RFK Jr.’s Campaign Is Getting A Boost From Biden’s Hawkishness

Joe Biden is fueling his opponent’s campaign through his unpopular and hawkish foreign policy.

by Norman Solomon, The Hill

It’s almost certain that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not be the next Democratic presidential nominee, but the momentum of his campaign is a dramatic contrast to the uncertain prospects that Joe Biden can win a second term. While RFK Jr. is best known for denouncing vaccines, a major factor in his appeal to progressive Democrats has drawn scant media attention: He is making headway with denunciations of President Biden’s slide into fervent militarism.

It’s a deep concern, well below the radar of the D.C. press corps, that is causing many one-time Biden supporters to seek an alternative. Kennedy is now drawing support from a sizable proportion of Biden’s 2020 voters. An appreciable number of them see Biden as a leader who stubbornly, even recklessly, prefers arms buildups and confrontational rhetoric to genuine diplomacy.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the red carpet at Celebrity Fight Night XXIII at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona.

While there isn’t much of an antiwar movement right now, there is a lot of antiwar sentiment — and Kennedy is deftly playing to it. His website lists “peace” as a priority, declaring that “it is not too late for us to voluntarily let go of empire and serve peace instead, as a strong and healthy nation.” The first pledge at the top of his home page is: “We will end the forever wars.”

Kennedy is calling for a halt to “the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening.” I agree with the gist of that message — it’s a central theme of my new book “War Made Invisible” — but RFK Jr. is a deeply flawed messenger.