Opinion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this afternoon that he’s ending his so-called independent campaign for president. He’s endorsing Donald Trump. With that announcement, I won’t have to talk about him anymore, thank God, though the need to talk about third parties hasn’t stopped.

“I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory," Kennedy said today. "I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working their long hours or ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path."

During the 1950s, Republicans were the party that promoted labor unions, Social Security, and a top 91% income tax bracket and 70% estate tax on the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower successfully campaigned on what we’d call a progressive agenda for re-election in 1956.

During the Reagan years, Republicans embraced Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism with its free trade, opposition to unions, ending free college, and tax cuts for the fat cats. They called themselves “the party of new ideas.” They may have done more harm than good, but for most Republicans it was a good-faith effort.

Depending on your age, you probably remember when the Republicans owned the meaning of freedom. They fought virtually everything in the name of individual liberty. It didn’t matter how good a government program was, the fact that it was a government program at all meant Americans were less free. And most people, most of the time, agreed.

My, my – how things have changed! When the US Supreme Court struck down Roe, it badly undermined the Republicans’ reputation for being “the party of freedom.” But fumbling the ball, to use a football analogy, is one thing. It’s another when the other team picks it up. That’s what happened at the Democratic National Convention last night. Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz ran 95 yards to score.

We all know how important crowd size is to Donald Trump. That’s why liberals and Democrats enjoy sharing video clips on social media of his campaign rallies in which there appear to be lots of empty seats. But I think liberals and Democrats are missing the forest for the trees. Crowd size is not as important as crowd interest. The question isn’t whether they’re coming. It’s whether they’re staying. They aren’t.

About 7,000-8,000 people attended Trump’s rally on Friday in eastern Pennsylvania, according to Mary Wheeler. Another reporter at the venue (for the New York Post) said it can hold around 10,000. About an hour into Trump’s speechifying, however, attendees started heading for the exits, according to USA Today reporter Zac Anderson. “Looks like people are starting to trickle out of the Wilkes-Barre Trump rally as he goes past the hour mark. There appears to be more empty seats.”

Recently, a reporter spoke with one of the chief architects of Project 2025 using a hidden camera and microphone and learned they’re still in tight with Trump, still planning to run his administration if he’s elected, still planning to gut the guardrails America has placed around capitalism over the past 100 years, and even planning to “pull the ladder up” to make it harder for entrepreneurs and small business people to succeed in America.

Their plan relies on a major reinvention of modern capitalism and is being pushed by people suffering from an identifiable mental illness. To see how they’re hoping to pull this off, it’s important and necessary to first understand that there are two types of capitalism: raw and regulated.