Friday Reads: The Long Tantrum of Bernie and the Dudebros
Posted: May 20, 2016 Filed under: just because 49 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
It looks like the Bernie bros are determined to disrupt the Democratic Convention in July, despite the possibility that this could hurt Hillary’s chances to defeat Donald Trump in November.
From NBC10 in Philadelphia: City Approves Four Massive Pro-Bernie Sanders Rallies During DNC.
Four pro-Bernie Sanders rallies, with estimated attendance of 38,000 activists, have been approved for public demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in July, the city said Thursday.
The four rallies, given permits Wednesday night, bring the total to five for approved rallies and marches during what is expected to be a bustling week of political activity in Center City and South Philadelphia. The convention officially runs July 25-28, but two of the five approved rallies and marches of more than 7,000 activists will be held July 24 — the day more than 4,000 delegates arrive from across the country.
NBC10 first reported Wednesday that an anti-fracking, clean energy group called Food & Water Watch was the first to receive a city permit for public demonstration. A group organizer said more than 5,000 activists are expected July 24 at a march from City Hall to Independence Mall.
For the largest of the four pro-Sanders rallies approved, more than 30,000 people are expected to attend weeklong demonstrations called “March for Bernie at DNC,” which will be held at FDR Park in South Philadelphia. It’s within earshot of where conventioneers will gather at the Wells Fargo Center to nominate their party’s presidential nominee.
It’s not clear if these rallies are being organized by the Sanders campaign or by Bernie supporters or whether Sanders himself with speak at them. I’d be surprised if he could resist appearing before large crowds and drawing attention away from the convention itself.
Their permits were submitted by individuals, and the city would not identify them, a spokeswoman for Mayor Jim Kenney said.
She cited personal privacy concerns for the applicants.
The fourth pro-Sanders demonstration approved Wednesday has a sponsoring organization identified.
A group called Black Men for Bernie has been approved to hold a “We the People Restoration Rally” at Thomas Paine Plaza across from City Hall on July 27-28. They will be allowed to gather from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sanders and his supporters seem determined to turn 2016 into another 1968. It’s pretty ridiculous when you consider that in 1968 people were protesting the ongoing Vietnam war and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. In 2016, the grievances are about a bunch of conspiracy theories complaints debates, delegates and superdelegates, and the nomination being supposedly “stolen” by the woman who is leading by 3 million popular votes.
Here’s a very good piece from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Norman Sherman, who according to the bio at the end, worked for both Hubert Humphrey as VP and then for Eugene McCarthy.
Lessons from 1968: Bernie Sanders needs to put snide aside.
A cheering audience is a political aphrodisiac. Candidates for president, moved by crowds’ affection, become convinced that they are right, their opponents wrong. The pout of political pride makes backing off difficult later on.
Every campaign, no matter how humble and reasonable the candidate at the beginning, encourages a growing conviction of unique importance. This year, Donald Trump is the leading example, but self-importance is not a partisan condition. Sen. Bernie Sanders is justifiably gratified by his leap from obscurity to a formidable string of primary victories and special success in capturing the hopes of millions, particularly the young and idealistic.
But Sanders’ criticism of Hillary Clinton — constant and repetitious — has become increasingly bitter. That may be productive now, but those words do not disappear when the convention makes a choice and it is not him. They become weapons for the political enemy. In the mouth of Trump, particularly, they would become bludgeon and meat ax.Sanders should calm down, save the vitriol and think of the consequences of not doing so.
Obviously, Sherman speaks from experience. You’ll recall that in 1968 Eugene McCarthy was passionately supported by young people. After he demonstrated he could do well in New Hampshire, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for reelection. The Bobby Kennedy decided to get into the race, and many people who had supported McCarthy switched to Kennedy. George McGovern, who would win the nomination in 1972 and lose 49 states, also got into the act. Humphrey ran in Johnson’s place, but it was too late for him to get into any primaries.
After Kennedy was assassinated, Sen. George McGovern took up his anti-Vietnam crusade, and he and McCarthy — like Bernie Sanders today — aroused huge, enthusiastic crowds, including many young people.
McCarthy patronized Humphrey as weak, sometimes ridiculed him, made him damaged goods for the general election. But Humphrey ultimately accumulated a huge lead in delegate votes.
McCarthy, McGovern and Kennedy had provided focus for the antiwar movement and for those who, for whatever reason, were fed up with Johnson and Humphrey. It took courage on their parts. And they had served the country well.
