RFK Jr.’s Long-Shot Bid Is Shockingly Alive. Thank His Brain Worm Coalition.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for the New York Times, Mario Tama/Getty Images, and Apu Gomes/Getty Images.indifference among the electorate

to the Biden-Trump rematch, RFK Jr. continues a strong, worrisome third-party run that’s scrambling American politics in the lead-up to Election Day. He’s also been able to keep himself out there with the assistance of a strange array of media celebrities and brand-name executives: woo-woo Hollywooders, conspiratorial podcasters, and weirdo Silicon Valley disrupters all brought in to prop up an especially big tent of support. You might call them RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm Coalition.

Of particular interest are the tech and finance members of this Brain Worm Coalition, who include the candidate’s VP pick, Nicole Shanahan, a well-connected venture capitalist who was formerly married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin andracist right-wing paranoia related to immigrantswere enthusiastic fans of his early last year, when the independent long shot first launched his bid as a Democrat and, with potentially serious challengers attempting to thwart Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s...

There are a few key ideas that united the Brain Worm Coalition behind the imperfect avatar of RFK Jr. For one, rich guys like Chamath Palihapitiya whofor corporations and top-income-bracket dwellers, a re-empowered Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission that have gone after tech companies likein the years since the COVID pandemic’s peak. Skepticism of vaccines, climate science, and general public health measures is far more mainstream than it was even a few years ago.

United only in certain superficial commonalities—lots of money, a disaffection with liberalism, COVID-era journeys down online rabbit holes—the techie members of RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm Coalition want to leverage their influence through a particular type of candidate. One who doesn’t seem to know what he believes, who’ll play both sides on basic issues of democratic governance, and who promises at best to throw politics as usual into disarray—which is more than enough for these tech lords.

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