Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed paperwork on Wednesday to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential primary.
It’s the third time a member of the Kennedy family has sought to primary a sitting Democratic president. In 1968, Kennedy’s father Robert challenged Lyndon Johnson, who soon announced that he would not pursue a second full term. In 1980, Kennedy’s uncle Ted challenged Jimmy Carter and narrowly lost a bruising, extended primary campaign. Both of those men were sitting US senators and national figures who had become icons to a generation of Democrats. Kennedy Jr., however, is a vocal anti-vaccine activist who long falsely maintained a link between childhood vaccines and autism and has never before run for political office.
Yet, Kennedy still has the potential to complicate a Democratic primary far more than Marianne Williamson, the New Age author who is Biden’s only other announced rival. Kennedy Jr. not only is running as a scion of one of the few political dynasties left in American politics but with a public profile that predates his anti-vax turn. Kennedy was long the head of Riverkeeper, a prominent environmental nonprofit, and has been a vocal proponent of a baby-boomer-era brand of environmentalism that includes ardent opposition to nuclear power.
Kennedy’s announcement was not a bolt out of the blue. In March, the political scion visited New Hampshire and tweeted out a link to an exploratory website several weeks ago that said, “Help me decide whether to run for president.” It went on to say that if he mounted a campaign, his top priority would be “to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.”
Still, what will almost certainly grab attention are Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, he had served as a locus of…
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