How RFK Jr. Helped Democrats Get Their Act Together

The Democratic Party is still recovering from the shock of Donald Trump’s reelection. There seems to be a crisis of memory: The early chaos of his administration was not just predictable, it was telegraphed. On the campaign trail, Trump said exactly what he was going to do, while his allies at the Heritage Foundation literally wrote it down and published it. And yet, the first 10 days of the Trump administration have been defined almost as much by Democratic fecklessness as they have been by the characteristic and—again—predictable torrent of chaos, authoritarianism, and racism that Trump and his allies have unleashed.

There are, however, some positive signs. As Democrats reached the bargaining stage of reckoning with Donald Trump’s reelection, some in the party signaled a willingness to work with him. Having been beaten by him—and having realized, belatedly, that a decade of messaging had failed—many thought it was time to join him. It’s been a dispiriting sight: There are still too many Democrats voting for Trump nominees, an attempt at reviving a certain standard of comity that Trump will never reciprocate and which Democrats should abandon in the wake of the president’s attempt to end all government funding by executive fiat.

But the hearings for Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have illuminated the path forward. In those sessions, Democrats have been ruthless, zeroing in on Kennedy Jr.’s long history of conspiracy theorizing, his shameless thirst for power, and the danger he poses to public health as Trump’s pick for that post. And they’ve done more than simply tilt and parry—they’ve broken some new rhetorical ground, as well. In the Kennedy hearings, Democrats aren’t just opposing Trump’s nominee, they’re opening up a new path forward: not just castigating Trump’s nominee but countering him and co-opting his message.

The period immediately following Donald Trump’s reelection was bleak for reasons so obvious they’re not worth rehashing. But it was made unbearable by the enervating performance of the ostensible opposition party. As Trump and his followers popped champagne, Democratic leaders arrived at the same conclusion: Their decade-long effort to convince the country of Trump’s singular unfitness and danger—his stupidity, incompetence, and authoritarianism—had failed. Something else was needed.

This didn’t have to be a bad thing. Over the years Democratic resistance to Trump has too often verged into hysteria and hyperbole. The all-out, singular fixation on Trump—as if he were a gift from the negative-partisanship gods—often seemed like a convenient excuse to put off doing the more difficult work of coalition building or, for that matter, policy crafting. If Trump was such a singular, self-evident threat, after all, then the tough, mundane work of politics wasn’t necessary. But Trump’s victory has sent Democrats back to the drawing board.

Their first draft of what to do next was less than inspiring, as Democrats formed an initial consensus that what they needed to do was forgo finding a new way to oppose Trump in favor of a new way to help him. This has been most prominent in the party’s depressing capitulation on immigration, culminating in the bipartisan passage of the draconian Laken Riley Act, which allows undocumented migrants who have been accused—not convicted or even tried—of a crime to be deported.

Less prominent and almost as pathetic was the flirtation between some Democrats and Kennedy, who was tapped by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and whose lifelong fixation on dead animals may not even crack the top five of his most disqualifying characteristics. A virulent anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, RFK Jr. played a pivotal role in a measles outbreak in American Samoa that left nearly 100 dead. He is an anti-science quack who seems set on returning the country to an era when polio and other preventable diseases were rampant.

Shortly after Trump nominated Kennedy Jr., Colorado Governor Jared Polis endorsed him, albeit in a mealy-mouthed way. “Science must remain THE cornerstone of our nation’s health policy and the science-backed decision to get vaccinated improves public health and safety,” Polis wrote on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “But if as a country we follow the science we would also be far more concerned about the impact of pesticides on public health, ag policy on nutrition, and the lack of access to prescription drugs due to drug high prices.”

Meanwhile, reporting in early January, albeit with a pro-RFK Jr. slant, indicated that the HHS nominee saw Bernie Sanders and John Fetterman as potential allies to his nomination. Kennedy Jr., after all, was a crank, but some of his conspiracy theorizing appealed to independent-minded Democrats, either those cynically attempting to show their bipartisan credentials (Fetterman) or those who saw common cause with elements of RFK Jr.’s program, which treats pharmaceutical and agricultural giants with skepticism (Sanders).

