And, more importantly, why was it published? I'm still analyzing it, so let me just explore some thoughts about it.
Ickes doesn't understand why George McGovern lost in 1972. It
wasn't his anti-Vietnam War stance. Bobby Kennedy would have won on that stance, back in 1968. The country was utterly revolted by the Vietnam War, by 1972. McGovern lost for three reasons: 1) He made the mistake of proposing a cap on American wealth of $50,000 (enough to live well on, in those days--but it smacked of the "C" word). 2) He didn't project well on TV--just a fact. He doesn't have the gift. 3) Nixon White House "dirty tricks"! They were bugging the DNC headquarters, for godssakes! And it was not exposed until well
after the election. God knows what advantage this gave them, but they weren't doing it for laughs.
People were sick to death of that war--just as they are now, with the Iraq War. And, in that war, by 1972, we were well into the final slaughter toll of TWO MILLION PEOPLE and over 55,000 U.S. soldiers! That's how the phrase "body bag" entered the lexicon. Nixon had clearly broken his promise of "peace with honor." He had been in office four years. No end in sight.
Nope, I am quite sure of this. And I lived through it, so I have at least that as my creds.
So Ickes he doesn't understand
that campaign, how can he understand
this one? And, sick as the American people were of the Vietnam War, anti-war sentiment in that era never reached the whopping level of today--70% of the American people opposed to the Iraq War and wanting it ended. Congress, which hasn't ended it, has a 22% approval rating. Bush, who hasn't ended it, has a 19% approval rating. Do the math!
And Obama, a) has made no such mistake as to presume to cap Americans' lottery dreams, and b) has the gift--projection of his personality and intelligence, and his impressive cool-headedness, in the media.
I think Ickes remarks about this reflect the overall determination of our corrupt political establishment to PREVENT this election from being about the war. They did it in 2004, and they are doing it again. And we are the "enemy"--this whopping American majority that hates this war and wants it ended.
Sentiment against the Vietnam War never got much above 55% levels--by comparison. And it is very arguable that, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on the night he won the California primary, and then two months later, LBJ's vice president Hubert Humphrey was nominated at the bloody 1968 Democratic Convention, Nixon won the election on ANTI-WAR sentiment. Humphrey was complicit. That was WHY there was such a fracas between antiwar protesters and the Chicago police outside the convention. Fair or not, Humphrey was tagged with it. He'd gone along. And if Hillary Clinton resembles anyone it's Hubert Humphrey. Nixon came along with this smooth "peace with honor" message to "Middle America"--which, at that point, was frightened by this rebellion of the young against the war, and was experiencing it every night at the dinner table, with arguments between fathers and sons (fueled by the Draft), and they wanted somebody like Eisenhower, with the skills to bring this conflict to a close, and bring back peace and harmony. I think most Nixon voters didn't know that he was lying. They were thinking "Ike" not "Dick." (Nixon had been Eisenhower's VP.)
Although there are certainly parallels to the Vietnam era, there are also differences. And one of them is that,
because of the Vietnam War, 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb 03, NYT; other polls, 54-55%). 54-56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). That's what our political establishment was thinking about when they passed the $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, Oct 02. How to control and stop the antiwar movement, which was starting at 54-56%, and would surely grow when the injustice of the Iraq War became apparent?
So, a lot of Ickes' blather, and that of these other Clinton advisers and "pundits," is just hot air, possibly designed for some purpose, but I haven't sussed it out yet. Is Obama Nixon--that is, the stealth candidate of our war profiteer government, soothing people with platitudes, but with a secret plan to escalate the war, maybe hit Iran as well (like Nixon did in Cambodia and Laos)? Hard to read people these days through the fog and lies of this corrupt media cauldron. I think not, but I really don't know for sure. Is this all just a charade, to make us FEEL LIKE this is really a contest, but it's been fixed all along for Clinton (or McCain)--to keep us--we, the American people--off kilter, and lulled into believing that democracy is "working"?
Really, with all the vote counting run on electronic machines, with
trade secret, proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by
rightwing Bushite corporations, and with
virtually no audit/recount controls, ANYTHING is possible. Anything. Even their Diebolding another blatant Bushite into the White House in November. We really need to realize what a tremendous and devious effort has been mounted to KEEP THIS WAR GOING and to expand it. If Obama is relatively clean and sincere, do we even have a chance of putting him in the White House? I don't know. I think it is possible to outvote the machines, but there are many factors to an election. In the 1960s, they just shot leaders who were in the way of the next war. Today, they have a subtler weapon--trade secret vote counting--and also the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Back then, the news media was much more open. Today, it acts like the "Iron Curtain" in the Soviet Union. It can make any absurd narrative seem plausible enough to keep the population confused. Can they do it--steal another election? Of course they can. The election system was DESIGNED for election fraud. Will they be able to? And will the American people put up with it? That's "x = the unknown." The People. I think not. I think rebellion is very much in the air.
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(Journal refs)
Discussion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4775777Referenced article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/25/AR2008022502501.html