Like many of us, I'm worried about the tone of many recent dairies, and I'm concerned that we may hurt each other to the point where supporting our candidate for the general election may fall victim to the passion we are experiencing now...
This diary will be long on opinion and recollection and short on facts. I haven’t the time to do enough research to make this a fact-filled essay, so I’ll just tell you what happened to me in 1972 during the primary and general election.
Let me start with one fact: in 1972 we got our asses handed to us. Nixon saw us tear ourselves apart in our inner-party war and took full advantage.
I was twenty years old and fired up for McGovern, who spoke to our ideals and our desire for peace and equality. In the primary we went out and fought the center of the Democratic Party and won. In the Los Angeles area I went out door-to-door, I worked the phones, I drove around after midnight putting up signs and tearing the other guy’s down (great fun, by the way.) I went to rallies and committee meetings and planning sessions. It was a great time and I felt alive and passionate and engaged.
Then after the convention a funny thing happened: the Party went home and never returned. We idealists, the passionate progressive activists, were left trying to work a national campaign against the dirty-tricks, tricky-Dick, lying SOB’s that were running Nixon’s campaign. It went from bad to worse every day over that long summer and fall, the national and local press printing whatever the Committee to Reelect the President said, ignoring our positions, policies, and campaign points.
We kept waiting and hoping for the center of the Party to arrive and help us out. Nothing. We needed their professional experience, we needed their contacts with the press, and we needed their money. They stayed home and licked their wounded pride. They weren’t going to help the dirty F’ing hippies and decided electing Nixon was better than helping the progressive side of the Party.
On election day we got killed. I am slightly proud to say that our area of LA was the only one that went for McGovern, so I guess my precinct walking helped a little. But it was devastating. Nixon went on to secret bombing, killing more innocent soldiers and civilians, and lying his way into the history books.
Why? Because the Democratic Party had an internal war and effectively gave the election to the Republicans.
Now I read the candidate diaries, I hear the press and electronic media, and I’m experiencing some serious flashbacks. Do we want to repeat history here? I’ll bet none of us do...yet today I read a diarist saying "I...am considering whether or not I will be able to support Hillary if she does get the nomination." Yeah. That’s the kind of statement that leads to another Republican president and another four years of our waking nightmare.
So here’s what I’m asking all of us to do:
Be passionate; there’s nothing like passion to create positive energy, and we need all the passionate, positive energy we can find over the next five years to save our country.
Be strong; we will need all the strength we can find to win this election and to hold ourselves above the dirt and scum and lies that will be thrown at us over the next year (and the four years after.)
Be understanding; we need to realize that our fellow Democrats are just as passionate and just as strong as ourselves—and they see things a little different. We all love our country and we want to return our government to one we can trust and that shows compassion for all people. But we might just have a good reason to back someone else—right now.
Be respectful; don’t burn the bridges behind you in your passion. Open to the fact that we have at least three excellent leaders in the running for President and we all need to support the one that wins. Keep your eyes on the prize of winning this country back.
Remember what Benjamin Franklin said: We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately. Thank you.