The undead Kennedy

The NYT has a particularly silly thumbsucker this morning, about the “threat” that Robert Kennedy Jr.’s absurd presidential campaign supposedly presents to Joe Biden’s re-election hopes:

Those upstart rivals include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist with a celebrated Democratic lineage who has emerged with unexpected strength in early polls even as he spreads conspiracy theories and consorts with right-wing figures and billionaire donors. Mr. Kennedy’s support from Democrats, as high as 20 percent in some surveys, serves as a bracing reminder of left-leaning voters’ healthy appetite for a Biden alternative, and as a glaring symbol of the president’s weaknesses.

Evidence for this proposition is not forthcoming. Instead we get this:

Mr. Kennedy’s popularity in polls is largely because of his family, which has included three Democratic senators, one president and a host of other high-profile figures. A CNN poll late last month that showed Mr. Kennedy with 20 percent support against Mr. Biden found that the main reason voters liked him was because of the Kennedy name.

We’re talking about the idiot nostalgic boomer vote here in other words.

Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, and there’s nothing else to be said on this topic. In other words this is a horse race with no horses, which is a tragedy for a whole class of political journalists.

The other tragedy this non-story implicates is quite a bit more significant for the nation and the world.