{"id":870,"date":"2024-04-01T23:40:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T23:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/?p=870"},"modified":"2024-04-01T23:41:21","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T23:41:21","slug":"forget-kennedy-democrats-here-comes-the-2024-kennedy-voter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/forget-kennedy-democrats-here-comes-the-2024-kennedy-voter\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget Kennedy Democrats. Here Comes the 2024 Kennedy Voter."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>These days, the phrase \u201cKennedy voter\u201d means different things to different members of Burke Cahill\u2019s family.Cahill, 50, is a formerly reliable Democratic voter who was alienated<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>by what he sees as a leftward drift into policies he can\u2019t abide \u2014 like a Covid-19 vaccine mandate that almost cost him his firefighting job. On Tuesday, he got up early, driving nearly two hours from the Sacramento area to Oakland, just so he could witness \u2014 in person \u2014 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing his running mate. (That would be attorney\/philanthropist\/documentary producer\/fellow former Democrat Nicole Shanahan.) As Cahill sees it, Kennedy\u2019s fierce independence from a sclerotic two-party system is just what the country needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kennedy, he tells me as he heads into a rally for RFK Jr., has what it takes to heal the partisan wounds bedeviling the nation.His relatives, on the other hand, aren\u2019t convinced. To the contrary. The Cahills are distantly related to the Kennedys and Cahill says he \u201cgrew up holding the Kennedy family as royalty.\u201d His embrace of a RFK Jr., a passionate anti-vaxxer at odds with his own family, has opened a rift.\u201cThey\u2019re old-school Democrats, and they think they\u2019re being loyal,\u201d Cahill says of his family. \u201cThis can\u2019t even be talked about without it being contentious.\u201dThat estrangement mirrors a deeper divergence on display in the proudly liberal East Bay, particularly on this sunny Tuesday in Oakland. Several hundred fervent RFK Jr. fans, some decked out in Kennedy paraphernalia, gather at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts to show their support of RFK Jr., and where, just outside, another dozen or so folks \u2014 some sporting \u201cKennedy for Measles\u201d stickers \u2014 gather to show their contempt of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For decades, the Kennedy name was synonymous with a mainstream strain of civic optimism that preached public service and a beneficent government. It enthralled aspiring Democratic politicians like California Governor and avowed Kennedy admirer Gavin Newsom. But that was a different era, when a different kind of Kennedy could be seen running for the highest office in the land \u2014 and\u00a0when more Americans had faith in their government. Today, RFK Jr.\u2019s supporters tend to place a corrupt<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>government at the root of America\u2019s ills. They ask not what their government can do\u00a0<em>for<\/em>\u00a0them but what it has done\u00a0<em>to<\/em>\u00a0them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These days, the phrase &ldquo;Kennedy voter&rdquo; means different things to different members of Burke Cahill&rsquo;s family.Cahill, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatistandfor.co\/LeFachicette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}