with many RW features of fear of Big Government, LW/RW conspiracism, faux science, etc. All items flying off the shelves in this era.
WaPo, Matt Bai: ... It doesn’t surprise me at all that a Trumpian candidate would emerge inside the Democratic Party, someone trying to run for president with the same cynical mix of star power and misinformation that fueled a nationalist uprising in 2016. It was inevitable from the moment Donald Trump showed us how easy it was to unmake a party in the age of social media.
What I would not have predicted is that the Trumpian challenge on the left would be waged by someone named Kennedy. ...
Kennedy even tweeted this past week that “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES” — his capital letters, not mine — would he agree to become Trump’s running mate, because their governing philosophies “could not be further apart.” That he felt compelled to make such a statement, however, tells you that they could be at least a little further apart. Maybe a lot.
The similarities have little to do with policy, though there is some overlap there. Rather, what makes Kennedy profoundly Trumpian is a dark strand of populism mixed with self-grandeur and self-created reality. ...
What makes Kennedy most like Trump, though, is the overlay of conspiracy and contempt that tinges nearly everything he says, the destructive distrust in the electorate he seeks to channel. ... Kennedy sketched the bleak tableau of a government wholly owned and controlled by corporations, of nefarious powers in both parties hellbent on enslaving people with bureaucratic mandates.
... Kennedy holds himself out as a bridge back to the golden age of American liberalism. But instead of “ask not what your country can do for you,” he offers a variation on the Trumpian theme of trashing government and science, while stoking fear and resentment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/15/rfk-jr-2024-campaign-trump-celebrity-conspiracy/Of course. Like all populist leaders, only he can lead the massive reforms required to fix what's wrong with "the (hopelessly corrupt) establishment" and Democratic Party. (Everything.)
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