According to political scientist Lee Drutman, Robert F Kennedy Jr will be in the news for some time. In Undercurrent Events, Lee said his “campaign is channeling an anti-system, anti-two-party, anti-elite, smash-the-system energy that has grown considerably over the last decade to the point that it can now support a third-party candidate.”
Yesterday, I said his campaign is a scam. More than most people, Kennedy knows he can’t win. (He’s a member of one of America’s great political dynasties, after all.) He knows he can’t win, not because the parties are preventing him from winning, but because the system designed by the founders prevents him from winning. Yet he tells supporters if he can get enough votes, he can “reclaim our country.”
“I can be your instrument. I’ll be the sledgehammer that the American people will wield to smash apart the corrupt merger of the state and corporate power,” he said. “We, the people, can take back our power.”
That’s a scam.
It’s also makebelieve.
The Washington press corps goes to great lengths to make everything in public life seem as good or bad as everything else in public life, to the point where newspeople end up giving the impression that politics is merely a game that elites play and that none of it really matters. That goes double for how they represent the presidential candidates. Regardless of how badly Trump behaves, reporters will search high and low for at least one bad thing Biden did to create the appearance of “balance” in their reporting of whatever bad thing Trump just did.
People who pay attention to politics are acutely aware of this. They are invested in the outcomes of public affairs. They have a broad base of knowledge about policymaking, government, political history. They have access to a network of like-minded allies. With all these things within reach, they can see the Washington press corps’ habit of equating things that can’t be equated actually warps reality.
It’s makebelieve.
However, people who don’t pay attention to politics don’t know that. These are Kennedy’s people. As Lee Drutman said: “Many of Kennedy’s supporters are disaffected, ‘low-propensity’ voters — that is, citizens who are not super-engaged in politics and typically don’t vote (though may have voted last year in an unusually high-turnout presidential election). They are probably the least likely citizens to respond to pollsters, and thus hard to capture properly. This is the most likely reason why Kennedy’s support changes so much from poll to poll.”
Please make no mistake. I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with not being super-engaged in politics. However, there is something morally wrong with being a member of one of America’s great political dynasties, who knows third-party candidates can’t win presidential elections, saying to people who are not paying attention to politics that he – and only he – can be the American people’s “sledgehammer.” That’s not just a scam rooted in makebelieve. That’s demagoguery.
The Washington press corps has always tended to like demagogues. Not only do they generate the kind of attention that the country’s most lucrative media properties need in order to remain the most lucrative properties. Demagogues complement making everything in public life as good or bad as everything else in public life. Indeed, a figure like Robert F Kennedy Jr validates the press corps by arguing that, as Lee Drutman paraphrased, “the system is rotten. Our institutions are failing us. We need to smash them. Then we will rebuild.” The demagogue and the press corps are in a symbiotic relationship.
But that depends on people who are not paying attention to politics continuing to not pay attention to politics. Once they start paying attention, that’s the end of the makebelieve – and, hence, the scam. It’s here, I think, that Kennedy’s fate is tied up with Donald Trump’s.
To the extent that Trump was leading in the polls over the past year, it was to the extent that most people most of the time had not been paying attention to politics. And they had not been paying attention to politics, because the time wasn’t right. As long as it was possible that the former president might not be the Republican Party’s nominee, there was no point in allowing him to live rent-free in their heads.
Now that he’s the GOP’s nominee (and now that Joe Biden is the Democrats’ nominee), most people most of the time are starting to pay attention. Indeed, I think we are in the beginning stages of a period we might call the Great Remembering. With the choices being made clear, voters are recalling what happened the last time the country rejected an insider (Hillary Clinton) in favor of an outsider (Trump). They are remembering what life was like the last time a demagogue was president. The result? Biden’s slow but steady improvement in polls.
I don’t think we should trust the good word of people who are not paying attention to politics who also claim to be “dissatisfied with a political system that has fielded the same two candidates for the second straight election,” according to an Ipsos poll that attempted to identify Kennedy supporters. I don’t think these people really care.
That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, though. As Lee Drutman said, what’s needed is serious institutional reforms. (Lee enumerates a few ideas. I highly recommend his piece and his newsletter, generally.) I suspect Biden understands this. That’s why he has made room in his campaign and his administration for rehabilitating the spirit of democracy (for instance, trust-busting aimed at creating more competition between giant corporations and bringing down prices for consumers.) Whether Kennedy supporters hear that over the din of his demagoguery might depend on whether they really believe that “the system is rotten.”
If they don’t, they’ll vote for Kennedy.
And nothing will change.