Is The Wall Street Journal really endorsing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after its editorial board wrote an article titled “The Winner in Michigan Is … RFK Jr.”?
Not likely. But the WSJ editors chose this headline to bring home the strong message that Americans, particularly swing-state Michigan voters, are very upset about the choices in their presidential primary this week.
The editors were saying: Anything is possible.
They write: “Throw in RFK Jr. and a potential No Labels contender and then hold on tight. If the two major parties nominate the leading but unpopular candidates, it is going to be a wild ride.”
Over 100,000 voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary voted “uncommitted” on Tuesday, roughly one vote for every six that went to Joe Biden. Donald Trump, running as a quasi-incumbent, also underperformed his earlier polls. He got 68% of the vote vs. Nikki Haley’s 27%. An Emerson survey just before the primary had him at 76%, and an earlier Morning Consult poll said he would get 79%.
Much of this protest vote was an organized campaign against President Biden’s support of Israel. Still, it also reflects an underlying angst that has been building for the last 40 years against both political parties, particularly among Michigan’s decimated blue-collar workers and its middle class.
Since 1979, the income of most Americans – the 62% without a college degree – has fallen dramatically, while the uber-rich have become richer. The share of Americans earning more money than their parents has plummeted.
Kennedy believes that a nefarious elite of Democrats and Republicans has rigged the system so that the majority of Americans have been cheated out of the American Dream.
The protest vote in Michigan indicates that the voters know it. The election results are reflective of this profound gloom in our country. Americans are not happy with what is going on … and they have not been happy for a long time.
No wonder, economically, our politics has yielded stagnation for the majority, 62% of Americans, without a college degree.
In 2016 Donald Trump cleverly hijacked this underlying anger and twisted it and won Michigan against Hillary Clinton. Four years later, voters who were still angry flip-flopped, and Biden won the state by 154,000 votes. Today, Trump is beating Biden by 46% to 44%.
According to a RAND report by Kathryn Edwards and Carter Price, if the income distribution in the three decades from 1945 to 1974 – a period of glorious prosperity – had remained constant over the next four decades, the annual income of the bottom 90% would have been $2.5 trillion higher in just the year 2018.
A median-income worker, now making $54,000 per year, would be making $74,000 a year if the income distribution rate had remained constant in the years since 1974. This figure is far more than our recent 8% inflation.
According to Oren Cass, four decades ago, the median male worker needed 30 weeks of income to afford a house, a car, health care, and education. Today the average worker needs 53 weeks of income a year to afford just these necessities, let alone others that a family needs.
America’s public spending on health care, housing, and education has been miserly. To reach the level of Canadian or European basic living standards, America needs to more than double its level of spending.
As a result, Americans are much sicker, less educated, poorer, and more unhappy than citizens of most other industrialized countries.
Any government that does not deliver the goods to the majority is bound to fail.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a true maverick, is outraged at the dystopian democracy that has led to the great American decline. He’s ready to lead a Peaceful Populist Revolution.
Maybe this is why the editors of The Wall Street Journal called RFK Jr. the “Winner in Michigan.” They see something is happening, regardless of whether they want to jump on board.
