Let me take you on an improvisational journey, Time Line 1988: Ronald Reagan had won the Presidency in 1980 and 1984, and theoretically, we should have fucking won in 1988. Republicans lost the Senate in the 1986 off-year election (They never, throughout Reagan’s Presidency, had a majority in the House). The Iran-Contra Scandal was being investigated. Reagan’s Alzheimer’s had most likely already metastasized – he couldn’t remember what the Iran-Contra figures had done and his public appearances during the second half of his second term dwindled down to a precious few.
Candidates for the 1988 Democratic nomination for President were:
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Michael Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts
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Jesse Jackson, clergyman and civil rights leader
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Al Gore, U.S. Senator from Tennessee
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Dick Gephardt, U.S. Representative from Missouri
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Paul Simon, U.S. Senator from Illinois
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Gary Hart, U.S. Senator from Colorado
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Bruce Babbitt, former Governor of Arizona
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Joe Biden, U.S. Senator from Delaware
There were a handful of others but some Corporate Media schmuck began to refer to the above contenders minus Jackson as “The Seven Dwarves” to imply they didn’t have the gravitas of a Reagan or a Bush.
The Republican contenders were:
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George H. W. Bush, Vice President
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Bob Dole, U.S. Senator from Kansas
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Pat Robertson, televangelist from Virginia
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Jack Kemp, U.S. Representative from New York
5. Pierre S. du Pont, IV, former Governor of Delaware
6. Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State
7. Ben Fernandez, former Special Ambassador to Paraguay
The thing quickly whittled down to a 3-man race on our side between Dukakis, Hart, and Jackson, and in GOP Land, between Bush, Dole, and Robertson. Long story short, Hart got scandaled, Dole got angry, Jackson preached, and Robertson spoke in tongues. Finally, Dukakis and Bush were nominated.
Dukakis started the fall campaign seventeen points ahead in the polls over Poppy Bush.
Read that last sentence again. Slowly. Now contemplate exactly how did we get so screwed out of this victory which we needed?
Liberal-bashing, that’s how. Plus, Duke looked awkward in a tanker’s helmet. The corporate media fucked him just like they would Howard Dean 16 years later. Lee Atwater, Bush’s campaign manager, readily admitted it and on his deathbed he kinda sorta apologized for it.
Perhaps it was foreshadowed by Congressman Peter Kostmayer (D-Penn.) up until then a rising star, tellng Congressional Quarterly that his party’s advice for liberal interest groups was, “Just shut up, gays, women, environmentalists. Just shut up, and you will get everything you want after the election. In the meantime, just shut up so we can win.”
This year, the shoe is on the other foot. Reckon somebody like Paul Ryan could be saying what Kostmayer said to liberal groups, instead to The National Right to Life, Eagle Forum, the Koch Brothers, Heritage Foiundation and the rest of the right-wing grifting operations? You know it’s true!!
Friends, we need to Neanderthal-bash with all our might, or else they’ll get everything they want. What do you think?