I was 15 in 1968. The world was swirling around us in even more turmoil than today—at least so far. In March, an incumbent President announced he would not run for re-election after having been retained in office in an overwhelming landslide in 1964. In April, one of the greatest leaders in American, indeed world, history was assassinated and scores of American cities were hit with insurrections and filled with National Guard. In May, campuses around the country were shut down by strikes against the war in Vietnam. And in the midst of it all was a Presidential election that was one of the most unique and tumultuous in American history.
Even as it seemed our country might dissolve into chaos or civil war, many of us in the Boomer generation were dreaming of a better world: a world at peace; a world where our children were all well-fed, well-housed and well-educated; a world where the promise that we were all created equal was actually realized. A courageous Minnesota Senator, Eugene McCarthy, got things rolling by taking on the powerful incumbent President in the New Hampshire primary.
McCarthy centered his campaign on the Vietnam War and the malaise of the times:
What is the spirit of 1967? What is the mood of America and of the world toward America today?
It is a joyless spirit-- a mood of frustration, of anxiety, of uncertainty.
In place of the enthusiasm of the Peace Corps among the young people of America, we have protests and demonstrations.
In place of the enthusiasm of the Alliance for Progress, we have distrust and disappointment.
Instead of the language of promise and of hope, we have in politics today a new vocabulary in which the critical word is "war": war on poverty, war on ignorance, war on crime, war on pollution. None of these problems can be solved by war but only by persistent, dedicated, and thoughtful attention.
But we do have one war which is properly called a war-- the war in Vietnam, which is central to all of the problems of America.
A war of questionable legality and questionable constitutionality.
Young people flocked to his message, cutting their locks and getting “Clean for Gene.”
They headed to New Hampshire in VW microbuses adorned with peace symbols (at least some did) and canvassed for McCarthy in the mid-winter snows. The result was a 40%+ showing for McCarthy, an outcome deemed by the press to be shocking against an incumbent. Hope built among the young that the war could be stopped, and that a better world was possible.
McCarthy’s success brought Robert Kennedy into the race, much to the consternation of McCarthy’s young supporters. As a high school kid whose parents had a picture of Jack Kennedy on the wall (my grandparents had FDR), RFK had a powerful attraction for me, and as his campaign took shape, I was completely captured.
I was not alone.
The McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns battled it out in the relatively few primary contests that were held at the time. McCarthy was the original, the idealistic campaign that resented Kennedy’s late entry. Meanwhile Kennedy was building a much broader coalition, a multi-racial, multi-generational working class coalition.
Each side won some primaries. When Gene defeated Bobby in Oregon, it was a milestone: the first time a Kennedy had lost an election. Meanwhile, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey was racking up delegates the old-fashioned way: pressure through party bosses.
It all came down to the winner-take-all California primary. After a hard-fought and close contest against McCarthy, RFK emerged the winner, but with a tragic aftermath.
The Democratic Convention in Chicago was one of the greatest disasters in the history of the Democratic Party. The convention hall was filled with anti-war McCarthy and Kennedy delegates. The streets were filled with young anti-war demonstrators. The convention was run by Johnson, Humphrey and the infamous Chicago city boss, Dick Daley. Many of us Boomers will remember this confrontation between Abe Ribicoff (D Conn) and Daley and his thugs. As Boomer demonstrators were being beaten bloody by Daley’s cops, Ribicoff was placing George McGovern’s name in nomination after RFK’s family had asked McGovern to be the stand-in for Bobby’s delegates.
As a 15 year-old watching intently from home, this moment is seared in my memory (no sound first 15 seconds):
The anger and violence at the convention did let up for a few moments as a film was presented about Robert Kennedy. I remember lying on the floor, watching the family television in the living room with my parents and weeping uncontrollably as the film was shown. My heart was broken along with millions of us Boomers, not only by the deaths of MLK and RFK within the space of a few months, but by the defeat of our effort to end the war as Humphrey, who had not won a single primary, was nominated.
The chaos and violence of 1968 was enough to turn many of us off to politics, but when 1972 rolled around with a reformed Democratic Party that would have a hard time nominating another Establishment candidate with no popular support, I was ready to give it another shot. This time, I was in college and old enough to really participate—even vote!!! My first canvassing experience was in the nasty Massachusetts March weather going door-to-door for McGovern. That big primary win made him a contender, and later wins, aided by his strong youth support, brought him to front-runner status. The Establishment Democrats coalesced into a Stop McGovern effort, but despite their efforts, McGovern won the still winner-take-all California primary and wrapped up enough delegates to win a first round victory.
The Establishment Democrats, Humphrey and Jackson pre-eminent among them, tried to change the rules on McGovern. They wanted to retroactively make California a proportional state, cutting McGovern’s delegate count below the nominating threshold. Even after the party insiders lost the rules fight on the floor, they continued to sabotage the convention, delaying McGovern’s acceptance speech until 3 in the morning. Watching from home in Missouri, where I was pleading with my county Democratic committee to actively support McGovern in the general, I stayed up to watch a wonderful speech: “Come Home, America.”
And this is also a time, not for death, but for life. In 1968 many Americans thought they were voting to bring our sons home from Vietnam in peace, and since then 20,000 of our sons have come home in coffins.
I have no secret plan for peace. I have a public plan. And as one whose heart has ached for the past ten years over the agony of Vietnam, I will halt a senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day.
There will be no more Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North.
And within 90 days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong.
And then let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad.
This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves.