In the lead-up to the hearings that began on Wednesday, moreover, there were rumblings that Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse might actually cast a rogue vote for Kennedy Jr. for reasons both base and familiar—Trump’s nominee was his roommate at the University of Virginia’s Law School. As Democrats, still smarting from their defeat in November, struggled to come up with anything cohesive, there was legitimate anxiety that they could fail to mount a serious challenge to one of Trump’s most unserious nominees—and that any Democratic votes for Kennedy Jr. could provide enough cover for reluctant Republicans to vote to confirm as well.

But the hearings themselves have thankfully put paid to those notions. Whether it’s recognition of Kennedy’s extreme lack of qualification or a new hard edge born from Trump’s attempt to sabotage the civil service (or both!), Democrats have been forceful—these confirmation hearings are perhaps the shoutiest in recent memory.

It’s been a target-rich environment for Democrats’ anger. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy theorizing about vaccines, his lack of evident qualifications, his role in numerous deadly public health emergencies, his basic lack of competence, and his overall fecklessness have all been themes. The hearings have forced Kennedy Jr. to admit he once claimed that Lyme disease was likely to have been a “military engineered bioweapon” and that he had once suggested that “exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender.”

“It doesn’t matter what you come here and say that isn’t true; that’s not reflective of what you really believe,” Democratic Senator Michael Bennet said in one exchange with Kennedy. “Because unlike other jobs we’re confirming around this place, this is a job where [it’s] life and death.” That is the crux of the Democratic case, and it’s a strong one. At the same time, other Democrats have worked to open a wedge between Kennedy Jr. and other Republicans, zeroing in on the nominee’s seemingly convenient recent adoption of anti-abortion viewpoints. Kennedy Jr., these attacks make clear, cannot be trusted as anyone’s ally. If Republican senators are willing to set aside his vaccine skepticism because he is pitching himself as an ally on abortion, Democrats are making it very clear he cannot be trusted on this or anything. He is, at all times, guided only by his own quackery.

Democrats have an opportunity to build on these hearings. Kennedy Jr.’s appeal is largely built around a pitch to cranks: He’s a whack job and skeptic of modern medicine who pushes ridiculous ideas about vaccines causing autism and the water turning kids gay. But parts of his approach to Big Pharma and Big Agriculture are worth co-opting. Kennedy Jr.’s distrust of these companies is mostly a silly affectation—he sees them as part of a sinister cabal pushing evil vaccines. But there are elements of his critique that ring true, particularly when it comes to processed food and other chemicals. When faced with someone who is actually skeptical of corporate power, as happened during an exchange with Sanders on Thursday, he wilts.

Trump’s message still resonates because it feeds off crankish skepticism of powerful governmental and economic actors. That message has always been corrupt. Trump isn’t remotely interested in reform or a more equitable or just society. He wants a government and a corporate world that bows down and ultimately enriches him. That message, moreover, has been co-opted in Trump’s second term. Kennedy fits within the Trump 2.0 milieu where cranks and crooks have the run of the place. One moment, you have Kennedy Jr. advancing high weirdness in the halls of power. The next moment you have plutocrats like Elon Musk, transparently running a con job on the federal bureaucracy in order to shred regulations, cut taxes, and stop pesky investigations into his own business practices. Self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement are the goals at all times.

One reason why Democratic messaging has fallen flat over the last decade is because it’s been inherently pro-institutional. They have rightly labeled Trump as an authoritarian and a fascist. But they have, again and again, backed an existing political and economic order that Americans distrust as the only alternative. Voters want something different—something that cuts against the torpor of a broken status quo. The Kennedy hearings suggest a different Democratic Party is out there—angry, crafty, eager to fillet their opponents and coming awfully close to even having fun doing so. It still isn’t clear if Democrats quite see these possibilities—or if they’ll seize them with both hands. But RFK Jr. somehow or another, brought out their best side.