Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made multiple high-profile press appearances already this week.
On Monday, he joined Elon Musk for a live discussion on Twitter Spaces about his campaign after having his Instagram account locked last week.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 5, 2023
On the same day, he also sat down with Michael Smerconish for a live town hall event broadcast on SiriusXM.
“I’m not going to take anybody’s guns away” @RobertKennedyJr weighs in on how he would approach America’s gun violence. pic.twitter.com/qMRrZZBhE2
— Michael Smerconish (@smerconish) June 6, 2023
Both appearances target surprisingly disparate audiences.
Musk has become a favored target of the left since he purchased Twitter last year. Associating with him is all but certain to draw ire from the Democratic base while appealing to mostly disaffected Republicans or Independents who have recently returned to Twitter. Praising Musk as RFK did further cements his status as a right-wing conspiracy theorist in the eyes of the establishment.
Alternatively, sitting down with Smerconish appeals to the very establishment-oriented viewers who presumably despise Musk with every fiber of their being. Best known for his weekend show on CNN, Smerconish’s viewers are likely to toe the party line on the virtues of vaccines, social media censorship, and the comprehensive array of woke insanity — all the issues that RFK stands against.
If these views are “deadly,” as the corporate media assures us they are, then why is one of their spokesmen giving him a platform to espouse such dangerous positions? (RELATED: Biden World Wants The Media To Destroy Robert F. Kennedy Jr)
From a purely business standpoint, why would they want to platform someone that their viewers can’t stand?
Tuesday morning’s Politico Playbook seems to have the answer to both questions. It is likely part of a fail-safe election strategy to simultaneously insulate and boost Biden. “Yet, for now, Biden world’s plan is to ignore him. The overwhelming sense inside the campaign and White House orbits is that any other posture would elevate him from a gadfly with a good name to a genuine contender,” Politico writes.
RFK is polling exceedingly well against Biden. Early polls have him hovering just shy of 20%. That is no small number, but it is unlikely to generate the overwhelming grassroots momentum required to overcome the institutional backing Biden enjoys from the Democratic machine. As Playbook correctly notes, addressing RFK head-on could only help stimulate such momentum.
Instead, Biden is expecting the media do his dirty work for him. “They are counting on reporters and other Democrats to do the work of informing voters about Kennedy’s well-established views. Once that happens, as one Democratic strategist put it to us, they will ‘realize he’s running in the wrong party,’” Politico continues.
Here, the corporate media says the quiet part out loud. They openly plan to protect the Biden campaign from challengers and RFK is a key part of the plan. They will platform him for the same reason they continue to platform Donald Trump — their viewers love to hate him. “‘Even the slightest press scrutiny is his biggest problem,’ one Biden 2020 alum put it last night: ‘When Democrats see a candidate is anti-vaccination, anti-assault weapons ban, and a quasi 2020 election denier, their first thought is that this person must be a MAGA Republican,’” the outlet continued.
This final excerpt is the crux of the matter. Democrats and their media allies want Americans to see RFK as much as possible. They want to highlight all his views that they have already instructed their viewers to hate, so that they despise him as much as the other figures they have been trained to see as evil incarnate.
At the same time, all of these positions will make him extremely appealing to key Republican voters who resent Democrats’ overreach on Covid, censorship, and other social issues, but are “exhausted” with Trump. Even if DeSantis is the nominee, there is a possibility that his culture warrior posture will alienate some kitchen-table Republican voters. (RELATED: ‘A Huge Mistake’: Former Trump Official Says ‘Too Much Woke,’ Lack Of ‘Economic Agenda’ Hurting DeSantis)
Many working-class Republican voters were likely Democrats for most of their lives prior to the Trump re-alignment of 2016. Their parents or grandparents may have proudly voted for past generations of Kennedys and they would be happy to keep the legacy alive. (RELATED: The Top 2024 GOP Candidates Prove The Trump-Fueled Republican Realignment Is Real)
Now, there are two scenarios. In one instance, the corporate media will destroy RFK early in the primaries to the extent that he has no political capital left going into the general election.
Yet if they fail to destroy his credibility, there is a very real possibility that RFK could eventually run as a third party candidate. In this instance, the media’s elevation of him would serve as a buffer around the margins for Biden.
After a year of corporate media agitprop against him, an Independent RFK would be much more likely to draw support away from the Republican nominee than from Biden. This could tip the scales in key swing states just enough to allow Biden to eek out another narrow win.
As always, the Democrats and their media allies have a fail-safe plan to solidify their power long before the election truly kicks off. Republicans need to match their tenacity if they hope to have a chance next November.