Ultimately, Humphrey lost the election by less than a percentage point. States where McCarthy was immensely popular might have been won with his support and would have provided the electoral votes needed for election.
Sherman says that Bernie needs to decide very soon whether he will be a McGovern or a McCarthy.
Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair: Is Bernie Sanders Becoming 2016’s Ralph Nader?
Just three weeks after offering a conciliatory statement suggesting he was winding down his campaign, Bernie Sanders’s race for the White House has taken on a renewed urgency that has shocked the Democratic establishment with its newly belligerent tone. Despite the fact that it is practically impossible for the Vermont senator to catch up to Hillary Clinton, party leaders are now grappling with the prospect of an ugly, drawn-out fight that could roil the Democratic National Convention in July.
The trouble began at the Nevada state convention on Saturday, which turned violent after Sanders’s supporters rebelled against party rules they perceived as unfair by throwing chairs and screaming at Democratic officials they accused of favoritism toward Clinton. Sandersbarely apologized, instead launching into a verbal assault against the D.N.C., infuriating party figures eager to move on to the general-election fight against Donald Trump. Suddenly, it seems the anti-Establishment rage that until recently threatened to tear apart the G.O.P. is at the Democratic Party’s doorstep. What changed?
According to advisers who spoke to The New York Times, Sanders was re-energized by several polls that suggested he would beat Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, by wider margins than Clinton in several key states. And while his campaign previously signaled that they are aware he can’t win, Sanders is now willing to harm the Democratic front-runner in order to gain maximum political leverage at the convention in Philadelphia. “We have to put the blinders on and focus on the best case to make in the upcoming states,” strategistTad Devine said. “If we do that, we can be in a strong position to make the best closing argument before the convention.”
What closing argument? The race is already over and Bernie lost. If he ever had any realistic chance of getting superdelegates to switch to him, he certainly can’t convince them after attacking the DNC, the Democratic Party, and the likely nominee. But apparently he just can’t accept that he lost to a woman.
That closing argument, increasingly, is taking the form of a concerted attack on the D.N.C. itself—exactly at the moment when Democratic leaders were preparing to shift their energies toward Trump. Now, they face a two-front battle, with Republicans bashing Clinton on one side, and Sanders’s surrogates condemning their own party system on the other. In the wake of the Nevada-convention debacle, the Sanders campaign has doubled down on its critique of the D.N.C., which they accuse of favoring Clinton, refusing to hold additional debates, and helping the former secretary of state fundraise. Animosity toward the front-runner has reached a fever pitch in recent days. On Wednesday, campaign manager Jeff Weaver accused D.N.C. chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of “throwing shade on the Sanders campaign from the very beginning.” And Devine, Sanders’s senior adviser, told theTimes that his team was “not thinking about” whether their efforts might help Trump in the long run. “The only thing that matters is what happens between now and June 14,” he said.
Last night the Daily Show weighed in on the Bernie bro situation. You can watch the video at The Wall Street Journal: ‘The Daily Show’ Spoofs Impassioned Bernie Sanders Supporters. I know it’s supposed to be satire, but the woman played by Eliza Cossio is pretty realistic based on what I’ve seen on Twitter and in videos.
Played by “Daily Show” correspondents Roy Wood, Jr. and Eliza Cossio, this Bernie Bro and Bro-ette weren’t so much using their screen time to stump for their preferred Democratic candidate as they were parodying the fervent nature of Sanders’s followers.
If anything, the segment showcased the increasing divide between the Bernie Bros themselves, as Wood portrayed a Sanders supporter who at least seemed willing to vote for Hillary Clinton if and when she claimed the Democratic nomination. Cossio, on the other hand, portrayed a Bro-ette who was steadily losing her grip on reality….
When it came to discussing the recent unrest at the Nevada State Democratic Convention, Cossio and Wood held vastly different stances: Cossio was all for it, whereas an embarrassed Wood said, “Actually, I wasn’t so hot on that – all that unruly behavior, we just can’t be lashing out everywhere.”
Cossio and Wood also disagreed on the death-threat-tinged harassing messages left on Nevada state party chairwoman Roberta Lange‘s voicemail (you can hear excerpts in the video):
“That’s passion,” observed Cossio. “No, that’s a felony,” corrected Wood.
Check out the video at the WSJ link.
The case Bernie has been making is that he is a working class hero who can lure white voters away from Trump in the general election. Is there any truth to that argument? I don’t think so. I think he’s like Gene McCarthy–most of his followers are young people who are idealistic but ignorant about politics and government. Here’s Jeff Stein at Vox: Bernie Sanders’s base isn’t the working class. It’s young people.
