Against all odds, Manhattan voters made the right call on Tuesday.
Jack Schlossberg, the 33-year-old Kennedy scion who has never worked a real job, was handily defeated in the Democratic primary for New York's 12th Congressional District, sitting in third place with less than 11 percent of the vote. George Conway, the mentally disturbed Lincoln Project cofounder and frequent guest on The Jim Acosta Show, sat in fifth, trailing not just Schlossberg but also a woman named Nina Schwalbe.
Schlossberg's defeat is worth celebrating for several reasons.
The Kennedy family is a toxic cabal of bloated, boat-shoed sex pests and trust-fund layabouts still living off the fortune amassed by Joseph P. Kennedy, the wealthy patriarch best known for his efforts to make peace with Adolf Hitler. Tuesday's outcome suggests the family's once-mythic reputation is in the midst of a long-overdue correction.
John F. Kennedy, Schlossberg's grandfather, was the Eric Swalwell of the White House, while his great uncle Ted Kennedy was the Eric Swalwell of the U.S. Senate, a reputation he cemented in 1985 by making a "waitress sandwich" with Chris Dodd at a local fine-dining establishment.
To be fair to Swalwell, there's no evidence (that we know of) to suggest he's ever fled the scene of an accident after a woman drowned in his car. Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, continued to serve in public office until 2009, more than 40 years after Mary Jo Kopechne's death.
Days before the election, Schlossberg told the Wall Street Journal he would view his loss in the primary as proof that our political system is irrevocably broken. "If I can't do it, then nobody can," he said.
Indeed, if a 33-year-old Kennedy brat with four trust funds and what the New York Times described as "little traditional work experience" can lose a primary in one of the country's wealthiest congressional districts despite being endorsed by David Letterman and spending $1 million of his own inheritance, the American Dream is truly dead.
Schlossberg, who was also backed by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, rose to semi-prominence thanks to his bizarre social media antics. By cracking jokes about guzzling "Jew blood" and "male jizz," he has sought to usher the Camelot brand into the digital age. When it came to actually running a campaign, Schlossberg's limited exposure to the demands of adult responsibility may have been a disadvantage.
The Times reported in May that Schlossberg rarely showed up to campaign meetings and often disappeared "for long stretches with little notice or explanation." He fired his staff early and often, though some ex-employees kept coming to work for weeks because he "never bothered to tell them."
In the end, Schlossberg was unable to parlay his social media following—primarily among TikTok tweens and Facebook grannies who dubbed him "America's babygirl"—into success at the ballot box.
The Times recently accompanied the candidate to greet voters on an Upper East Side street corner. After speaking to a 72-year-old retiree named Robin who called him "nice looking," Schlossberg was mobbed by a pack of 10th-grade girls who wanted a photo. "Do you guys have parents that might want to vote?" he asked.
America dodged a bullet on Tuesday. Not since Kamala Harris's defeat in 2024 has the country been spared such a calamitous outcome. Congress has been Kennedy-free since Massachusetts voters wisely rejected former congressman Joe Kennedy III's bid for U.S. Senate in 2020. In a just world, it would stay that way for as long as the republic endures.
