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BOBBY, THINK IT OVER: YOUR CANDIDACY MAY DOOM DEMOCRACY  
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Russ Baker
March 24, 2024
Going Deep
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_ Do the right thing; make your family and forebears proud. _

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Dear Bobby, 

According to your publicist, this Tuesday, March 26, you will announce
your vice presidential pick. 

I have a suggestion. Do something different instead: Announce you’re
dropping your White House bid.

If you don’t, you may well deliver the country and the world to
Donald Trump — that even more wild-eyed, exponentially more
dangerous version of the disaster we saw with _Trump_,_ Act One_. 

“Drill, Drill, Drill,” “bloodbath,” and “dictator on day
one.” Indeed, friend and fan of dictators everywhere. Divider of
Americans, provoker of hate. Pathological narcissist. 

Everyone, including you, knows without equivocation that it is totally
impossible for you to win this presidential election, and honestly no
one is sure what your end goal is. 

Your chaotic “platform” appears to be a random selection of
unrelated issues from across the entire political spectrum. That
incoherence is evidenced even by the people you’re supposedly
considering for roles in this fantasy cosplay operation that you are
attempting to pass off as a presidential bid.

I mean, the depth and scope of this fiction is kind of amazing. I
suppose you can claim that you are a uniter, since you’re the only
person who could possibly have had both the leftist Dennis Kucinich as
your campaign manager — though he departed for some reason — and
the nasty, hard-line rightist “Libertarian” Rand Paul in your
retinue. Exactly what color is the sky in your world that includes
both Kucinich and Paul? I cannot imagine. 

Voting for you would not even represent a comprehensible,
conscientious protest vote. 

***

I’ve spoken to folks who know you personally, and they tell me some
of the things that matter to you. 

Like ego. You love the attention. And money — apparently, that’s
always been an issue, and this high-profile situation helps. 

But now, it’s s_erious. _

Besides tainting the important, ongoing investigative research into
what really happened to your uncle and father — by tying into the
general kookiness of your lunatic hodgepodge of issues — you’ve
harmed science [[link removed]], and brought
together a disparate basket of the aggrieved, misguided, and often
plain crackpot. Now you’re poised, perhaps, to wreak havoc on your
own country’s future. 

You’re polling nationally around 10 percent of the vote (yes, yes,
supposedly a plurality of independent voters, young voters, etc.), and
in a key swing state or two, that’s enough — not for you to win,
but for you to deliver the country to the demagogue, criminal,
pathological narcissist, and instigator of violence, even lethal
violence, Mr. Trump. 

Of course, with your shocking rightward tack, you undoubtedly are
pulling some folks who might otherwise vote for Trump, but the Trump
campaign will paint you as a radical leftist and, unlike some of your
detractors, I do not dismiss you as a non-factor. 

I’ve seen the recent polling that shows your strength among young
voters in particular — the very voters Trump is counting on you to
siphon from Joe Biden. Not strong enough for you to win even a single
state, but strong enough to hand Trump an Electoral College victory. 

***

Most of us, like you, have problems with the “system.” We loathe
the corporate monsters that have long had a stranglehold on the
American state and society. Everyone knows there are deep problems
with Big Pharma. But you’ve ruined any legitimate critique by
trafficking recklessly in nonsense and fear in the same way the
Holocaust-deniers, moon-landing deniers, and other ignorant fanatics
ruin whatever cause they join. 

What you’ve done has contributed, and continues to contribute, to
the deaths of untold masses that could have been prevented by
vaccination. 

Let’s consider the island country of Samoa. In 2009, it had zero
cases of measles. But in 2019, it was walloped with an astounding
5,707 cases — and 83 deaths — a huge comparative toll for a small
country (population less than 200,000). The outbreak
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attributed to a vaccine scare that began in July 2018 when two infants
died after being given the measles vaccine. 

You publicized these deaths and blamed the vaccine. Then the real
cause was discovered: The vaccines had been mistakenly mixed with a
powerful muscle relaxant
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And even _after the true cause was known_ — you continued to
spread the false information that it was the vaccine that killed them.
In June 2019, you visited Samoa
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met with local anti-vaxxers and government officials. The Samoan
government suspended its vaccination program for 10 months
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presumably a result of your influence. When asked about the high death
rate from measles in Samoa, your response
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to avoid accountability — exactly the kind of thing you say you’re
running to rid the country of:

Yeah, I’m aware there was a measles outbreak, but I didn’t have
anything… You know, I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating
in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there
for any reason to do with that.

Equally ludicrous was your explanation for why, before the epidemic,
Samoans did not get measles
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Nutrition and clean water, not the vaccine.

And, by the way, the US is experiencing an unusual spread 
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this highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease — thanks, in
part, to the spread of your false information.

We do share concerns about issues ranging from the environment to
misinformation about our country’s political history, but, frankly,
you have not put forward a set of viable, realistic solutions. 

Ironically, your claim to want to fix what ails us is not reflected in
your candidacy, which itself almost guarantees the situation will
become catastrophic. As you know only too well, Biden has done quite a
lot to address problems and to take on corporations and wrong-doers,
while, of course, Trump actively reversed any progress made by the
previous administration on those fronts. 

***

To your supporters, I say: Protest votes in the right circumstances
can help advance a good cause. But not now. Not with what is at
stake. 

To you, I say: Enough is enough. Your own family has renounced you.
They’re so worried — and, frankly, disgusted — that
they traveled to the Biden White House
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St. Patrick’s Day to make clear who they think ought to be
president. 

And for once in the history of this famously family-loyal clan, their
preferred candidate in the race is not their own kinsman. 

Nonetheless, I suppose some are waiting with bated breath for your
promised announcement to be made Tuesday in Oakland, CA. Will it be
Jesse Ventura? Tulsi Gabbard? Aaron Rodgers? Well, why not consider
Steve Bannon? Or for that matter Elon Musk — or Sam Bankman-Fried?
Or Tommy Tuberville? Or Sen. Robert Menendez?  What kind of person
would take this on? 

I’d also point out that some of the deep-pocketed individuals
funding you seem less enthusiastic about making you president than
about helping Trump. And so the nefariousness of the undertaking
reveals itself. 

Look: You did some good things years ago, but you have no reservoir of
goodwill to see you through this atrociously selfish gambit, and will
never, ever, live it down unless you start doing something rational,
and fast. 

Why not be the guy who chose_ not _to push America into a new dark
age? Why not be the guy who helped preserve democracy as we know it?
Why not be the guy who opted not to plunge the world into an era of
chaos and dread by giving us a deranged commander in chief with his
brain on “empty” and his finger on the nuclear button? Why not
stop the madness?

I normally wouldn’t mention this, but when I began criticizing your
bid last year, your own son emailed me and told me you admired my book
on the doings of the Bush clan — and seemingly agreed that they had
done irreparable damage during their presidencies. Surely, you’re
aware that we can expect much worse from Trump II. 

And with that, I beg you: _Stand down._ 

_READERS: IF YOU AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENT EXPRESSED ABOVE, PLEASE
SHARE THIS WIDELY, WITH THE HASHTAG #STANDDOWNBOBBY_

_Russ Baker is Editor in Chief, WhoWhatWhy [[link removed]].
Author. Investigative Journalist. To reach me: [email protected]
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_Subscribe to Russ Baker's Substack Going Deep for free to receive new
posts and support my work.
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