What are your thoughts about Robert Kennedy announcing his run for president?

I think the Republicans are going to hope to detract votes from Biden. But people should know that he was actually funded by Bannon and that he is very much sympathetic with the right wing.

His stance on vaccines, he is anti vaccines of all types, makes me mistrust him.

I agree with @chyna

Leary of it. Have to wait untill the election gets closer.

Biden is capable. As much as I hate to admit it, I think he’s our best choice right now.

Marianne Williamson is still my first choice. Robert Kennedy is either a fool, a grifter or both.

Didn’t he die ten years ago? How many Kennedy’s are their in politics?

@RedDeerGuy1 Robert Kennedy did die years ago. This is his son, Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Next year’s elections will be a circus. Bring on the clowns!

Who?

I hope he drops out fast.

I don’t know…when I first heard, I thought, “Yayyy! Someone with sense, and a Kennedy to boot!” But then I learned of his stance on vaccines and my stomach kinda sunk.

I just read the following (linked) and I’m really disappointed. This was an environmental lawyer and he’s now seeming like a right wing puppet. :(

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/robert-f-kennedy-jrs-presidential-bid-doomed

I agree with @NoMore, I’ll wait and see…and hope more dems step up to bat!

Hillary should run. I wish to see her haters go nuts.

@mazingerz88 I understand, but unfortunately even the first time she ran, she had Democrats that didn’t like her. We need to have a candidate who everybody can get behind. We don’t want to have a divide and conquer situation like the Republicans with Trump and DeSantis.

^^I didn’t mention. But I also wish to see those Democrats who did not support her for whatever reason to go nuts just the same. They can be blamed for putting that horrible trump creature in the White House.

@LifeQuestioner I think most of the Democrats who didn’t vote for Hillary would vote for her this time if she wound up winning the primary. I do know we have one jelly who wouldn’t, but most people won’t make that mistake again.

I’m still pissed some Democrats were so vicious towards her, and vicious to fellow Democratic voters who liked Hillary. I still can’t understand it. They helped Trump win not only by not voting, but they helped sway independents away from Hillary and maybe even some Democrats to vote for Trump.

Edit: I don’t think Hillary will run. I don’t get the feeling she wants to work that hard anymore. Maybe she would do it for the country.

@JLeslie GA!

It was Hillary and her team that encouraged the media to prop up Donald Trump because they thought he’d be easy to beat. That piece of shit never took ownership of that or of rigging the primaries and disenfranchising tens of millions of voters. She is a cancer on the party and a big part of why the Democrats created a populist vacuum for the right to fill with racists and antisemites. It’s pretty pathetic to see people think Clinton has anything to contribute. Maybe she should run with Robert, you guys get what you deserve at this fucking point…

I am disappointed in his beliefs, and am considering telling people that voting for him causes autism and genital warts.

@gorillapaws You helped put trump in the White House. Blaming and judging Hillary for being politically ambitious is senseless hatred. You got too sore a loser when Bernie lost and dragged the whole Democratic party and the country down with him. Own it.

I think Bernie himself said vote for Hillary. Now if you did vote for Hillary, I apologize. She lost by just about 60K votes in three different states! And now the country is in hell don’t you think? Simply because Hillary haters went nuts.

A long shot.

@mazingerz88 Hillary won the popular vote, so people did vote for her. If the popular vote were the way to go, she would have won.

@gorillapaws If Hillary’s team helped promote Trump, well, I hate that. It’s not just her though. It wasn’t only Hillary getting Trump airtime on TV.

Both sides of the political parties use this tactic and I hate it. It happens in elections that Hillary is not involved in at all. The risk is not worth it, and I believe in the primaries people should vote for their preferred candidate and not try something creative to sabotage an election.

You’re being too much of an idealist in my opinion. I understand your position, but like a Russian friend told me when I was upset about how hospital bills, health insurance, and law suits work, she said, “it’s the system.”

So, as much as I believe in working to change the system, we also, in my opinion, need to try to not let things go off a cliff. I say that even though I’ve said things like healthcare in the US probably won’t change until many many people, especially Republicans, are suffering and dying from lack of care. So, the analogy would be our government getting so bad all rights are being taken away and people are getting killed. Maybe the horror of Nazi America would eventually have a backlash of extreme liberalism, but the years waiting for the bounceback, well, my people are at high risk of not making it through.

I see how your position is from a moral POV and from a place of integrity.

It would be good to have a Kennedy back in power but not this one.

@JLeslie ”...in my opinion, need to try to not let things go off a cliff.”

