I am an old history teacher who now finds himself in the middle of what might be one of the most historic moments of our lifetime! These are my opinions to be sure, but perhaps, just perhaps, it might be true!
Ask yourself, when was the last time politics were this crazy?
1912 Maybe? That's when Teddy "Speak Softly, Carry a Big Stick" Roosevelt was determined to bring down his former hand picked successor William H. Taft after Taft had sold out the Republican Party to the Barons (aka the Corporations). Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party and formed the Bull Moose Party and won himself 88 electoral votes and over 4 million votes of the electorate; thereby handing the election to Woodrow "Call me Doctor" Wilson. (Some historians have said through the years that if Roosevelt had begun his bid for the Presidency earlier, he may have well become our first Third Party President. Wouldn't that been something?)
The Progressive Movement was at its peak then and a c-change was occurring in the country. The two parties arguably were never the same after this as the conservatives and corporatists moved into the Republican party and the Progressives and Liberals moved almost completely over to the Democrats so that by 1932, another Roosevelt (my own political hero and muse) would seal the deal and set our nation's politics in stone up until the time of "Old Man" Reagan.
I ask again however the question I started with. When have we seen politics this crazy? For the primary/caucuses, I don't know if we have ever seen it this wild (maybe 1948?).
What IS happening right now on both sides of the isle is amazing. On our side, it is the fact that we have an "agent of change" in Barack Obama, a woman who not only has a name we all know but a reminder of many successes that were had in the 90's and we have the son of the millworker who preaches the gospel of "Two America's" and how the poor and middle class are struggling to stay afloat. Can you sense what people may have been feeling back in 1968 with all the revolutionary leaders we had forcing this country to think about change? Can you sense the charged atmosphere that we as a nation must have had when 25% of the people were unemployed when FDR took office in '33?
I am telling you this as a person who has worked the political angles now for 30 years. I am an activist as well as an amateur historian. What we are seeing here and now is incredible AND historic.
We need to remember this time and hold it in our minds and share it with our children and with the generations to come because something like this crazy time in politics '08 may not happen again in our lifetime.
Just something I thought you might want to read and think about.