McGovern was doomed in the general. In 1968, the Democratic Party had received only 42% of the vote in a three-way race with Nixon and Dixiecrat racist, George Wallace. When Wallace was shot and severely wounded in May, 1972, the chances for another three-way race vanished, and along with it, any realistic chance for Democrats to beat Nixon. Then Tom Eagleton, a Senator from my home state, lied to McGovern about having any potential “issues” that would affect the campaign. The humiliating search for a replacement ended all realistic hope. The Democratic Establishment and the pro-war side of the labor movement sat it out or backed Nixon. Even the Watergate burglary was not enough to change the direction of the race because the press ignored it and Nixon’s cover-up was successful at first.
I remember how broken-hearted I was again as Richard Nixon came on the television to gloat about his victory. Little did I know that our country was headed on a nearly 50 year journey in the wrong direction.
Our hopes twice dashed, many of us Boomers gave up dreaming of a better country. We burrowed into our niches, getting jobs, buying houses, having kids. And while the McCarthy, Kennedy and McGovern campaigns did spawn many activists who have achieved remarkable things in the areas of LGBTQ rights, women’s rights and environmental issues, many of us Boomers became passive consumers of politics, voting, maybe contributing, but generally content to choose from among the candidates that the party insiders put before us.
This election reminds me a lot of 1968 and 1972. Young people are stirring again, dissatisfied like we were when we were young. They’re tired of war like we were. They’re so fed up with our dog-eat-dog economic arrangements that they’re identifying more as socialist than capitalist. And they face an existential threat from climate change that requires radical and rapid changes to our entire system. These young people are coalescing around Bernie Sanders the way we gathered around McCarthy, Kennedy and McGovern when we were young. They believe now, like we believed then, that a better world is possible, a world where America doesn’t have 500,000 homeless, where life expectancy is not declining because of deaths of despair, where youth suicides aren’t high and climbing, where going to college does not entail crushing debt if you’re not from a wealthy family.
Are youth really behind Sanders? Chegg/College Pulse surveys 1,500 students at four-year institutions across America every week. This week, Sanders reached 50% in that poll for the first time this cycle. Elizabeth Warren came in second at 18% with Yang third at 10%.
Polls are great, but what about the actual youth vote in Iowa and New Hampshire? In Iowa, he received 48% of the 18-29 vote, and turnout for that group constituted a higher percentage of the total turnout than any previous election, even 2008 when enthusiasm for Obama fired up Iowa’s youth. In New Hampshire, Bernie received more votes in the 18-29 category than all the other candidates combined. Turnout analyses of New Hampshire have not yet appeared, but it’s clear from the above data that Sanders completely dominates the youth vote in general and college students in particular just as Gene McCarthy did in ‘68 and McGovern in ‘72.
Now no one will believe that Sanders has anything like RFK’s charisma, but Bernie is nevertheless putting together a multi-racial working class coalition like
Bobby. Morning Consult did a racial/ethnic breakdown of their daily tracking poll on February 13. It showed Biden leading over Bernie with African American by 34% (-1) to 30% (+3). Bloomberg had 19%. No other candidate had double digits.
Among Hispanic voters, Bernie leads by an astonishing 48% to Bloomberg’s 17%. Biden trails with 13%. No other candidate has double digits.
And Bernie isn’t passively waiting for voters to show up at the polls. He’s organizing heavily among minority voters, and it’s shown in the results in the first two contests. In Iowa, the Sanders campaign did outreach to immigrant, minority and Hispanic working class voters. This is a photo of Sanders’ supporters grouped at a multilingual satellite caucus in Cedar Rapids:
In another satellite caucus, Bernie’s campaign organized workers at a meat plant in Ottumwa, Iowa that included several Ethiopian immigrants. Bernie’s campaign even had an organizer who spoke their language!
Bernie’s organizing in Texas and California among working class voters of color has been so successful that he is leading all recent polls in both states. His South Carolina campaign is headed by three African American women organizers whose efforts are steadily bringing Sanders up in the polling in that state.
We have a candidate who is as strong among young people and college students as Gene McCarthy in ‘68 and McGovern in ‘72. We have a candidate who is putting in the time and resources to organize working class people of color as RFK was doing by the power of Kennedy charisma in ‘68. And we have young people across the country pleading with us as we pleaded with our parents to give substantive and substantial change a chance.
Before we give them a final answer, let’s try to connect to that 18 or 20 year-old we once were. Why did we care so much about McCarthy or Kennedy or McGovern? Why did we believe that this could be a nation at peace with the world? Why were we hopeful enough that we believed the good guys could win and that a better world is possible? Would that 18 or 20 year-old be standing now shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with Bernie’s young supporters?
And then let’s flip it. Ask ourselves what would that 18 or 20 year-old, so full of dreams, think of us today as we confront this urgent request from our young people to join their movement to set things right again? Would they still see themselves in us? Would they find just of glimmer of that hope, those dreams, still alive in us? Would they be proud or disappointed in us?
Some see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.
I don’t believe we’re too old to dream of things that never were, things that we desperately wanted and fought for when we were young. I don’t believe we’re too old or too fat and comfortable to refuse to accept 500,000 homeless, many of them in our richest cities. I don’t believe we’re too old or too self-centered to join with our young people in the existential fight to save our planet just as we once gave birth to the environmental movement with the first Earth Day. I don’t believe we’re too old or selfish to join with our children’s generation to end the terrible burdens that we’ve put on them to get an education, burdens that we didn’t bear because state colleges and universities were free or close to it when we were young. I don’t believe we’re too old or jaded to join with our children in ending the endless wars just as we helped to end the war in Vietnam.
There’s a multi-racial working class movement building that can transform the country from the mess it’s become into something much closer to the dreams we had half a century ago. Our young people are inviting us to join them to make this movement a multi-generational one as well. Let’s do what most of our parents didn’t do. Let’s join them. Together, we just might win this thing.