The “Animal House” Election

The 2024 presidential race is playing out like a B-movie gag comedy

I’ve always appreciated the moral clarity of a ‘slobs versus snobs’ comedy. Some of these classics–like National Lampoon's Animal House, The Bad News Bears, Stripes, Caddyshack and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story–have lived rent-free in my brain for decades. No matter how bad the aesthetics of the underdogs—the zeroes, weirdos, buffoons and hapless slobs—we always know who to cheer for, and it’s not the Dean Wormers or the Judge Smailses. You can count the major story beats on one hand…

1. Zany misfits with unique flaws unite against an overbearing authority, like a priggish boss, say, or highfalutin institution

2. Condescension from on high reaches a breaking point

3. Quirky rebels pool their unique talents and embark on a madcap adventure to overthrow the snobs, exposing their arrogance and hypocrisy along the way

Throw in a keg stand, some boobs, a punch to the nuts, et voila, the slobs hand the snobs their asses on a platter. The end. 

Like Hollywood itself, the ‘snobs versus slobs’ trope is pretty much dead. But who needs movies when the real drama is the nail-biting, fast-approaching U.S. election? Like many political clashes happening worldwide, this one features a rebellious group of outsiders facing off against a crumbling establishment. It’s a real-life snob-versus-slobs epic, playing out 24/7 on every TV and social media media platform.

If it weren’t already apparent, the Slobs in this real-life scenario are +80 million MAGA deplorables plus the recent bonus of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., along with his ex-liberal MAHA core of disillusioned Bernie bros, vaccine sceptics, crunchy granolas and counter-elite billionaires like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The Snobs, in loose terms, are the Democrat party and its anointed ‘joy’ candidate, a diminished ruling cast of coastal affluent WASPs, as well as elected and unelected guardians of the administrative state and their operatives in the mainstream media. 

Needless to say, the Slobs aren’t feeling this Democrat-enforced joy one bit. They’ve had it with decades of brutal and incompetent governance by a uni-party that pays lip service to issues people care about—healthcare, housing and wages—only to legislate in favour of lobbyists and corporate interests. The Slobs aim to overthrow this stultifying hegemony on Election Day, November 5th. 

A public rift inside the Kennedy family makes for a spicy b-story in the unfolding drama, with a tidy ‘snob’ versus ‘slob’ framework. On one side, the Democrat-loyal Kennedys clinging to the old-guard establishment of coastal elites. On the other, black sheep RFK Jr.—the family’s own Prince Hal. He’s broken from Kennedy tradition, challenging the power hierarchy by running for president and rubbing elbows with commoners and rogues.

Back in March, non-RFK Jr members of the family appeared on the White House lawn to circle its wagons around a reanimated corpse of a president and politically disown Bobby Jr. for going off the reservation. “Nearly every single grandchild of Joe and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden,” Kerry Kennedy told the White House gathering. Later in the year, in a string of  interviews, she called her brother’s embrace of Donald Trump “gaudy and obscene.” 

Having watched this interview—which, if you do, fast-forward to the 3:50 mark to avoid MSNBC’s Karen-in-chief Jen Psaki’s toe-curling vocal fry—I had three immediate thoughts… 

— I’m sorry, who are you again? 

—The soigné backdrop of her sun-lit New England retreat—stuffed chintz sofas and presidential busts—combined with the quavering dysphonia of her late WASPy mother, made her pleas sound like the extinction burst of a dying species, like Queen Victoria lecturing on propriety. Gaudy and obscene! My word! Pass the smelling salts! 

—Back in the day, such a Kennedy tantrum might have caused more of a stir. Instead, it fizzled. Lacklustre second and third generations and scandal after scandal have turned the Camelot glow into the faint shimmer of a cesspool.

Perhaps aware of his family’s vanishing cachet, RFK Jr.’s MO appears to be “change or die.” Looking tanned and jacked, and without a harsh word for his family, he delivered a speech for the ages. While Kerry Kennedy gazed down her opera binoculars at the plebes, tut-tutting them for their loyalty to a “gaudy and obscene” candidate, RFK spoke of America’s chronic disease epidemic, dismantling the war machine, untangling corporate and state power, defending the environment and protecting the First Amendment—all of which he wrapped up in a mic-drop call to arms… 

“We have to love our children more than we hate each other.” 

In the slapstick cinematic universe, it was the kind of ringing soliloquy that transforms the once bumbling and awkward crowd into a unified force, ready to take on the enemy, often followed by a lone slow clap, standing ovation and thunderous applause. Think of Bluto’s battle cry in Animal House (“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”) or Lewis Skolnick’s ‘dorks are humans too’ speech in Revenge of the Nerds. 

The backlash from Team Snob was as swift as it was harsh. His siblings described his MAGA embrace as “a sad ending to a sad story.” Mainstream media accused him of pandering to the far-right, calling his speech “rambling and conspiratorial,” “politically opportunistic” and “self-serving.” 

To which Team Slob replied—in not so many words—you’re the party of super rich donors, decamillionaire hollyweirdos living behind gated walls with armed guards, Oprah and her cast of captive groupies and the shrill cat ladies James Carville has been warning you to avoid. Also, Dick and Lynn Cheney, the union representing IRS agents and, now, Geraldo Rivera. Who cares what you think!

Things do look a bit more vigorous on Team Slob where we see RFK Jr pumping iron on Venice Beach and catching falcons on his muscled forearm. Then there’s Elon delivering Starlink routers to troubled Appalachia (while FEMA fumbles) and rescuing stranded astronauts in space (while Biden’s DOJ investigates him). In fact, Team Slob, isn't so slobby after all. It also includes Nicole Shanahan, the whip-smart feline beauty using her enormous tech fortune to promote regenerative-agri farming, who has vowed to dedicate her life to “fighting on behalf of children and their right to be healthy.” 

Then there’s JD Vance, the sharp and well-spoken Ohio senator with a truly remarkable rags-to-riches story. In an alternate timeline, he’d be a left-wing hero. Not now, not since the Left drifted away from the everyday struggles of regular folks and got caught up in neoliberal woke causes that push the culture further left. Consider that, in 2022, Kerry Kennedy handed Meghan Markle and Prince Harry a Ripple of Hope award for their “heroic stand against structural racism inside the British monarchy.” That pretty much says it all. 

By Hollywood logic, the Slobs should be cruising toward an easy electoral win. In real-life, momentum, energy and millions of social media ‘likes’ do not equal votes. Numbers-wise, roughly half of voters seem to prefer the known entity of an age-old ruling class, one that includes public-spirited plutocrats like the staunchly Democratic Kennedys. Their message has been repeated so often, and with such urgency, that it seems to have stuck: a Slob victory would be an existential threat to democracy. As long-time custodians of America’s major instruments of power, it’s tempting to think it’s not so much democracy they’re worried about but rather their desire to forever control it.