Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., went to a bank of microphones in Phoenix on Friday afternoon to announce the suspension of his presidential campaign and a strategic alliance with Donald Trump. What he said and did at that press avail was quite possibly a whole lot more consequential than anything the Democrats put forth in the four days they spent coronating Kamala Harris as their nominee.
Kennedy hasn’t become a conservative. He’s still very much an outsider figure in American politics, and furthermore, he leans left on most issues — the ones where he and Trump have found common cause are only “conservative” in the sense that they’re issues that the Democrat Party has run so far away from the national mainstream that a liberal like Kennedy can only find an alliance with Republicans. (READ MORE: Anti-Democratic Skullduggery Against West, Stein From the Democratic Party)
Kennedy outlined three such issues in announcing the suspension: Chronic disease and the corruption of public health and food bureaucracies, the war in Ukraine, and political censorship and electoral corruption.
He stressed that it’s a suspension and not a withdrawal. In non-competitive states, whether deep red or deep blue, Kennedy will remain on the ballot. But he’s pulling himself out in about 10 swing state contests and allying with Trump. Based on polling in those states, if Kennedy’s support moves fully to Trump an electoral landslide may be in the offing — between them, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Virginia (if I’ve gotten these correct as the states Kennedy will be dropping out in) control some 110 electoral votes, and if Kennedy’s votes throw over to Trump in those states he could be looking at 329 electoral votes with no further movement in the race.
It turns out, also, that Kennedy’s three issues are good ones to run against Democrats on. While none of the three are as compelling with voters as immigration and the border, inflation and the economy, and crime and public safety, the things Kennedy identified in his speech work to Trump’s advantage.
Kennedy’s Issues Are Popular With Trump Voters
The public doesn’t want to see Russia swallow Ukraine, but we’ve largely established that isn’t a likely outcome of the war. The conflict will certainly come to a close at some point via peace negotiations. Trump has said he would end it, Kennedy has endorsed a negotiated solution, and the public backs a negotiated peace in Ukraine. It may not be a huge driver of votes, but the fact is that Kamala Harris — whose conduct in the immediate runup to the Ukraine War in 2021 was catastrophic; you’ll remember that as Russian tanks massed on the border she went to Munich and stressed the desire to have Ukraine join NATO, which the Russians had repeatedly said was a casus belli — cannot credibly speak to this issue.
The electoral corruption and censorship issue has been a Republican talking point that the legacy corporate media has been shouting down since November 2020. If you expressed the sentiment that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or even that it was irregularly held given the multiple violations of state election laws committed with COVID given as the excuse, you often found yourself “fact-checked” or even de-platformed for your trouble. Trump certainly was, and for his trouble of running for re-election, he’s had Democrat prosecutors concoct cases based on “novel legal theories” to attack him in a fusillade of lawfare both civil and criminal, with some 16 states attempting to remove him from their ballots. (READ MORE: Tim Walz Lied About IVF)
It turns out that Kennedy has run into the same kinds of shenanigans on the part of the Democrat Party, and the two are joined by Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who has been attacked via Democrat lawfare for committing the sin of trying to get on the presidential ballot in various states. In Michigan, the same thing has been done to Cornell West, another left-leaning independent candidate.
The Democrat Party Is at War With Democracy
This is no longer a conspiracy theory trafficked in by rednecks in MAGA hats. It’s an unassailable, clear fact: The Democrat Party is at war with democracy and it’s actively working to rig the electoral process in unprecedented ways. The Democrats even deposed their own nominee, disenfranchising some 14 million of their voters who chose Joe Biden in the primaries, to give Harris their imprimatur. Given that Kennedy was denied Secret Service protection and Trump has been effectively denied it — especially given the hinky circumstances of his miraculous survival in Butler, Pennsylvania last month — you simply can’t deny that the people in charge of the Democrat Party don’t respect the rules of the game.
