Did Anyone Else Watch It?

[Ron Bulman]

RFK Jr's speech tonight did in fact echo JFK's Peace speech from 60 years ago, from quotes to todays situation.  Wow, he put it out there.

I almost gave up, a 30 plus minute delay.  Then three people speaking first.  God Bless America.  The overflow crowd causing the delay not very loud.  Then he spoke Truth in a "desert of censorship".

The Russians won WWII, True, will piss many off, but True.  We must re-examine our attitudes.

No teleprompter or notes?

Not an invasion of US.  From within violence promoted by continual war.

Tribalistic us vs them tearing us apart.

a call for de-escalation, the nuclear threat is real.

Much more.  Watch it if you didn't.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Ron Bulman

[K K Lane]

Before the speech it looked like there was two teleprompters.   Please correct me.  If true, that's not a particular problem for RFK Jr. who has demonstrated admirable command of the issues.

I agree with RFK on substance.  My critique is more style.   I think he should incorporate a couple sound bites into his speech - as he did with his announcement in April.   Plus, I'm offended as a midwesterner that he started 30+ minutes late.   

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by K K Lane

[Ron Bulman]

13 minutes ago, K K Lane said:

Before the speech it looked like there was two teleprompters.   Please correct me.  If true, that's not a particular problem for RFK Jr. who has demonstrated admirable command of the issues.

I agree with RFK on substance.  My critique is more style.   I think he should incorporate a couple sound bites into his speech - as he did with his announcement in April.   Plus, I'm offended as a midwesterner that he started 30+ minutes late.   

 

Late was frustrating to me, I almost gave up.  The speech itself was worth the wait imho.   Now, what I want to know is how he would accomplish Peace.  Giving up Ukraine, part of it, a no NATO guarantee, again (failed).  

Edited June 21, 2023 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

This is what you get in an msn search for RFK JR speech tonight.

RFK Jr speech tonight - Search (bing.com)

 

[Benjamin Cole]

28 minutes ago, K K Lane said:

Before the speech it looked like there was two teleprompters.   Please correct me.  If true, that's not a particular problem for RFK Jr. who has demonstrated admirable command of the issues.

I agree with RFK on substance.  My critique is more style.   I think he should incorporate a couple sound bites into his speech - as he did with his announcement in April.   Plus, I'm offended as a midwesterner that he started 30+ minutes late.   

 

I share your Midwestern sentiments. A favorite stage of my life was when I lived in Texas. 

A bit related: No one can fault RFK Jr. for his birth, we are all born into our families not by choice. 

Then RFK Jr. spent a lifetime pursuing various causes, most of them good. 

After his divorce, RFK Jr., with his name, looks and money, probably could have chosen his wife, more or less. 

Did he marry a farmworker from New Mexico, or an accountant from Iowa? A police officer in NYC? 

No, literally married a Hollywood actress and went to live in Hollywood (the Hills, if I recall correctly). 

I have enough of Hollywood in politics. 

True, RFK Jr. has breached his ties with the ultra-rigid norms of Tinseltown...but why was he there to begin with? 

Let's hope RFK Jr. serves the interests of the US middle class. 

[Ron Bulman]

It's a foreign policy speech primarily.   

[Ron Bulman]

He doesn't start until 25 minutes plus into this.  Watch for yourself, JFK mentioned early on, plus Peace.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks so much for this.

 

BTW, if Dennis Kucinich is your campaign manager that tells you you need to know.

[Ron Bulman]

I've been brainstorming, nothing too ridiculous, maybe.  Biden in his first campaign mentioned being a bridge to the future if I remember right.

Many are worried about Kamala's qualifications as President, and Joe's age.

If RFK Jr collected enough electoral votes might he be a better candidate, VP, and a bridge, knowing the president?

[Roger Odisio]

22 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I've been brainstorming, nothing too ridiculous, maybe.  Biden in his first campaign mentioned being a bridge to the future if I remember right.

Many are worried about Kamala's qualifications as President, and Joe's age.

If RFK Jr collected enough electoral votes might he be a better candidate, VP, and a bridge, knowing the president?

