If you’re mad at Joe Biden, supporting RFK Jr. isn’t going to help
Backing a hopeless crazy loser is not a smart way to send a message
As I write this, we are fewer than six months out from what’s arguably the most consequential presidential election since the Founding Fathers launched this experiment nearly 250 years ago.
Since Trump’s inauguration, women, non-white people, and the LGBT community have watched in horror as far-right reactionaries have spent every waking hour rolling back minorities’ rights. In 2022 alone, Americans were jolted back in time with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the introduction of Florida’s draconian “Don’t Say Gay” bill, not to be mistaken with the imaginary “Don’t Say Slurs” bill that edgelord media hosts hysterically warn us of.
The same people constantly hyping the (nonexistent) danger of Muslims wanting to see the United States under sharia law are the ones who’ve made it their life's work to see that Americans abide by strict Christian doctrines. I enjoy a communion wafer as much as anyone else who grew up being dragged to mass before breakfast, but I’d like it to remain a snack I have at Catholic funerals, rather than a part of a compulsory weekly routine.
In spite of all the despicable actions Trump has inspired other politicians to carry out, many Americans remain intent on supporting an unviable presidential candidate who has admitted to experiencing memory loss due to a worm that feasted on part of his brain in the early 2000s. Not to knock others who are afflicted with this condition, but I’d prefer the president to not be a main character in remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
Brain worms or not, Kennedy, who is currently polling at around 10 percent, cannot realistically turn his campaign around in time to win the election this November. Voting for him in the general election is as useful as writing in your dog’s name. It might make you feel good, but you know Fido isn’t going to win.
Most Americans are beyond fed up with being forced to choose between two out-of-touch candidates, this time and last between two elderly white men who were born over a decade before there were even fifty states. The unfortunate thing for us all, is that come this November, we’ll have to choose between an octogenarian who’s funding an ongoing genocide in the face of widespread, public backlash, and a seditious pants-shitter who wants to rule the United States until he expires, likely in bed next to a half eaten Big Mac. I completely understand wanting to send a message to congress by voting for a third party candidate, but I’m sorry to say the people who the message is intended for do not care. Trying to prove something this close to the election is akin to killing someone to “teach them a lesson.” There’s no lesson to be taught to someone incapable of hearing you. Pretending otherwise is a waste of your time.
The unfortunate reality is that those are our only realistic options. While the argument can be made that it’s self-defeating to not support a candidate because you don’t think they have enough support, that is the realistic scenario we are currently in. Many of Kennedy’s supporters are mistakenly seeing his run as a repeat of Bernie Sander's campaign, a not-so-far off chance at a third-party president. The problem with that delusion, however, is that Kennedy has nowhere near the support that Bernie had at this point. A Reuters poll in March of 2016 revealed that Bernie was polling 14 percent ahead of Donald Trump, who himself was favored over Clinton by a mere 1 percent.
And while Kennedy shares sides with Bernie on some important issues, he holds a number of dangerous views that will prevent him from ever capitalizing on the groundswell of supporters Bernie captured in the spring of 2016.
For starters, he has spread vaccine misinformation constantly, including in an article he wrote for Rolling Stone and on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” He has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the events of January 6th, publicly speculating that the sentences being handed out to insurrectionists are being motivated by democrats’ political agenda. To be clear, most of the people who were at the capitol that day with the intent to overturn the election, were handed class D misdemeanors, a slap on the wrist, due to the justice department being overwhelmed by the enormity of the event.
He has claimed Ukraine bears the responsibility of Russia’s 2022 invasion, going on to present a conspiracy theory that Ukraine worked in tandem with the United States to bring the war upon themselves, as part of America’s “strategic grand plan to destroy any country such as Russia that resists American imperial expansion.” I’m no fan of the American military industrial complex myself, but the idea that Ukraine put its own country and citizenry on the line to help America take over the Kremlin is a storyline out of a graphic novel.
Perhaps most egregious was his invocation of Anne Frank during a speech he gave at a rally to protest vaccine requirements. Like many other antivax wackos, he drew a parallel between vaccine mandates in the United States and the repressive restrictions put on Jewish people during the Holocaust. Seemingly having missed eighth grade social studies, he said, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
It is mind-bendingly insulting to liken vaccine requirements for eating at Chili’s to the Gestapo kicking in your door before hauling you off to a concentration camp.
Offensiveness aside, the Alps are a mountain range, not a mini golf course, and they don’t even run along the border between Switzerland and Germany. Further, Anne Frank and her family made it out of Germany shortly before the borders were shut down. And finally, for the love of god, it wasn’t an attic. It was an annex. It’s a breathtaking feat of stupidity to confuse geography, history, and architecture all in one sentence. If only there was a vaccine that protected against ignorance.
Until we adopt ranked choice voting, we’ll never be able to accurately calculate how many of RFK Jr’s supporters would’ve otherwise voted for Biden versus Trump. It’s not fair to say a vote for Kennedy is a vote for Trump, but it is fair to say that literal lives are on the line this fall. If Trump wins, conservatives will execute their plans laid out in plain sight in Project 2025 and we will be no less than completely fucked. Voting for Kennedy this late in the game is like telling a divorce court judge you don’t want to live with mom or dad, you want to live with JoJo Siwa.