The subject line in the email from the Kennedy campaign read “Darling Nikki.” Being an 80s kid, I recognized it as the title from a Prince song. Of course, that song was about a torrid assignation between Prince and a 17-year-old singer. See, folks? The culture has been trending downward for much longer than you think. The song even convinced Tipper Gore to launch the Parents Music Resource Center to combat explicit lyrics. Yes, that Tipper Gore. It shows you just how far the Democrats have spiraled since the 80s, too.
Chuckling that someone at the Kennedy campaign was showing their age, I clicked on the email. I was hoping for another laugh, but it is election season, and the email turned out to be an appeal to sign a petition to give Kennedy Secret Service protection:
A congressional advisory committee recently voted in favor of granting Nikki Haley Secret Service protection.
Nikki, who has almost no chance to win her party’s nomination, has clearly won the hearts of Congress, and an adoring national media elite gushing over her every move.
And while the Congress and the Media continue to prop up the presidential ambitions of their darling Nikki, they are hanging Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. out to dry.
While the swamp has likely dismissed Kennedy as a gadfly, the Secret Service issue makes a strong talking point for the campaign. It points up the gap that exists between DC insiders and, oh, say, the rest of America. And intentionally or not, it hearkens one back to the fates of his uncle and father, even among those who are too young to remember either or were unborn when those incidents occurred. And Kennedy has a populist appeal. His environmental policies are alluring to the Left, and disenchanted members of the Right have keyed in on his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine and the influence of BlackRock and big industry. His call for border security and his criticism of the prosecution of Trump has added to his appeal to the center-right and, to a degree, the center-left.
This has not gone unnoticed by the Democratic Party. The DNC filed a complaint with the FEC over allegations that a PAC, American Values 2024, had been making illegal contributions to Kennedy’s signature-gathering effort. So, Kennedy’s presence is enough to give the DNC cause for alarm. Because while Kennedy’s chances of becoming president are slim, he has the potential to impact the turnout for Joe Biden. And as goes the DNC, so goes CNN.
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The outlet reports that American Values 2024 claims that it has enough signatures to get Kennedy on the ballot in Georgia and Arizona, two states that helped Biden to victory in the last election. Kennedy is on the ballot in Utah after a signature-gathering push and a lawsuit. CNN points out that while Kennedy will likely remain a long shot, he has shown that he has the power to disrupt the Biden bid. According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, Van Jones appeared on the network Tuesday expressing that concern. Jones characterized Kennedy’s momentum as a shockwave that has left him heartbroken.
If you understand basic math, this is a shockwave through the Democratic Party because it takes a lot less than the amount of support he‘s got, especially among young people, to throw this whole thing [for] Biden. And we can lose some states, but we can‘t lose many, and so we‘re having — we‘re going to have a tough enough time in Georgia, we’re going to have a tough enough time in Arizona anyway, but this is a big deal. This is a very big deal and I think, for me, my heart breaks.
Jones went on to praise Kennedy for his environmental activism but warned that if Kennedy does not have the votes to win, he should exit the race. He added, “I don‘t think that he‘s going to be on enough ballots to win the White House, then you shouldn‘t be doing this because you can only hurt Joe Biden and hand the country over to Donald Trump.”
Many Americans are tired of the same headlines. They recognize that there are bigger issues at play in the Middle East than are covered in a college protest sign. They understand that both Putin and Zelensky can be the bad guys in the Ukraine war. No serious person of either political persuasion can bring themselves to say that the streets are safer, the economy is any better, or that unchecked immigration has had a net positive effect on the country. Trump may set progressive and some conservative teeth on edge. However, Biden, addled or otherwise, has been outed as a dithering opportunist who will say or do anything to give the impression that all is well and we have nowhere to go but up. The same can be said about the Democratic Party.
The Michigan Primary should serve as a warning to the DNC and the Biden campaign that they have a very small needle to thread and an increasingly unpopular brand with which to do it. Which is why the party is so concerned about circling the wagons.