When Robert F Kennedy Jr announced his plan to run for president in the Democratic party primaries this April, the dominant liberal strategy towards the once tough environmental lawyer – now spreader of all manner of dangerous, unsupported theories – seemed to be: ignore him and wait for him to go away. Don’t cover, don’t engage and don’t debate. Jim Kessler, a leader of the pro-Biden think tank Third Way, called him a “gadfly and a laughingstock”; Democratic consultant Sawyer Hackett brushed him off as “a gnat.”

Well, if recent developments in the Kennedy campaign have demonstrated anything, it’s that denial is not a viable political strategy. Kennedy honed his social media skills over years to spread his anti-vaccine message, so he has simply done an end-run around traditional media and party structures: a “Twitter Spaces” tete-a-tete with Elon Musk and a string of video streams, several with hundreds of thousands of views and listens, on every channel from Breaking Points on the left to Jordan Peterson’s podcast on the right (that one quickly broke a million views on YouTube).

He has landed an apparent endorsement from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and this week is being feted at a Bay Area fundraiser filled with heavy hitters. According to a CNN poll released in late May, support for Kennedy was at 20% among respondents who identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning.