Then there were two: Another Democrat rises to challenge Biden in 2024

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Marianne Williamson has some competition. Another Democrat filed a statement of candidacy Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is challenging Joe Biden for the Democrat nomination for president.

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Who knows how long he will last (or Williamson, for that matter) but it may be fun to watch while he’s around. He’s an anti-vaxxer and has written an anti-Fauci book so he may find an audience. He has been anti-vax for years, long before the pandemic. Between his anti-vax activism and being a member of America’s most famous political family, he comes into the primary with plenty of name recognition.

Kennedy is 69 years old and the nephew of JFK. His father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while running for president in 1968 in Los Angeles. He was a bestselling author and an environmental lawyer. He worked on issues like clean water and saving the oceans. Then he took a turn. Fifteen years ago he became a leading voice among anti-vaxxers. He has taken a lot of blowback over his positions over the years.

So, things may get interesting between him and Sleepy Joe. No one, other than Fauci and the CDC, was a bigger vaccine nag than Joe Biden. It has only been recently that Biden has let up on talking about the vaccines every time he speaks. Even after evidence began emerging that the vaccines were not as effective as once thought, and sometimes downright dangerous to the health of some people, Biden and his administration continued to insist that everyone get the COVID-19 vaccine. People lost their jobs for not getting jabbed, including members of the military, and everyday Americans lost their ability to attend events if they couldn’t produce proof of receiving the vaccine. Our lives have never been the same. There is a lot of resentment in public opinion now over how the pandemic was handled so Kennedy will have some level of support built in.

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He won’t be much of a challenge to Biden but he can cause him some heartburn along the way. His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, did very well during the pandemic. Its revenues more than doubled in 2020 up to $6.8M, according to filings made with charity regulators. There has been controversy along the way, though.

His organization has targeted false claims at groups that may be more prone to distrust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans, experts have said, which could have resulted in deaths during the pandemic.

Kennedy released a book in 2021, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in which he accused the U.S.’s top infectious disease doctor of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy” and promoted unproven COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin, which is meant to treat parasites, and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.

His push against the COVID-19 vaccine has linked him at times with anti-democratic figures and groups. Kennedy has appeared at events pushing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with people who cheered or downplayed the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A photo posted on Instagram showed Kennedy backstage at a July 2021 Reawaken America event with former President Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger. All three have promoted the lie about the 2020 election being stolen.

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Democrats eager to keep control of the White House will have a field day with all that. It’s easy to imagine the ads attacking Kennedy now. Kennedy often invokes Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about COVID-19 mitigation measures. His siblings have sometimes spoken out against his rhetoric, as Kerry Kennedy did in a 2021 interview. She said her brother is “completely wrong on this issue and very dangerous.”

As I said, it may be interesting. It may be fun to watch Biden squirm if he is confronted about the pandemic and the vaccine. That’s a big “if”, of course because Biden has gone about his merry way without being confronted on much of anything. His handlers keep him away from the press and he only talks to those he knows will be friendly to him. Only softball questions for Joe Biden.

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