If you want to understand the current state of the American Democratic Party (its ruthlessness, its hollowness, and its absolute intolerance for dissent) you don’t need to look at the donor rolls or the committee assignments. You only need to look at the family photograph taken in the Rose Garden on St. Patrick’s Day 2024.
There, arranged like well-dressed props in a Vanity Fair spread, were dozens of Kennedys. They grinned with the practiced radiance of American royalty, surrounding President Joe Biden. It was an image meant to project unity, heritage, and the passing of the torch. But what it actually projected was a public execution.
Conspicuously absent from the frame was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the one member of the dynasty who had dared to do what Kennedys are mythologically supposed to do: question the establishment.
For decades, we have been suffocated by the Kennedy mystique. We are told endlessly that this family represents the pinnacle of American civic virtue, bold, independent, and courageous. We are told they are the guardians of the little guy, the challengers of the war machine, the bold truth-tellers who speak to power. Yet, the moment one of their own actually started asking inconvenient questions about the security state, the pharmaceutical complex, and the erosion of civil liberties, the “Clan” didn’t rally around him. They didn’t even offer him the respectful distance of a neutral family dispute.
Instead, they mobilized with the cold efficiency of a ward-boss hit squad.
The St. Patrick’s Day Massacre
The spectacle of the Kennedy family flocking to the Biden White House (and later, their seamless, sycophantic pivot to Kamala Harris) was not merely a political endorsement. It was an act of fratricide performed for an audience of one: the Democratic National Committee.
Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, Joe Kennedy III, and a host of others didn’t just disagree with Bobby; they sought to annihilate his political existence. In a coordinated media blitz that would have made a Soviet censor blush, they painted their brother and uncle not as a man of conviction, but as a dangerous apostate. They penned op-eds, gave weepily concerned interviews, and stood on stages in Philadelphia to declare that the only way to honor their father’s legacy was to vote for the very machine that Bobby was running against.
The irony is thick enough to choke a horse. The Kennedy brand is built on the idea of the “Profile in Courage”, the lonely leader willing to stand against the tide. Yet when the tide turned against the DNC narrative, the Kennedy family proved they have all the courage of a weather vane. They weren’t protecting democracy; they were protecting their access to the VIP tent at the convention.
The Myth of the “Free Thinking” Liberal
This betrayal exposes the rotting core of modern Democratic sanctimony. The Left loves to posture as the home of free thinkers, the rebels, the punk-rockers of politics. They claim to value “lived experience” and “speaking truth to power.” But this is a lie. The modern Left values conformity. It demands total submission to the current orthodoxy, whether that orthodoxy concerns foreign wars, mandates, or the coronation of a candidate who didn’t receive a single primary vote.
RFK Jr.’s sin wasn’t that he was wrong (though the family certainly claimed he was). His sin was that he was off-script. He was a Kennedy who forgot that his role was to look good in a sweater, quote Aeschylus, and rubber-stamp whatever policy the consultants had cooked up.
By physically surrounding Biden, a man who represents the absolute calcification of the Washington status quo, the Kennedy family signaled that blood is not thicker than water. Blood is certainly not thicker than proximity to power. They chose the decrepit, failing architecture of the Biden administration over their own flesh and blood because the Biden administration offered them relevance. Bobby offered them only the hard, lonely road of integrity.
From Camelot to the HR Department
When Biden collapsed and the Party installed Kamala Harris, the Kennedy chorus didn’t miss a beat. They seamlessly transferred their loyalty to the new vessel, proving that their allegiance isn’t to a person or a principle, but to the Structure.
Watching the Kennedys ingratiate themselves with Kamala Harris, a candidate whose entire career is a testament to failing upward, was the final insult. Here is a family that gave us the Peace Corps and the Moon Shot, now reducing themselves to cheerleaders for an administration defined by word salads and bureaucratic incompetence.
They treated RFK Jr. not like a brother, but like a virus that needed to be quarantined. When he finally suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, the family released a statement calling it a “betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear.”
What values are those, exactly?
Is it the value of censorship? Is it the value of endless foreign intervention? Is it the value of weaponizing the legal system against political opponents? Because those are the values of the administration they endorsed. If RFK Jr. betrayed anything, it was the unspoken rule of the modern aristocracy: Never turn on the other elites.
The End of the Illusion
There is a silver lining to this display of treachery. It has finally shattered the Kennedy illusion. We can stop pretending that this family holds some special moral wisdom. We can stop looking to them for guidance.
Maria Shriver can polish the statues and write the misty-eyed essays. Kerry Kennedy can give the speeches about “democracy.” But we have seen who they really are. They are company men and women. They are enforcers for the status quo. They are willing to sacrifice the “free thinking” rebel in their own ranks to keep their standing in the cocktail circuit secure.
The old bootlegger, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a ruthless man, but he understood loyalty to the tribe. His grandchildren have kept the ruthlessness but lost the loyalty. They have traded the soul of their dynasty for a few more years of relevance in a party that uses them as hood ornaments.
In the end, RFK Jr. didn’t leave the Kennedy family. The Kennedy family left him. They left him the moment they decided that being “Democrats” was more important than being Kennedys, and that protecting the system was more important than telling the truth. The monuments may still stand, but after this election cycle, the shrine is empty. The “Legacy” they are so desperate to protect is now just another asset liquidated for political capital.
Related reading
- Part III: Blood Is Thicker Than Water, But Money Is Thicker Than Both: The Kennedy Family's Long History of Choosing Power Over Kinship
- Part II: The Kennedy Endorsement Was a Democratic Party Production: How Opposition Research Became Family Theater
- Part I: The Kennedy Brand: How Nonprofit Millions Turned a Family Into a Democratic Party Asset
- Maria Shriver, the Kennedy Center, and the Empty Politics of Legacy
