Clayton Cramer surmises that Obama the Socialist Messiah may be George McGovern reincarnated:
The only good thing about being old is that you get to say, “I’ve seen this idiocy before!” It is increasingly apparent that the Democrats are planning to reprise the 1972 election–with a Republican that many Republicans didn’t like, because he wasn’t very conservative (the 55 mph national speed limit, wage and price controls) running against a very liberal Democrat that talked a lot about idealism.
Read the whole thing. I don’t remember the 1972 presidential election, because I wasn’t born until two years later at the height of the Watergate scandal.
Were McGovern people cheering his nasal secretions too?
Seems more akin to 1976 to me.
I was very much alive in 1972 and remember it pretty well. I was in college and quite liberal. Everybody I knew was for McGovern and it seemed every magazine, TV news show, and every newspaper was also for McGovern. Everyone hated Nixon and thought that McGovern would win in a landslide.
McGovern’s clarion call was “The bombing will stop on inauguration day.” I went to bed on election night confident that McGovern would be president-elect when I awoke. When I learned that Nixon had been easily re-elected I was in a state of shock and disbelief. How the hell did that happen? Everybody I knew hated Nixon.
By the time Pauline Kael had a similar moment of disbelief in 1984 I had been through the miserable Carter years and had become a solid Reagan conservative. Now I am only shocked that I could have ever been so naive.
Obamamania will only be similar to the McGovern swoon if Obama loses. Then his supporters will be as surprised as I was when McGovern lost. If Obama wins it won’t be reminiscent of 1972, but of 1976.
I was in high school and I remember the McGovern race real well. Many people in high school were energized by this race. But when McGovern said everyone should get $200 this made him look like a fool. Amazing what we thought foolish back then compared to now.
I also recall that the energized college and high school set thought McGovern would win easily. But our parents were the WWII generation, the Silent Majority and it was a landslide win for Nixon.
But Obama is not McGovern, McGovern was a fool but not as charasmatic as Obama. It was obvious to me in high school that McGovern would lose and the Shrivers lived behind my high school, so they were familiar to us.
Obama is more dangerous, less experienced than McGovern and smarter. He has generated amazing interest and getting 3-1 people out to vote in the primaries.
I think Obama is more like the Kennedy phenomen that happened when I was in elementary school. JFK won then and he was more like what a Republican is today compared to what Democrats have changed to be. This is very scary and I fear what foolish voters will bring to us with an Obama win. I do not see the GOP having the demographics and voter participation to get the requisite number to out vote the Obama voters. I can only hope he craters and so far he has not. Clintons have not been able to touch him. I just hope that more people become scared at the messiah feel and reject Obama.
Well, the only way this is like 1972 for me is that I was crapping my drawers back then and if Obama wins, I might do the same now.