One hot afternoon last month, former Democratic congressman Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts traveled across the Mississippi Delta, looking out his window at unending fields of soybeans and cotton. Although he was far from home, he was sort of coming home.
Using an obscenity, he stated that boil-water notices have been sent to residents for the past two years. Every day, we ought to be hammering the drums on this.
The 44-year-old Mr. Kennedy was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, former attorney general and presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy, who visited the Delta in 1967 and saw the kind of poverty and starvation more commonly associated with the developing world. According to Evan Thomas, a biographer of both the elder Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Bobby was greatly influenced by the pictures he shot of kids with distended stomachs and open wounds.
Mr. Kennedy gave the history a nod. I have some knowledge of my grandfather’s trip to the Delta in the 1960s, and he told me how seeing this in the wealthiest nation on earth upset and changed him. My family has dedicated many of their years in politics to fighting for these individuals, and I’m proud of that.
Mr. Kennedy’s goal is to carry on the tradition of an American political family that has lost some of its liberal appeal in recent years. He is incensed that a prominent member of an administration that is subverting his family’s fundamental beliefs is his uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services.
According to the younger Mr. Kennedy, the health secretary has defended Medicaid users’ unworkable work requirements. They are only successful in denying Medicaid to those who are in need of it.
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