approximately 99% chance they are about to issue forth with a steaming pile of B.S., and even they know it.
  
  
• It is dubious that Biden's request about social media accounts represents a wholesale assault on the First Amendment.
  
  
• Even if you accept that Biden wants to kill the First Amendment, so does Trump. And not just the parts about free speech, but also the ones about freedom of assembly and freedom of religion. Trump also wants to shred Article I and Article III, along with at least a dozen other Amendments. In short, there is no way Biden is a greater threat to the Constitution or to democracy than Trump is. There is no president, Democratic or Republican, who has even been in Trump's universe when it comes to threats to democracy.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Biden is "the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech"? Really? John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law. Andrew Jackson pulled federal funding from unfriendly printer-publishers. Abraham Lincoln put critics in prison without benefit of a writ of habeas corpus. Woodrow Wilson literally put a third-party presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, in prison for disloyalty to the government. Franklin D. Roosevelt oversaw a massive censorship operation during World War II. Richard Nixon kept an enemies list, and used the IRS to harass unfriendly reporters.
  
  And then there is Trump, who has made abuse of non-fawning media a core element of his approach to politics. To take but one example, a couple of weeks ago, he wrote: "I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events." He also opined that these media outlets "should pay a big price."
  
  Some of these presidents might have been justified in their approach; we are offering no judgments on that front. What we are saying is that it is laughable that no president prior to Biden has engaged in censorship. Either Kennedy is an ignoramus who knows nothing about U.S. history or he's a liar. Readers can decide for themselves which it is.

All of this said, our goal here is not to mock RFK Jr.'s asininery (OED says that's a word, so we're sticking with it). Our goal is to point out that the candidate is using outlandish rhetoric much more in line with Trump than it is with Biden. Consider what kind of voter would have their ears perk up if they hear: "Biden is a greater threat to democracy than Trump is." It isn't Biden voters; it's the MAGA crowd. And so, if this is the tack that Kennedy takes, it increases the likelihood that he spoils things for Trump instead of Biden. And this is before groups friendly to Biden start running ads saying: "Vote for Kennedy because he wants to ban vaccinations nationwide." (Z)