The Left’s Swift Shift After RFK Jr.’s Trump Endorsement
Kennedy’s indictment of his former party, along with his endorsement of Donald Trump, has sent shock waves through the chambers of the self-appointed elite who would rule us.1/2
Roger KimballAugust 25, 2024
The thing I admire about contemporary deep-state Democrats is their nimbleness.
This nimbleness was on ostentatious view in the regime response to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement Friday that he was 1) suspending his campaign (at least in battleground states) and 2) throwing his support behind Donald Trump.
The acrid scent of panic might have been expected among the limp-wristed, totalitarian faithful. And, in fact, beneath the amusing cologne of anti-Trump bluster, the panic was indeed discernible.
But there was also that trademark smooth-as-a-suppository (as Saul Bellow put it) suaveness, exemplified, for instance, by former Obama strategist David Axelrod.
“Robert F. Kennedy Sr.,” Axelrod posted shortly after the deed was done, “would have been appalled to see his son cut a deal to drop out for [t]he race and endorse Trump.”
Imagine: someone agrees to drop out of a race at the last minute and support a rival candidate! As the commentatorNed Ryan put it in response to Axelrod’s snippy post: “You suddenly seem offended by someone cutting a deal to drop out of the race and endorse someone else.”
Cast your mind back, David, to July 21 of this year. That’s when Joe Biden, having been made an offer he couldn’t refuse by the secret committee running the country, suddenly announced that he was dropping out of the race. This was, remember, after Biden repeatedly insisted that he was staying in the race and was looking forward to the next debate against Trump. Yes, the first was a disaster, but he would show ’em!
Biden’s missive, posted to his personal—not his official POTUS—account, bore all the earmarks of haste not to say coercion. Had someone actually dictated the text to him? We don’t know. But it was widely remarked that he neglected to endorse Kamala Harris. That came a few moments later in a separate post.
It is easy to forget what prodigious feats of political nimbleness were required to carry out this most delicate operation. First, the media and the party bosses had to stop mid-track and start marching in the opposite direction.On the morning of July 21, Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack.” By sundown, he was sadly diminished but also a brave herofor putting country before self and nobly bowing out of the race. The whole maneuver displayed an Olympics-level nimbleness.
So has the subsequent coronation of Kamala Harris. On the day before Biden’s defenestration,she was widely acknowledged to be a disliked, incompetent, airhead. The day after, she was hailed as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
As I have several times noted since ==the magic bus of Kamala’s supreme makeover= got underway, the nimbleness of her canonization, though impressive, was the brittle project of magical thinking. It was like a hot-air balloon: eye-catching on ascent, intractable in flight, and dangerous when the air cooled and the plummet began.
As I and others observed, the ecstasy surrounding Kamala Harris on the run-up to the Democratic Convention wasbut a “sugar high,” a temporary state of intoxicationthat would be as short-lived as it was numbing.
The convention wasn’t over before strains of “the thrill is gone” could be heard beginning to echo in the chambers of the punditocracy.
By Thursday, the day that Kamala was to speak, it was beginning to beclear that her image as a great statesman-in-waiting was the closest thing to creatio ex nihilo since the events recounted in the opening chapters of Genesis.
(https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/25/the-lefts-swift-shift-after-rfk-jr-s-trump-endorsement/