The speech was all about picking up where his uncle and father left off before each was murdered and the disastrous turn the country has taken since. Exactly what is needed and what I was hoping for. He even ended it with the essence of  what JFK was trying to say 60 years ago: What kind of peace do we want? Not a Pax Americana enforced by American weapons of war.  A genuine peace...etc.

 

It was delivered in a conversational tone as if he was sitting in your living room talking one on one with you.  He wasn't a politician with obvious applause lines scattered throughout.  In fact, it took a while for the audience to start breaking in with applause.

 

There was an overflowing crowd, some of which had to hear the speech in other rooms (which was blamed for the delay at the start).  A small, good sign.

 

By early next year his antiwar message is going to resonate even more than it does now. This was a fine start.

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

He doesn't start until 25 minutes plus into this.  Watch for yourself, JFK mentioned early on, plus Peace.

 

Thanks Ron.

It is a lloooonnnngggg road to the White House, and long knives are out on the whole route. 

I think RFK Jr. is going to win it---meaning the JFK Records will be opened up in my lifetime (with luck). 

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I share your Midwestern sentiments. A favorite stage of my life was when I lived in Texas. 

A bit related: No one can fault RFK Jr. for his birth, we are all born into our families not by choice. 

Then RFK Jr. spent a lifetime pursuing various causes, most of them good. 

After his divorce, RFK Jr., with his name, looks and money, probably could have chosen his wife, more or less. 

Did he marry a farmworker from New Mexico, or an accountant from Iowa? A police officer in NYC? 

No, literally married a Hollywood actress and went to live in Hollywood (the Hills, if I recall correctly). 

I have enough of Hollywood in politics. 

True, RFK Jr. has breached his ties with the ultra-rigid norms of Tinseltown...but why was he there to begin with? 

Let's hope RFK Jr. serves the interests of the US middle class. 

You can't be pro-Kennedy and anti-Hollywood. Old man Joe owned a movie studio. JFK roomed with movie stars, befriended the biggest stars and slept with the most glamorous actresses. Outside of Reagan, JFK was the most Hollywood-connected President in history. 

I mean, heck, even RFK had a friendship with Frankenheimer and others in the Hollywood crowd.

[Benjamin Cole]

7 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

You can't be pro-Kennedy and anti-Hollywood. Old man Joe owned a movie studio. JFK roomed with movie stars, befriended the biggest stars and slept with the most glamorous actresses. Outside of Reagan, JFK was the most Hollywood-connected President in history. 

I mean, heck, even RFK had a friendship with Frankenheimer and others in the Hollywood crowd.

Verily. The Kennedys were the first TV PR-smart occupants of the White House, after the under-rated and prosaic Truman and Ike.

The Kennedys were glamorous and handsome, with gorgeous wives. Confident, witty (and very smart too). 

But times have changed. Tinseltown is ugly and the people in it too. 

RFK Jr. would do well to move on from Hollywood. 

The US has serious issues with housing costs, globalism in foreign, military and trade policies, and epidemics in diabetes and obesity. Long-term stagnant wages. An open border undercutting US labor.  Very expensive medial care. 

Not a situation for some hairdos from Hollywood. 

[Greg Doudna]

I have been majorly (not counting numerous minor instances) "burned" twice in the past by believing specific impassioned promises of presidential candidates. The first was Reagan who was going to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons on earth, and there was a reasonable, intelligent, breath-of-fresh-air leader on the other side, Gorbachev. I did not support Reagan on other grounds (horrors in Central America among others) and would not vote for him. But he sounded so real on this one that I half-believed, half-hoped, that he could be for real on that. Then Reyjkavik 1986, when Reagan--who by some credible accounts apparently did believe privately and personally his rhetoric in his public statements--and Gorbachev agreed to a four-stage plan to end nuclear weapons on earth, that was doable. Reagan's staff, horrified, walked it back, explaining that Reagan had been out of step with the Reagan administration on that, and that his promises were never intended to be taken seriously. The Pentagon objected that nuclear deterrent was less costly than fielding standing armies--a fiscal responsibility/budget argument against the Reagan-Gorbachev deal in keeping with Reagan's most central and heartfelt campaign pledges. But, you know, he tried. What's a poor president to do when his own staff won't cooperate in carrying out his campaign promises? But seriously, what an existential tragedy. A JFK matched with a Gorbachev could have gone into a peaceful world between superpowers in which so much could be possible for the world and humanity. So that was major Burn No. 1 for me.

