RFK Jr.’s decision to throw in with Trump is a logical development for anyone who understands the way American politics have changed in the last decade.
There is always a price to be paid for crossing party lines. But when the person doing it is a Kennedy, the cost is far higher. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s defection from the Democrats and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump last week is being treated by his family in joint statements as a betrayal of the legacy of his namesake father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Family members like his sister Kerry and brother Max have denounced him in vituperative terms. Longtime pals like actor Billy Baldwin have said they were ending their friendship. Media coverage was equally hysterical. A New York Times columnist skewed him by pretending to speak as a brain worm inside his head, a reference to a dead parasite that had caused a since-resolved medical problem in the past, the kind of sleazy dehumanizing shtick that it is unlikely the editors of that paper would allow to be used against any Democrat.
As a result, his withdrawal from the race has had the opposite effect that such a move usually has on a former candidate. Instead of being consigned to the dust heap of political history, RFK Jr. has been getting more rather than less attention in the week since he announced he was withdrawing from the race and then endorsed Trump. Even though the coming together of the two candidates produced nothing more for RFK Jr. than a spot on a potential Trump transition team, the agreement was considered not so much a typical case of politics making strange bedfellows as an act of heresy.
His betrayal smarts all the more given that RFK Jr. remains in many ways a man of the Left, yet when it comes to the very issue that Democrats claim to be fighting for in 2024—democracy—he views himself as more closely aligned with the populist MAGA wing of the Trumpian GOP than he was with the party he grew up in.
And that is something other Kennedys and the Democratic establishment will not tolerate.
