Democrats are squatting on the Kennedy name

Democrats are known not only for entitlement programs, but also for a profound sense of entitlement. They can’t fathom why President Biden is seeing a significant, possibly devastating drop in support from Black and Hispanic voters, for example, because they believe they own those people’s votes.

But there’s another, significantly smaller group of voters to whom Democrats feel entitled, and the prospect of losing it could have ramifications beyond this very tiny group: the Kennedys.

The presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is proving to have some legs, which scares the hell out of Democrats. RFK is no Ross Perot, the independent presidential candidate who received nearly 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 election. But he could play the spoiler by taking votes away from Biden.

Unlike Biden, RFK is an actual progressive who seems to genuinely believes in the things he says. He isn’t doing what he is doing for any party — he’s doing it for causes (often badly misguided ones) that he believes in. Biden, on the other hand, is something of a chameleon. Not only has he been on every side of nearly every issue, but he has also claimed an ethnic kinship and bond since childhood with nearly every ethnic or racial audience he’s addressed.

It is truly weird to watch Democrats and MSNBC savage Kennedy as anti-Democrat and even anti-democratic, because the Democratic Party has milked the Kennedy name almost as much as the Kennedy family has.

RFK’s adherence to principle has the Democratic establishment confused. JFK, RFK and Ted Kennedy were all party men, and Democrats still invoke their names for applause lines and fundraising. Now there’s a member of that family using that name against them.

The left appears to have decided to deal with that problem by insisting that Kennedy somehow has no claim to the Kennedy legacy, or that his campaign is tarnishing it. The Democratic National Committee is effectively squatting on the Kennedy name, trying to claim it as their own while denying it to an actual Kennedy.

The gang at “Morning Joe” did an entire segment on how disappointing RFK Jr. is and would be to his own father. Think what you will of him, but really — the gall of people passing judgment on someone by declaring he’d be a disappointment to his own dad is beyond the pale. What piece of the Kennedy family legacy does Joe Scarborough have domain over? The correct answer is none.

David Corn, MSNBC contributor and Mother Jones magazine’s D.C. bureau chief, can declare RFK Jr. “is tarnishing” his father’s legacy by simply running for president. That’s the sound of the professional progressive class spitting in your face and telling you it’s raining.

MSNBC has also had a string of Kennedy family members on to denounce RFK Jr.’s campaign, gleefully reported on statements condemning the candidacy. Again, they act as though they own the Kennedy name. Maybe they own the lesser Kennedys who are willing to publicly attack a family member because they wish he weren’t running. But they have no claim over the name.

“Kennedy is peddling an unpersuasive narrative about Biden predicated on a bunch of misleading or outright false claims,” writes an MSNBC blogger. “But his outsized distaste for the president tracks with a political journey in which he appears to feel more at home on the right than on the left.”

RFK Jr. is a lot of things, but a conservative is not among them. Still, he has to be otherized, lest progressives notice they have an option besides Biden. The wagons have been circled. Biden has a phalanx of media surrogates attempting to protect him from Kennedy’s existence.

First, the Democratic National Committee denied him any sense of a fair and honest primary this year. In doing so, they may have sowed the seeds of Biden’s defeat. They did all they could to block RFK’s ballot access, and so he left the party to run as an independent. Because these people, who are now risibly campaigning on a supposed threat to “our democracy,” have a way of showing their true nature whenever it’s time to throw all of their political opponents off the ballot in as many states as possible. Just trust them — they can save democracy only by destroying it.

After RFK’s campaign ran a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl, the New York Times declared, “A Super Bowl advertisement promoting the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a remake of a 1960 spot that helped put his uncle John F. Kennedy in the White House — has struck a nerve with Kennedy family members and friends, who worry that it exploits and potentially tarnishes the legacy of a storied political family.”

Who has a stronger claim to “exploit” the Kennedy family legacy? The man whose father and uncle were assassinated in pursuit of public service? Or the entitled liberal media and party elites, who have broken into the Kennedy home and are squatting on the Kennedy name, insisting that it belongs to them?

Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).