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Comment by quotemstr | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't be so sure of that. This chemical seems like a central example of something RFK would love to ban.

The FDA (potential future home of RFK) does not have oversight on pesticides. This is an EPA issue.

You're overindexing on formal authority and prematurely discounting informal influence. RFK will be a prominent member of the administration. He'll have the ears of powerful people. He'll get some wins at the FDA (because it's blindingly obvious we're poisoning ourselves), and he'll be able to use these wins to drive changes at other agencies.

The org chart is always just a suggestion.

Is the next administration really likely to do, on purpose, anything that would affect earnings for large corps? It would absolutely blow my mind. I think RFK will do zilch unless it aligns with more profits for the right folks.

You might want to update your model of the political metagame. "Big Corp versus the people" is something like three Hegelian dialectics ago.

Interesting, the UHC stuff would have led me to believe otherwise. What is the current Hegelian dialectic?

You're assuming he'd make a serious attempt to ban it

RFK was telling us he'd never support Trump, too, and here we are.

RFK has demonstrated repeatedly that he has absolutely no principles whatsoever, and he'll sell out if a soft breeze passes by. If the agribusiness sector tells Trump that banning this chemical will cost them 10% of their profits, Trump will tell RFK to get in line, and he'll give a slight whimper as he does so.

Trump was willing to build a coalition while Democrats were not. RFK, assuming he gets past the Senate, will be in a substantially better position to influence health policy than if he were to have snubbed Trump.

The game of politics makes enemies one day become allies the next. If you want real progress on an agenda, being dogmatic generally isn't the best way to accomplish it (imo).

I'm not American, but to me this looks like a preposterous take, when the Democrats had Cheney and a pile of other Republicans lined up in what looks more to me like a coalition than getting the endorsement of a bizarre personality-cult fringe candidate.

It depends on your perspective. Dick Cheney is generally considered persona non gratta due to his role in pushing the US into forever wars during the Bush Jr years. The Left hated him during the Bush and Obama years, the Right came around to hating him during the Obama and Trump years.

Trump Republicans very much dislike Liz Cheney for being completely against Trump during J6 investigations, and recent news implicates Liz Cheney in having tampered with lawyer relations for one the J6 testifiers [1,2]. Right-leaning commentary during the J6 investigations considered them sham investigations with the Republicans on the J6 committee often called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), as those Republicans were anti-Trump.

This is the perspective that makes the Chenys supporting Democrats seem ridiculous. Other republicans supporting the Democrats generally have pro-war big government views which are largely incompatible with the new Trump Republican base.

I'll disagree that this was just an "endorsement of bizzare personality-cult fringe candidate" as these individuals all have some political pull and have been given substantial positions in the upcoming administrations.

[1] - https://cha.house.gov/2024/10/new-texts-reveal-liz-cheney-co... [2] - https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-stef-passantino

Cheney is just one person in a long list of republicans who endorsed Harris[1], and these people were part of a much longer list of republicans who opposed Trump[2].

Meanwhile The Trump-endorsing 'coalition' individuals in question are wildly unserious people, to the point that they're going to be laughed out of their senate confirmation hearings if they don't withdraw beforehand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_Trump_administr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_oppose...

This is correct, there is an unfortunate acceptance of a lot of political mythology that I believe explains the results of the election (as we see above).

The GOP couldn't even form a coalition with itself, you saw a lot of people within the GOP who wouldn't endorse their candidate (the most stark example being the former VP). The democratic nominee coalition built to a fault. Many point to exactly this, and the failure to scorch the opposition to the degree warranted, as the reason for the loss.

RFK is your garden variety opportunist grifter, as are the entire confederacy of scammers and dunces (no offense, this is strictly a factual assessment) who are now on their way to positions of power based purely on their loyalty.

The GOP isn't the party of that side anymore. Only on paper.

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