After Bernie Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary last week, the national media was ready with an explanation: the white working class.
The New York Times and The Atlantic, for instance, bothattributed Sanders’s win to his strength among low-income white workers. “White Working-Class Voters in West Virginia Pick Sanders Over Clinton,” read NPR’s headline.
This trope has become the conventional wisdom in the media, with the Wall Street Journal, the Nation, The Huffington Post, and a host of other outlets (including me at Vox) stating as fact that downscale whites have formed a crucial piece of Sanders’s base.This interpretation makes for an interesting narrative, but it’s missing the real story. Sanders’s victories aren’t being powered by a groundswell of white working-class support, but instead stem from his most reliable base since the start of the primary: young voters.
Because young voters also tend to have lower incomes, the massive age gap between Sanders and Clinton has sometimes looked to observers like a gap in economic class, according to political scientists Matt Grossmann and Alan Abramowitz.
But the most salient divide in the primary is not between rich and poor. It’s between young and old — and between white and black.
Please go read the rest.
I’d rather be writing about Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump today, but Bernie and the bros just won’t go away. I think we need to be prepared for their tantrum to continue for a long time. I hope Bernie wakes up and decides not to be this year’s Gene McCarthy or Ralph Nader, but I’m not holding my breath.
What stories are you following today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Have a great Friday and a relaxing weekend, everyone!
Thank BB………..It doesn’t look good with the thousands marching on the convention, how about the Hillary democrats, are we at some point going to show up by the millions.
Bernie hasn’t been a democrat, and it sounds like the minute the race is over, he is back to being an independent. If he is serious why isn’t he staying in the party?
One of the things that fries my ass, is why he gives the message that Hillary received the large gift of super delegates way before the election started. She has worked her ass off the party for how many years, and Bernie comes along and is in for 9 months, and he’s jamming crap down our throats, like he’s Mr. Big Stuff, and wants everything to go his way. He lost, it’s over man. Over.
It’s definitely OVER for Berner, he just hasn’t realized it yet. He’s never had this much attention in his life and he’s reluctant to give it up, but this time three months from now he’ll just be a bad memory.
Hear, Here!
You too, BB!
There’s a whole new line of tritheism about Nevada coming from them too. Teh stupid! It Berns! Great analysis BB!
Thanks. What’s the new argument about Nevada?
Hillary false flag. No chair throwing or violence. The dude picked the chair up but some winder Bernie bro talked him into putting it down. There was no threat of violence just people speaking their minds, and it’s all rigged with last minute rule changes.
Oh, I see.
Yup. Hillary’s power knows no boundaries. http://addictinginfo.org/2016/05/20/trump-claims-hillary-was-involved-in-disappearance-of-egyptair-flight/
If there was false flag shenanigans going on, it’s most likely to have come from right-wing hatemonger and dirty trickster Roger Stone (http://bit.ly/224NZrM). Don’t the videos of Nevada remind you of the “Brooks Brothers” riot that stopped the vote count in Miami Dade? That was a Stone production.
Yup
Okay … try this butthurt for size …GCW!!! http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-leaving-democratic-party-article-1.2644307
Oh for eff’s sake. There’s so many things wrong with that blather that it’s hard to pick where to start.
Yup… he’s a young’n with a long list of seriously not in touch
Shakesville: It’s Pretty Rich for Bernie Sanders to Complain about Democratic Party Favoritism.
http://www.shakesville.com/2016/05/its-pretty-rich-for-bernie-sanders-to.html
Bernie sinks lower. When will the quicksand subsume him?
Wow, I wonder what CONNECTION Bernard Sanders has with GUN elites that garner him such support, including his support against Hillary now. One does wonder…what motivated Nancy Pelosi in securing Sanders TOP Committee assignments.
Have you read this?
http://time.com/4327430/baby-boomers-are-isolating-themselves-as-they-age-thats-bad-for-everyone/
Maybe boomers are isolating themselves because Gen X’ers & Millenials are blaming the Boomers for everything that’s wrong with America. “Boomers are bad” is a very common theme among the Berners. “The Boomers” ruined the U.S.
Hmmm — the characteristics the author brings up: high rates of divorce, less social and church group participation, not knowing one’s neighbors — are increasing trends among all ages. Frankly, my emotional and mental health is far better now that I have no connection with my fundamentalist rightwingnut sister, her misogynist patriarchal husband and their selfish kids.
