The recent Senate confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented a striking scene that would confuse a time traveler from 10 years ago. Democratic lawmakers took turns excoriating a man who once embodied their ideals. Sen. Bernie Sanders, seemingly grasping for gotchas, was reduced to questioning Kennedy about baby clothing merchandise.
In another era, Democrats might have championed Kennedy’s nomination to lead Health and Human Services. His platform reads like a wish list for reformers: cracking down on toxic food additives, confronting corporate regulatory capture, and reducing drug prices. Most of all, Kennedy pledges a renewed look at the causes of cancer and other serious ailments — not simply the management of disease.
These are positions Sanders himself previously advocated. The Republican Party has now embraced these reformers. The battle lines on Capitol Hill have also turned upside down. Kennedy appeared surrounded by GOP allies and by his “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a grassroots group led by everyday moms. Meanwhile, a phalanx of industry groups and nonprofits funded by the drug and processed food industry lead the attacks on his nomination.
Kennedy’s populist instincts once placed him in the good graces of the progressive left. He spearheaded the cleanup of the Hudson River and litigated numerous cases against chemical and oil companies on behalf of disadvantaged communities. Congressional Democrats previously called him in as a star witness to testify on the hazards of mercury in America’s waterways. In 2008, Barack Obama considered him on the shortlist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Yet the left’s prior embrace has turned to vitriol. Media outlets that once lauded Kennedy now paint him as a conspiracy theorist unfit for office. Vanity Fair, which previously profiled Kennedy with a cover story as “one of the most respected environmental advocates in the country,” now writes that he could be “one of the greatest villains in American history.”
This reversal is less about Kennedy than most news journalists and Democratic insiders would like to admit. It’s more of a reflection of a groupthink psychology and the party’s drift away from its corporate accountability ethos. The most intense hatred is often reserved not for outsiders but for apostates. Having challenged Joe Biden in the Democratic primary before endorsing Donald Trump, Kennedy embodies the turncoat that institutional forces find most threatening.
Kennedy’s skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry was once at home in Democratic circles. He has questioned vaccination policies for nearly three decades, including when he was still welcome in the establishment liberal company. What changed was not Kennedy but the left’s transformation during COVID-19.
During the pandemic, Democrats led the charge for extended public school closures despite the devastating impact on working-class students. The party embraced tech companies’ censorship of dissenting voices on virus origins and vaccine efficacy. As pharmaceutical profits soared, Democrats attempted to mandate vaccines before judicial intervention. Reasoned debate gave way to accusations that skeptics were “anti-science” or far worse. Trust the experts, the mantra went, when it really meant never question authority.
Throughout this period, Kennedy maintained his consistent critique of corporate influence in healthcare policy. He opposed lockdowns, mandates, and official false narratives about vaccinations preventing transmission. And his bold support for free speech also angered liberals, who saw any dissident voice as a public health threat. The establishment censors ended up stifling discussion of the lab leak theory, a scenario for COVID-19 origin that seems most likely true.
Hindsight is 20-20, yet the Democrats have not forgiven Kennedy for his heretical pandemic positions — even though most have turned out prescient. Moreover, the pandemic ossified a class drift within the party, as Democrats embraced the mantle of institutional defenders and representatives of the established order. As such, they began viewing Kennedy’s plucky work as a grassroots crusader with increasing levels of indignation. The final betrayal, in the eyes of many Democrats, was the decision to join Trump’s team.
The partisan mentality among Democrats has led many to cast Kennedy’s views as a fundamental threat to health and safety. In making their case, left-leaning opponents have attempted to muddy the debate with character assassination. Many of the repeated attacks during the hearings were gross exaggerations or outright falsehoods.
Kennedy has been faulted for a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa. Yet a detailed investigation into the tragedy shows a “constellation of factors,” including poor infrastructure and an unrelated pause in vaccinations because of the killing of two infants a year prior, according to Dr. Vinay Prasad, a professor at UC San Francisco.
Kennedy has repeatedly pledged that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines.” Speaking before the Senate Finance Committee, he reiterated his focus on the chronic disease epidemic and the inclusion of all stakeholders in any health policy decisions.
A variety of Democratic questioning pushed black-and-white thinking on complex health issues, all designed to subvert Kennedy’s nomination. Sen. Tina Smith, for instance, cited Kennedy’s discussions of the dangers of SSRI medications and demanded to know, yes or no, whether antidepressants cause school shootings.
“This should be a simple question,” the Minnesota Democrat said.
“I don’t think anybody can answer that question,” Kennedy replied, adding that the issue “should be studied along with other potential culprits” like social media.
That’s a sensible answer to an unfair question. Research on the topic is still unfolding, and previous studies have found a “significant association between SSRIs and violent crime convictions for individuals aged 15 to 24.”
One of the leading critics of the Wednesday hearing was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has made a name for herself as the Senate’s top corporate watchdog. During the hearing, she oddly equated Kennedy’s work litigating against Merck to those who cash out and take drug industry lobbyist money. Warren, who has taken campaign money from one of the plaintiff’s law firms that now work closely with Kennedy, castigated the entire enterprise of class action lawsuits as equivalent to corporate malfeasance.
Warren’s breathless attacks on Kennedy contrast sharply with her questions during the 2014 hearing for Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the former Walmart foundation executive Obama selected to lead HHS. During that hearing, featuring a nominee far more in line with the business establishment Warren claims to oppose, her remarks from the panel were gushing and welcoming. The logic here leaves much to ponder.
Her opposition to Kennedy, despite their overlapping ideals and values, seems grounded in the pandemic wars and partisanship. What else could lead Warren to reflexively back a former Walmart official yet tear down a reform-minded consumer attorney?
The partisan spin cycle is precisely why so little has changed about how America handles its overlapping health problems. The need to solve problems means realizing that solutions might come from unorthodox places and requires settling old grudges.
The left’s hysterical response to his nomination reveals less about Kennedy’s evolution than about the Democratic Party’s dramatic pandemic-era shift toward institutional deference. But if there’s one lesson about last year’s election, voters have rejected this drift — it’s bad politics and even worse policy.
Taken from another perspective, Kennedy is a godsend for the left in a moment when Democrats lack any power in Washington, D.C. His nomination provides a beachhead for continued progressive reforms on a wide variety of issues, from regulatory ethics to improved health standards in our diets.
The country would have been better served if both parties set aside their differences. There’s an opening to make America healthy again. The question is if Democrats can recognize it. The Republicans have captured the hearts and minds of reformers and moms — Kennedy’s nomination would be promises made, promises kept.
Lee Fang is an independent journalist and publishes an investigative newsletter at www.LeeFang.com.