That’s why it’s reckless to vote for politicians willing to stack everything on the edge of the cliff and say “vote for me or we’re pushing the country off the cliff, and not just in this election, but if you vote for me, we’ll make sure that every election going forward has a cliff.” We saw Clinton’s rigging of the primaries as a January 6th of the Democratic Party. Maybe that will help you guys understand why Clinton was so uniquely dangerous. As to the antisemitism—neoliberals only have themselves to blame. Decades of “pro-business” Democrats, deregulation, backstabbing unions, tacit acceptance of Reganomics, and pretending to support the working class while colluding with Republicans to fuck them over has created a serious problem in this country: the wealth of the working class has been transferred to the 0.01%, and they’re looking for solutions to why they don’t have the same opportunities for a normal life like their parents’ generation. Worse still, not only have the Democrats failed them, but the neoliberals have built political firewalls to prevent any new progressives from ever gaining enough ground to take us back to the days of FDR—when the country’s middle class was thriving. I’m not sure if you’ve looked around but there are very few progressives in the Democratic Party that could run for President right now (that’s not an accident, nor is it a reflection of policies Americans support). So the Rust belt said “fuck you” to Clinton. It was entirely foreseeable, in fact, many of us were banging the alarm bells at the time saying this would happen and I seem to recall being told then that we were crazy by Clinton neoliberals.

The vacuum created by decades of this shit was filled by right wing populists who could point to boogie men like immigrants and “George Soros” (ignoring, of course, villains like the Koch Brothers) with an antisemitic wink. And to be fair, Soros is part of the problem—not because he’s Jewish, but because he’s a billionaire who spends large amounts of money to influence politics, just like the rest of the billionaires who have poisoned our political system with corruption (with the gleeful support of the neoliberal Democrats). If you don’t like Nazis in America, start supporting progressives—not Biden, not Robert Kennedy.

As for idealists, the real idealists in fantasy land are those who think it’s a winning strategy to bully voters into supporting unpopular candidates because the other guy is so much worse. The real idealists are those who think you can find common ground with Republicans by continuously moving the party further to the Right. The real idealists think Biden would have beat Trump in the absence of a global pandemic.

Well, this gives the Democrats someone to vote for…..someone who is smart and healthy enough for the job.

Too far the right for my taste.

@gorillapaws I’m curious about your source – you didn’t give one and I don’t think you wrote all of that yourself.

@smudges I wrote all of it myself, you’re welcome to run it through a plagiarism checker if you want. What claims do you want sources for?

Clinton trying to help Trump win the Republican Primary?
Clinton Rigged the Primaries?
Top 1% have transferred 50 Trillion from the bottom 90%?

^^ No problem, I believe you. I was just kinda impressed. LOL (not that I necessarily agreed with everything, but then again, you have more knowledge about it than I do.) I don’t follow politics very thoroughly.

@gorillapaws “Clinton rigged the primaries” seems to be an article written by a Bernie supporter about the money the DNC has In its coffers. I didn’t read it to the end as the writer had nothing nice to say about anyone in the first 10 paragraphs.

@chyna ”...seems to be an article written by a Bernie supporter.”

Actually that’s entirely inaccurate. Donna Brazile was caught red handed leaking debate questions to Clinton ahead of time to help her beat Bernie, and the DNC STILL put her in charge after her predecessor was caught red-handed trying to rig the primaries for Clinton. That article is a PRIMARY source regarding some of the extent of the corruption and the degree to which Clinton rigged the primary.

This is not tinfoil shit, the fact that people don’t understand these basic facts about what happened is astonishing… It’s like having a conversation with Trump voters claiming Jan 6. was a sightseeing tour…

Robert Kennedy is an antivaccine lunatic. I hate that guy. Honestly, I hate him worse than I hate Trump.

GA’s all around @gorillapaws.

Bernie supporters weren’t bashing Hillary supporters. It was the other way around and it was disgusting. I lost friendships.

Hillary didn’t even campaign in the most important swing states. She thought she was a sure win over Trump. Her campaign lost the election, not Bernie supporters. I’m so tired of hearing this bs.

I like Bernie, too. I just meant that the article @gorillapaws linked saying that Clinton rigged the primaries didn’t say that. At least as far as I read, the author was saying the money wasn’t in the democratic coffers.

Wow an anti-vaxxer Democrat. Unbelievable! Sounds like double jeopardy. HA!

@Caravanfan Yikes!! That’s some big hatin’ right there! lol

@Jonsblond Not true. I took a lot of crap on this site for being a Hillary supporter.

I think it’s likely that both @Jonsblond and @Caravanfan are correct. Yes, I’m a Libra

@smudges I hate him so much that I’d vote for Trump over him and I once vowed I’d vote for literally anybody but Trump. But it’s very likely that Robert Kennedy’s efforts have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths by leading the chants of the vaccine denial crowds.