Major Burn No. #2 was Obama, buying into the dream of a real change for the better. Such an effective campaign. Don't get me wrong here--I think Obama was a decent, good president in terms of the status quo. In the ranking of US presidents he was one of the better ones to me. That is not my criticism. My "burn" was that there was no "real change" in the critical issue of foreign policy and international diplomacy and removing the occasion for horrifying and misbegotten wars. The rhetoric was no more brought into fruition than Reagan's on bringing about a negotiated end to nuclear weapons on earth.  

Now to RFK Jr., positioned to become front and center a candidate for change in international relations. The negatives on RFK Jr. are: anti-vax prominence; right-wing company he keeps; prospect of throwing the election to Trump. A fourth major issue is the divisive issue of Ukraine in which some support and some oppose an end to the war through negotiated partition in which territories in Ukraine in which majorities of the population want secession or alliance with Russia would be ratified in a settlement. A fifth issue is he says he won't legislate re climate change. 

A comment on the Trump issue, which is indeed an existential prospect of hard fascism with white-nationalist overtones and probably tolerated organized vigilante death squads, the works, coming about in America if Trump were to get full control of the executive branch and the armed forces which could occur in a second Trump term that was not the case in his first term. Electability against Trump is probably on the short list of top one or two or three issues to most Democratic base voters. Well here is a comment on that: first, news bulletin, it is not at all clear that Biden is electable against Trump. After all that has come out negative about Trump, Trump is polling 6 points ahead of Biden in the most current matchup polling. Second, RFK Jr. would beat Trump. I am not aware of a matchup RFKJr versus Trump poll yet. But RFK Jr. already polls ahead of both Biden and Trump in favorability ratings across America. That is the next best to a direct matchup poll. 

And so RFK Jr. is a non-racist populist who may be the strongest candidate the Democrats could field against Trump, in terms of the electability issue solely considered. 

America has such a history of xenophobic and demonization-of-minorities and immigrants populism, precursors to fascisms of the twentieth-century kind, Sinclair Lewis "It Can't Happen Here" demagogues ... and RFK Jr. isn't that kind of populist, yet has the potential to peel off large numbers of populist votes from the horrible Trump and some of the Trump wannabes who are that kind of populist. 

On the climate change issue, RFKJr is well-known for being anti-fossil fuels and anti-nuclear, and is no shill for the oil industry which is the source of a large part of the air in the organized propaganda challenging climate science. There is no indication that RFKJr. is or would be bought off. The argument against RFKJr. isn't that he is bought off but that he is wrong on the anti-vax issue and other things, and is a stalking horse for right-wing interests seeking to wedge-divide the Democratic vote to elect Trump or some similar hard-right neo-fascist. 

The RFK Jr. foreign policy speech, if that was a real prospect for implementation in the world, would be worth giving any candidate a pass on some other criticisms, because it looms so central and major in a world in which current weapons have removed war as a viable option for settling differences between superpowers. 

But who would RFK Jr's cabinet be? What are the chances he could deliver--and be different from Reagan and Obama as described above?

It is usually better to vote the party not the candidate, based on core platform positions even if platform positions are not always implemented. 

Best case: right-wing interests think they are using RFK Jr. to wedge-divide the Democratic vote, and RFK Jr. wins and isn't what right-wingers had in mind for president but is a reform presidency bringing about the best in the Democratic Party platform and legacy of the earlier Kennedys idealism. Worst case: right-wing interests think they are using RFK Jr. to wedge-divide the Democratic vote and are right on that.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Greg Doudna  JFK was trying to chang the direction of the Cold War and was murdered. RFK said he would continue the effort and was murdered. What has followed is 50 years of war. RFK Jr now wants to pick up the mantle of his father and uncle. Dennis Kucinich is his campaign manager, If he was elected, he would pick like-minded people for his cabinet and to lead the intelligence community. can he be successful after 60 years of entreanch warfare? I dont know but it is worth a chance. we owe it to future generations to try.

This country cannot withstand a  Trump or Harris presidency. anyone voting for Biden in 2024 must understand that the odds are they will also be voting for Harris. Who would you rather have as POTUS- RFK Jr or Harris?