This leaves chronic disease, an issue that neither political party has done much with in previous election cycles. Here, Kennedy arrives with a not-perfect pedigree, having been tarred as a charlatan for his anti-vaccine stances and other outside-the-mainstream advocacies. That said, there is no denying that the American people are grossly unhealthy. Obesity rates have skyrocketed and now bring ruinous costs in both public health and productivity, they negatively affect military recruitment and our ability to maintain a proper defense, our susceptibility to diseases which used to be nearly unheard of is at unprecedented levels and our national quality of life, based on health issues, is a significant driver of two-thirds of us pegging the country as being on the wrong track. (READ MORE: Planned Parenthood Mobile Clinic Provides Abortions and Vasectomies at DNC)
Almost everybody sees this. It hasn’t entered the public policy conversation because it’s been seen as impossible to make headway on. But like with so many of the false-consensus status quo issues, we’re now in such straits that we have little choice but to put the structure of our national health on the table. What we spend on health care at a time when life expectancies and fertility rates are collapsing is an absurdity, and Kennedy’s voice no longer sounds like such an outlier.
All three of these issues seem to be symptoms of something larger, and Kennedy’s alliance with Trump fundamentally changes the race as a result.
This Presidential Election Is a Referendum on the Deep State
This isn’t a popularity contest between Trump and Harris, though the superficial and corrupt legacy corporate media would like to frame the race that way. Nor is it any longer a particular ideological showdown. At some point, we need to have such a dustup, but from the perspective of the Right, it’s likely better to spend some time better preparing the battlefield and “de-rigging” the rules of the game before that fight.
Instead, it’s something much larger.
What matters now is that this election will be a referendum on the Deep State and the corrupt, hyper-mendacious ruling class in this country which has run up $35 trillion in debt, plunged us into wars not in our interest, shredded our civil society, destroyed American childhood and declared war on reality itself in pursuit of some top-down utopian vision imported here from overseas.
The ruling class gave us the Ukraine War, through a series of moves that made it inevitable. Harris’ stupid touting in Munich of Ukraine as a future NATO member just before the balloon went up was only the final Jenga piece being removed.
The poisoning of our politics and media is a product of a government-media-complex oligopoly everyone has seen coming for the last 15-20 years, and the truth has been its primary victim. The censorship Kennedy decries is simply an inevitable symptom of it.
And the shambles our public health bureaucracies and other government agencies have made of their missions, such that our currency is debased, our life expectancies have collapsed, our educational institutions are all but defunct in serving their core missions, and so on — all at a time when spending on the missions of those agencies has skyrocketed — is solely the fault of the ruling class who control those institutions and, in so many cases, weaponize them against us.
Kamala Harris might have attempted to present herself as an All-American girl from working-class Oakland, but there is utterly no question that she is the tool and beneficiary of that ruling class. Indeed, in every way possible Harris is its avatar — unaccountable, unserious, overrated, shockingly corrupt, and thoroughly divorced from the traditions and standards on which America was built. The fact that Harris’ campaign had to lie to the American people that Taylor Swift or Beyoncé would appear at the United Center Thursday night as a ploy to boost TV ratings for her substance-free acceptance speech was a perfect illustration of who she is and what she represents.
Kennedy’s endorsement makes this very clear: Like Trump or not, he is your only alternative to that ruling class.
We found out in Butler and the revelations thereafter, that Trump no longer has a choice but to destroy and replace it as president. His life can be credibly said to depend on completing that project, because it’s the ruling class, which the Democrats are unquestionably the party of, or it’s Trump. There is now no compromise to be had between the two, and Trump must either drain the swamp or be drained by it.
So whether you like Trump or not, you can either get behind him or you’re with the ruling class. It’s now a binary choice. It may not be the one you want, but it’s what you have. Evaluate your interests and act accordingly.
That’s what Kennedy’s announcement on Friday means. This is a different presidential race than you’ve been sold, and it’s certainly different than what you were presented in Chicago.
The post This Is No Longer The Presidential Race You Think It Is appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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