@Caravanfan Do people still blame you for the loss? I highly doubt it. Look above and you’ll see that Bernie supporters still get blamed, how many years later? Did you lose friends? Another thing I highly doubt. You don’t need to answer. I’m out. I’m not going down this rabbit hole again.

@Jonsblond Thanks for the gaslighting.

Read my post again. I said I “took” a lot of crap. Not that I’m “taking” a lot of crap. You said, and I quote, “Bernie supporters weren’t bashing Hillary supporters”

I am merely correcting you that on Fluther I got a LOT of crap for being a Hillary supporter back in the time, so in my case, your statement is factually incorrect.

And the answer to your question is I never lose personal friends over politics. There is a guy in my band who is a deep blue Bernie supporter and a guy in my band who is a right wing Trump supporter. We all get along fine and play bluegrass music.

@chyna “I just meant that the article @gorillapaws linked saying that Clinton rigged the primaries didn’t say that. At least as far as I read,”

Here’s a thought: before accusing someone of intellectual dishonesty, try reading the entire article.

If Bernie had been the nominee I would have voted for him, even though I’ve wanted Hillary since she ran against Obama.

Plenty of Bernie supporters were exasperated and vicious towards Hillary and towards supporters on social media. People I know personally and even some jellies. The anger and frustration is apparent. @gorillapaws is citing his frustration with where the Democrats associated themselves with business, and really what bothered me most about Bernie supporters was not their debate about that, but the ones who hated Hillary for not being nice enough to Monica or mad she stayed with Bill. Debating about policy is fine, but once past the primaries, we have to deal with what is in front of us.

From my view, Hillary supporters weren’t angry or vicious with people who voted for Bernie in the primaries. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, that’s just what I saw.

Hillary supporters and other Democrats who favored candidates outside of Bernie, gave Bernie supporters a hard time when Bernie voters decided not to vote, to write in someone, or to vote for Trump.

@JLeslie Hillary essentially pulled a SUCCESSFUL Jan 6 on the Democratic Party. The party rigged things again in 2020 and is doing its best now to rig things in 2024 (SC is now the first primary state?). Just to help you understand the mentality: we hated Trump as much or more than you guys did, but the thought of a Democratic Party that doesn’t listen to its constituents is essentially tyranny, and as godawful as Trump was, a tyrannical party that will ignore the will of the voters to rig elections is worse.

If Jill Stein had hit (I believe it was 10%) then the Green Party would have qualified for many benefits and set itself up as a potential rival to a DNC that literally argued in court that it had every legal right to unilaterally pick their nominee. Having the hope of a viable alternative to an utterly corrupt DNC was worth more to many of us than defeating Trump.

There was no possible universe where these folks were going to vote for Hillary. If they didn’t vote for Jill Stein, they would have voted for Mickey Mouse, or just not bothered to turn out. It’s not Jill Stein’s fault, just as it wasn’t Mickey Mouse’s fault, nor was it the fault of the people who voted for them, or those who didn’t bother to vote for either, entirely repugnant candidate. Hillary should have withdrawn from the primary when it came to light that her campaign was cheating. Her supporters should have demanded that she do so.

I believe he will get a few votes and then die early. Kennedy’s name isn’t what it use to be and this one is a wack job, Kennedy. I’m all for Bannon wasting his money. People don’t know him and if politics has taught us something it that popular people win. His name may be popular but thats not the same thing. Hell. I didn’t know there were any surviving Kennedy’s.

@gorillapaws I don’t blame Jill Stein. I don’t blame Bernie either, but I wish he had done more to move his supporters to vote for Hillary when she was in the end up against Trump.

You and I don’t see eye to eye on all policy issues, so that’s where things fall apart a little. I’m more moderate than you. I’d say the Democratic party can’t please all of It’s constituents all of the time, it’s not necessarily that they aren’t listening.

I thought the first primary in SC would help more liberal candidates. It’s interesting to me you think it will hurt them. What’s your thinking on that? I’m not a fan of SC being the first state, but I wasn’t a fan of Iowa either. Caucusing makes no sense to me in a country that is supposed to have a secret ballot.

@JLeslie ” I don’t blame Bernie either, but I wish he had done more to move his supporters to vote for Hillary when she was in the end up against Trump.”