Same here
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/an-x-men-dark-forces-theory-of-jeff-weaver
Josh Marshall
Good post BB. The Berners have been saying for months this will be 1968 all over again, the problem is they don’t have a clue what 1968 was about. I don’t fear them and I don’t think anyone else should fear them. They’re a bunch of hot heads who will look stupid protesting a convention they clearly lost. I don’t see that there is any opportunity for a positive message coming from their gathering. Just more sour grapes from the sore losers. It’s over. It was over after NY or maybe it was over after Super Tuesday. Bernie will soon be returning to the Senate and I hope in the next Congress he is stripped of his juicy committee appointments.And again I will say that the DNC needs to rewrite their rules to keep people like Bernie, who are not Democrats, from using the power, prestige and resources of the Democratic Party to wage what has ended up being a Hillary hate fest.
Great post BB. Thanks for putting these articles together for us.
Speaking of Nevada — the credentials committee, that was the forefront of the allegations of favoritism and “crooked” cronyism for Hillary, had ten members. They were responsible for turning away the Bernie supporters for failing to be properly registered at the time of the primary. That credentials committee had 5 members supporting Hillary and 5 members supporting Bernie. So in addition to their general overall paranoia, the BernBros have trouble with simple arithmetic.
Yup. I heard that.
I remember good old Hubert Humphrey, or, rather I should say, my feelings about him at that early age. He seemed polite, pleasant, ineffectual, faceless, colorless, and useless. I’m not saying he was any of these things. I’m saying that’s how he struck an idealistic young hothead. (Although I never threw chairs.)
The thing I cannot grasp is even if I try to channel myself at 20, Clinton looks anything but boring or colorless or useless. I suppose you could swallow all the Wall St Shill crap if you didn’t look too closely, but then you ought to be equally put off the Berner when you find out he’s been working for the NRA. (Unlike Hillary, who has *not* changed her votes or policies to Wall St-friendly.) But they excuse Sanders and dump on her.
So, really, the only thing left, the one and only, is that she’s female. Part of me just can’t believe that plain old raw bigotry is what we’re looking at. I’m sitting there saying, “Really? Really?” It’s scary and discouraging that it’s so many college-age young people who are so steeped in this shit thay can’t even see that’s what they’re doing.
Us college profs have not done a very good job of teaching them critical thinking. 😦
There’s only so much you can do. We don’t teach by innoculation, we help them to develop. But they’re only in the classroom for a limited time. They have years of prior experiences affecting them. I can only explain it by thinking that the Berniebots still have a couple of developmental stages yet before reaching adulthood.
I want to stand up for Eugene McCarthy. But first, I will say that the Sanders’ people are determined to be outraged by whatever happens at the convention, and to vow that they will never vote for Hillary. This is already predetermined, if just unconsciously in their minds. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen there, will be transposed by them into things which make it impossible to want Hillary to win. They’ve done it all campaign, so they certainly won’t stop now. And Sanders will sit back and say that none of it is his doing. And it might cost us the election, depending on how much the media encourages this, and how much the Republicans try to foment the anger. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Now, as for McCarthy; as you note above, things were much different in 1968. There was the Vietnam War, and the powerlessness of people to stop it, or to even convince LBJ that the war might not be winnable. So it was an awful time. Allard Lowenstein, the liberal Congressman from NY, tried desperately to get Robert Kennedy to run against Johnson, who everyone was sure would be renominated. RFK refused, preferring to wait for the apparent sure thing in 1972. McCarthy, a quixotic sort by nature, and a brilliant intellectual who had written the book, “The Liberal Answer to the Conservative Challenge,” agreed to run. Most laughed at this, but McCarthy and his mostly young followers were able to almost pull off an impossible upset in NH, losing by about seven percent. The next primary was Wisconsin, and polls showed McCarthy well ahead. At that point, LBJ decided not to run. Immediately thereafter, RFK said that he was “reassessing,” and then entered the race, much to the upset of my parents and then me; as they had always greatly admired McCarthy; were not great fans of RFK, and disdained the fact that he only ran when he thought it was safe.
So it was a bitter prmary season, as EJM and RFK did not at all like each other, as EJM was never a friend of the Kennedys, whom he felt would ramp up enthusiasm for a bill, get publicity, and then weren’t there when the real voting battles came. Anyway, LBJ wanted Humphrey, who had morphed from a staunch ’40’s and ’50’s liberal, into a vociferous supporter of LBJ and the war, often banging his hand on the table to excoriate those protesting against this war, which probably 80% of Democrats disfavored. Humphrey’s name was represented by a slate of delegates in the primaries. There were not many primaries back then, maybe 10 or so. The big battle was in CA, and RFK, whose campaign of course had vastly more money than EJM, won by 3.5%. And that night he was tragically assassinated.
