All RFK Jr. apologia is anti-vaxx

The Atlantic is the latest publication to publish a RFK Jr. sanewashing. The genre remains a total dead end:

I love Jerusalem’s work but this is utter garbage. RFK Jr. helped sow a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed dozens of babies. If he is in charge and successfully carries out his antivaxx agenda, thousands more children will die. RFK Jr. is a weirdo and a sicko.

[image or embed]— Sam (@samd.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 8:02 AM

“What might it look like to open the Democratic tent to vaccine-skeptical Americans, of which there are a growing number?” We saw this in the early 2010s in crunchy Marin suburbs! It sucked! Measles came back!

[image or embed]— Sam (@samd.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 8:10 AM

The idea that you can somehow manipulate RFK’s empty platitudes about the Public Health Establishment and manipulate them to progressive purposes is absolutely delusional. He’s not trying to pursue good goals through different ends. He’s an extremely dangerous crackpot hell-bent on undermining incredibly important public health achievements, and he’s already played a direct role in getting children killed.

I’m glad to see that Chris Murphy at least understands the shot here:

Sargent: Maybe. I just want to try to pin this down because your thread is so jarring compared to what other Democrats are saying. Yes, licking wounds, understood. Yes, there’s time. Yes, there’s things to do, but the Democratic Party has got to get out there more on this stuff now, or in the next couple of weeks. It’s got to get in the game of sounding the alarm about both the profound unfitness of these nominees, the moral degeneracy of people like RFK, and Kash Patel, openly, as you say, being nominated for the express purpose of weaponizing law enforcement against Trump’s enemies with no basis. The party has to say this stuff, right?

Murphy: Yeah. And just because it is unlikely that we are going to defeat these nominees doesn’t mean that there [isn’t] great efficacy in having the fight. These are moments. These nomination fights are moments where you draw a contrast on values. Even if you don’t win the vote, they can be very impactful. And if you don’t signal outrage at how Trump is fundamentally shifting our conversation around the health of democracy now, then I don’t think people will believe that later.

Why? After a mass shooting—these awful mass shootings—I will often immediately go down to the Senate floor. I do that because it’s the way I express my visceral emotional reaction to another mass shooting. It is also because I want people to know, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, that this is not something we should accept; that I don’t accept it. I go right down to the floor and pour my heart out about how devastating it is, and that is what’s helped to keep the conversation going: that we don’t normalize mass shootings.

That’s the same tactic we need to use right now. If we just accept that RFK Jr. is a mainstream nominee to head the health agency when he just finished telling us that he thinks maybe Covid was a genetically engineered virus to protect Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, we’re cooked. We’re cooked if that, all of a sudden, is a normal thing—to nominate somebody like that, who thinks things like that, to head up the biggest health agency in the world.

The signaling to the public is important. We’re not super popular politicians, but it doesn’t mean that people don’t listen to us.

I don’t know if RFK Jr. can be defeated, but preemptive capitulation is the worst possible option. Trump getting 49% of the vote in an election where anti-incumbent parties were playing on easy mode doesn’t mean that you gotta hand it to every completely unqualified crank he tries to put in his cabinet. Tell the truth — it’s the easiest thing to remember.