Bernie did a big tour across the country begging his supporters to vote for the piece of shit that stole the primary from him. It made me want to vomit, not vote for Clinton. It’s not that I was in love with Bernie—the person, its that I was optimistic that we could see the country finally course-correct away from Reaganomics and corruption and for the fist time in my life start moving in the right direction. The thought that maybe we could address climate change before it was too late gave me hope for humanity. So it wasn’t about the person, it was about the chance for policies that would give us hope for the future from someone who I believed would sincerely try to make it happen. That’s it. A politician that managed to avoid being corrupted by money his entire career and was pushing policies I agreed with. As soon as he was trying to convince me to vote for someone that was willing to destroy democracy, I found a different candidate who was uncorrupted and pushing policies I agreed with.

As a point of fact though, Bernie Supporters did end up turning out for Clinton way more than Clinton supporters turned out for Obama. “More voters went from Hillary Clinton to John McCain in 2008 than went from Sanders to Trump in 2016; about 13 percent of Trump’s 2016 voters also voted for Barack Obama in 2012” (source).

As to SC helping Biden, I’m not sure if you were following the primary race in 2020, but Bernie had won the popular vote in every state in the primary list up until SC. This is the political blowjob to Jim Clyburn for reversing his position to remain neutral in the Primary, and endorsing the guy who opposed bussing and authored the legislation that lead to mass incarceration of Black people. SC was the establishment’s firewall against a progressive president.

@gorillapaws Thanks for writing all of that out. I actually understand your illness regarding Bernie trying to get his voters to vote for Hillary, because I felt a little queasy when Hillary immediately helped Obama when he got the nomination.

You don’t think Hillary would have tried to help with fighting climate change? Help women’s rights? Are you saying you believe Hillary was on board with Reaganomics and his trickle down bullshit theory? You don’t think she supports universal health care? Maybe she would not have moved the country as far as you would want it to go, but we would have at least stayed closer to the path you like and want than what Trump did.

@JLeslie I believe that the role Democratic Party (in large part at the behest of the Clintons) is a firewall against progressive change. It’s designed to ensure there is no viable political option left of the status quo. It’s why billionaires pour money into BOTH parties. Neither party is seriously considering any meaningful change to reversing the gross imbalances in wealth that have occurred since Reagan.

It’s why the Democrats win a supermajority and instead of Medicare for All, we get Romneycare rebranded as Obamacare that was dreamed up by the Heritage foundation conservative think tank in the 90’s. There will always be a Joe Lieberman or Joe Mansion or Kristin Sinema or Corey booker willing to step up to the plate to sabotage any progressive legislation from passing in DC. In fact, I think the party has more folks than not willing to step up to torpedo something progressive if they get the call.

Top marginal tax rates: in 1980 was 70%. Down sharply from the Eisenhower days (a Republican no less) where it was 90%. Reagan slashed that to 50% in 1982. And then 38.5% in 1987 (he also compressed the tax brackets downward, lumping married couples making 90k in 1987 dollars with billionaires. Bernie’s plan was 52% on income over $10m—and he gets labeled a communist. His plan is pretty close to Reagan’s tax policy for the majority of his presidency.

“You don’t think Hillary would have tried to help with fighting climate change?”

No. I think she would have passed bills that sounded like they were trying to help, but they would have been written by the oil think tank lobbying groups.Oil/gas basically spent equal money in donations to Clinton and Trump. Why? Because they win either way. We need radical environmental change yesterday. It may already be too late at this point. Token environmentalism is basically a vote for environmental devastation. If a train is headed for a crowd of people tied to the tracks, slowing it from 40mph to 39 and then pretending that you’ve made meaningful change is unhelpful and likely counterproductive.

“Help women’s rights?” maybe, but not things that really would affect women like fighting for a living wage, or universal healthcare that would disproportionately benefit women (especially women of color).

“You don’t think she supports universal health care?”

No. She said it will never, ever happen. She also took more money from big Pharma than any other candidate. More money from HMO’s/Health Services than any other candidate,

“Maybe she would not have moved the country as far as you would want it to go”

She would have maintained the status quo, just like Biden (and Trump for that matter). That means the middle class continues to evaporate, becoming even smaller than when her term started, that means more people gravitating to anti-immigrant/anti-semitic right wing populism.

But really, the worst part was that they essentially lead an insurrection on the party itself. They’ve infected the DNC with corruption and created the MAGA monster we’re all dealing with today.

I agree mostly with @gorillapaws with a few quibbles that I won’t get into here, but he’s more or less correct from my point of view.

For my part I was never a fan of Clinton (I supported another candidate that @gorillapaws probably hates—Klobuchar) but I was vehemently anti-Trump fearing (correctly as it turns out) that he would unleash the right wing dogs and legitimize them. I hate Trump and his ilk with a white heat of the cores of a thousand nuclear suns.

But I would vote for Trump over Kennedy. That’s how much I hate Kennedy.