Humphrey had all the big party bosses, who in those days still controlled nominations, on his side. At this pont, the anger and frustration at the fact that Humprhrey, whose slate had not won one primary, or even gotten over 15% in one, was going to be nominated, boiled over. The RFK people hated McCarthy so much, that they refused to move their delegates to him, instead convincing RFK friend McGovern to stand in. So the convention in Chicago was a formality as far as Humphrey being nominated; but for those who recall it, or read the history, Mayor Daley of Chicago, who apparently hated protesters, told his police to stand up with extreme force agains what were essentially nonviolent but angry young people So the police broke heads, dragged people away. McCarthy took some of the injured in at the hotel where he was staying in Chicago. Abraham Ribicoff, former CT Senator and JFK Cabinet official, got up on the floor of the convention, and inveighted against “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.” Daley cut off his microphone, and Daley’s lips could later be read as saying, “Shut up, you MFing Jew.” Humphrey was nominared. He spoke glowingly about Daley’s great work in handling the convention. And that was the tableau against which Humphrey became the nominee.
At that point, there was believed ample cause for many liberals and anti-war people to simply turn away from Humprhrey. McCarthy refused to endorse him until about two weeks before the election. LBJ stopped the bombing of Vietnam about that time, and Humphrey closed the gap on Nixon, but lost by 1%. Of course, Wallace and Nixon together got about 58% of the vote, so only because Wallace was in, taking right-wing and racist votes from Nixon, was this even close. McCarthy, who did have a certain bitterness in his temperament, was so upset at all of this which had preceded, that he decided not to run for his Senate seat in Minnesota; and Humphrey did, and once again was Senator from MN. McCarthy would have gotten the nomination in ’72 had he stayed there, but McGovern ended up getting it, and he was a good man but a terrible candidate, and Nixon, who wanted him nominated, beat him by a great deal. And after that was Watergate. And the liberals were in full retreat after ’72, which led to Carter stepping into the party vacuum in ’76. And the rest of it you can fill in.
I write all of that because I greatly admired Eugene McCarthy as a teenager. I don’t think that he cost Humphrey the election, not at all. But surely that was a much different era, with an ever-escalating war tore the country apart; and where a brutal police display at the convention remains as the worst thing I have ever seen in my political memory. If one wonders, try to see some of the footage, which is on various news sites, as well as memorably filmed by Haskell Wexler in what turned out to be made into his film, “Medium Cool.” Anyway, sorry for the long exposition, but I thought it was worthwhile to tell the story, at least from my memory and perspective. And whle I certainly see and even feel the unsettling parallels between this year and 1968, I would never blame McCarthy for having cost Humphrey the election. I always saw that campaign as akin to a Greek Tragedy, where Humphrey was the former liberal icon who so desperately wanted to be VP and then President, that he perhaps became that awful war’s greatest cheerleader. This year, there is no such war, no such split. Every state as a primary. Hillary will get 3 million more votes than Sanders, and many more pledged delegates. The Sanders people might want their own version on ’68, but they are twisting history. Whatever they do, will be to try to ruin the chances of a candidate whom they simply hate for not being their candidate, not because of any signifcant policy differences between them; someone who won a resounding primary campaign victory, which they like to claim was fixed or rigged or whatever, simply because they cannot stand to lose.
Um, William, not to disagree with what you said, which is true, but we’re now in the middle of even more unwinnable wars with arguably worse downstream consequences. Vietnam was small potatoes, in scale and geopolitics, compared to what we have now. The big difference is there’s no draft.
If you look at what’s really going on in the world, it’s interesting that the Berners are throwing chairs at a bunch of minor state convention delegates.
Yes, you are right that because there is no draft, the Sanders people don’t feel directly affected by the wars. And of course many of them adulated Obama, who has been the President for hte last eight years. And Sanders does not really have a foreign policy, that is not his metier. So they focus on the free college tuition they thing they are entitled to; and on complaining that every primary they lose was fixed, along with everything else they don’t like.
The Bernie bros hate Obama almost as much as they hate Hillary. She’s really just a stand-in for Obama. The middle-aged dudebros–who are really the worst–are the same people who were disappointed that Obama didn’t turn out to be the left-winger they thought he was. And so they turned on him. These are the same people who excoriated Obama at DailyKos and Firedoglake and other “progressive” blogs.
