Four RFK Jr Supporters Walk Into A Panera Bread...

TL;DR: For a recent segment on KJZZ’s “The Show,” I attended a post mortem rap session with some RFK, Jr. volunteers who were pondering their next steps following RFK’s decision to drop out of the presidential race. Listen here.

One of the most interesting things about living in Arizona is that there are actual undecided voters here.

I’m sure they probably exist in New York also, but if they do, my life never brought me into contact with them (at least not that I know of). In the twenty years I lived there, I honestly can’t think of a single conversation where I had to be sensitive to a radically different worldview. Out here, though, where Joe Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 was famously slim (fewer than 11,000 votes), it really does feel like the fate of the Republic hangs in the balance whenever politics are discussed.

In general, I have found that Arizonans do NOT like to be told how to think. They would prefer to arrive at their own conclusions, thank you very much - and they don’t arrive at them lightly. Obviously I haven’t talked to every voter in the state, but the ones I have spoken to have been well-read, highly informed, and firm in their convictions.

So when I heard that some local RFK, Jr. supporters would be gathering at a local Panera Bread to process their emotions following Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump, I wrote to the group’s coordinator and asked if I could join them.

The result is a piece which I am pleased to report generated a range of listener feedback that reflects the full spectrum of Arizona political discourse. In the words of Lee in Scottsdale, it was a gathering of “idiots.” As for Lindsay in Tempe, she felt it was a “valuable perspective that we don’t hear often enough on the radio.” I choose to interpret that discrepancy as evidence that I did a somewhat decent job of capturing the sincerity with which these folks hold their opinions.

I’ll leave it to you to decide. Listen here, and thank you, as always, for reading.