When Bobby Junior endorsed Trump, a number of Bobby’s siblings released a statement saying that his endorsement of Trump was a “betrayal” of Kennedy political values.  It would horrify Uncle Jack and Bobby Senior. 

Well, I’m not so sure.

I’m an old man, and I cast my first vote for president in 1960 — with great enthusiasm — for JFK.  His largest pool of support that year came from two demographic groups: Catholics, his co-religionists, and members of the working class, who had been reliable Democrats since the days of Franklin Roosevelt.  I said I voted for Kennedy with “great enthusiasm.”  I could hardly do otherwise, since I had grown up Catholic in a working-class family.

When Bobby Kennedy made his run for the White House in 1968, a run that was terminated by his assassination, he too relied especially on these two demographic groups, although he expanded the Kennedy political base to include blacks.

And whom do these two demographic groups, Catholics and workers, support today?

If we define the working class as all adults over the age of 25 or 30 who lack a college degree, they are Trump-supporters.  This was not precisely the 1960s definition of the working class, but the two groups — 1960s workers and present-day non-college folks — the two groups closely resemble one another socio-economically.

As for Catholics, back in the 1960s, especially the early ’60s, they used to be a relatively homogeneous group.  Since then, they have divided into two very distinct sub-groups.  On the one hand, there are Catholics who take their now-unfashionable religion seriously: they are regular church-goers, they deplore abortion, they are no fans of homosexuality or transgenderism, and they have drifted away from the Democrat party, which they feel to be anti-Catholic.  These Catholics are pro-Trump — not perhaps in an enthusiastic way, the way Catholics were enthusiastic for JFK in 1960, but because Trump is the only practical alternative to what the Democrats have to offer.

On the other hand, there are Catholics — nominal Catholics — who have drifted with the culturally liberal tide that has swept the USA since the 1950s.  They have no serious objection to abortion, no objection at all to homosexuality and redefining marriage, and barely any objection to transgenderism; and if the Democrat party is anti-Catholic, they either don’t notice it or don’t care.  Generally speaking, they are Trump-haters.

And so Bobby Junior, at least in my opinion, can reply to his siblings who accuse him of “betrayal” this way.  “Not at all,” he can say.  “Just the opposite.  Uncle Jack and our dad Bobby were champions of Catholics and the working class.  Trump is their present-day champion.  By standing with Trump, I am standing where the entire Kennedy clan would be standing if we wished to stand on the same demographic bases that our uncle and our father stood on.  So, far from being guilty of betrayal, I — and perhaps I alone — am a Kennedy loyalist.”

Image: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.