The young Sanders supporters will vote for Hillary–the polls have shown that. We just have to get them out to vote. The Ron Paul deadenders like Greenwald are the real dudebros.
They are still not looking beyond the surface if they were fooled by Obama and now by Sanders.
Vietnam wasn’t “small potatoes” in terms of how many Americans died though. That’s the big difference between Vietnam and the Middle East wars. The military has managed to reduce the size and efficiency of the army and medical advances have saved more lives. As you say, there’s no draft, so millions of Americans can divorce themselves from the horrors and the bloodshed.
Another big difference is that in 1968, more African Americans were still struggling to break out of poverty and get access to the vote. Both issues are still very bad, but today black people are much more numerous and powerful in the electorate. Bernie’s inability to reach out to people of color is the main reason he lost. Along with the votes of women, votes from people of color will be the reason Trump will lose.
Remember Humphrey also ran for president in 1960 and lost to JFK and LBJ. And it was a difficult race. He was a broken man after the 1960 primaries.
Well-reasoned. Many, many more people of color voting today.
The draft was the reason more Americans died, isn’t it? My sense is the only reason there’s fewer now is that the powers-that-be are real clear on the fact that US casualties get US attention. So they make sure to keep that out of US sight. No draft, fewer US deaths, no protests. The human carnage of the Middle East wars is way huger than Vietnam, especially if you consider what a medical journal would call “excess deaths,” all the deaths that would not have happened without the disruption. As well as all the displacement and impoverishment.
I’m not minimizing US deaths in Vietnam. That’s *not* what I mean by “small potatoes.” I just mean that’s a war the country was very aware of, and yet by most measures, it was much smaller than what’s happening now.
And thank god for AA voters! They rescued Louisiana from David Duke (the card-carrying Nazi got 60% of the white vote!). Now they’re going to help rescue the whole country.
60% of the white vote. Ye gods….
I always appreciate when he whole historic context is illuminated. That is what is klacking among the young and the low info voters alike. They have a warpedTMZ view of the world.
They will recite supposed Clinton sins but if you ask even simple questions…when, where, who were the players? Crickets. All they know is they saw a tweet. Clinton bad.
Thank you, William. I volunteered for Gene McCarthy and I agree with most of your post.
I loved Gene McCarthy too. I was angry when Bobby Kennedy stepped in. But McCarthy was wrong not to support Humphrey in the end. Hubert Humphrey was a true liberal and he fought hard for liberal policies in Congress. What hurt him the most was that he felt he had to support LBJ’s war, even though he (Humphrey) wasn’t enthusiastic about it. And so we got Nixon and then Reagan.
Yes, that’s right. What a horrible year 1968 was.
I agree. When I woke up and heard RFK was murdered I truly thought it was the end of the world. BTW, I was a McCarthy supporter also, partly because I had lived in Minnesota and admired him. I just found out here recently how bitter he had become. I had no idea.
I had perceived RFK as riding on McCarthy’s coattails and was angry at him for that. My opinion about him has changed.
But you are so right. 1968 was horrible. And scary. Even to a 18 year old college student in the bubble of a fairly conservative Catholic university.
That’s just how I remember it, too.
Last Thursday I wrote about the research of Dan McAdams on agency and communion in the life story. Interestingly, the cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic is an analysis of Donald Trump’s personality by McAdams.
THE MIND OF DONALD TRUMP: Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.
I’m only part of the way through this article, BB, and I’m really enjoying it. It gives me the words to describe what I’ve thought about Trump, but didn’t have the psychological terms to do so. Glad you posted the link – thanks!
I hadn’t read my ‘Atlantic’ yet, thanks for this, I found this little tidbit very telling: “Research shows that people low in agreeableness are typically viewed as untrustworthy. Dishonesty and deceit brought down Nixon and damaged the institution of the presidency. It is generally believed today that all politicians lie, or at least dissemble, but Trump appears extreme in this regard. Assessing the truthfulness of the 2016 candidates’ campaign statements, PolitiFact recently calculated that only 2 percent of the claims made by Trump are true, 7 percent are mostly true, 15 percent are half true, 15 percent are mostly false, 42 percent are false, and 18 percent are “pants on fire.” Adding up the last three numbers (from mostly false to flagrantly so), Trump scores 75 percent. The corresponding figures for Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, respectively, are 66, 32, 31, and 29 percent.”
Trump said today the “Hillary wants to do away with the 2nd amendment. He’s looney
And getting loonier all the time. A fascist looney.