JAMES P. PINKERTON: The Red-Blue Rumble Comes To Health

The Sept. 3 headline in The New York Times, the perfect place for Democrats to make an announcement: “Snubbing Kennedy, States Announce Plans to Coordinate on Vaccines: Governors in California, Oregon and Washington said their states would work together on vaccine guidance.”

The person being snubbed, of course, is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  In just a few years, he’s gone from being a legatee of the greatest Democratic dynasty in American history to a devil figure to top Democrats.  And the Times doesn’t like him much, either.

Yet on Wednesday, the three West Coast Democratic governors—Jay Ferguson, Tina Kotek, and Gavin Newsom—took aim, in their joint statement, at an even greater devil figure:

“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists—and his blatant politicization of the agency—is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people.  The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences.  California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”

So far, at least, the Democrats’ joint ire concerns only the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the head of which, Susan Monarez, was fired by RFK on Aug. 27 and then, after she didn’t acknowledge his authority, by the White House.

Yet we can all see the larger story here: The blue states are banding together, in opposition to you-know-who.  Indeed, it’s a safe bet that other blue states will join this west coast trio; we might keep in mind that the Harris-Walz ticket carried a total of