Archive: Opinions

The calendar tells me that this column will be the last before election day. And this places extreme pressure upon your correspondent. If there's going to be a round up of troublemakers after the election results are published, then the next 'Thoughts' will have to be smuggled out of a secret basement highway on a roll of toilet paper, unless America runs out of toilet paper again, that is.

Okay. Things aren't that bad yet. As a matter of fact, I remembered today an incident about a week before election day back in 2016, I stopped at a now defunct convenience store on Route 96 in Jacksonville and spotted a car with the greatest bumper sticker I had ever seen before or since. It imitated a political sticker and its colors and its makeup, and in red, white and blue, it said, "Giant meteor in 2016, just get this stupid election over with". Well anyway, the national sentiment seems the same in this lovely year of 2020, but the humor is missing. It's gone AWOL. All points bulletin: humor has left the building. A giant meteor, or would be a relief. And the astronomers who are predicting a small one will probably graze our little planet on November 2nd just won't do this time.

Here's a quote from Hunter Thompson -- remember the gonzo journalist? -- and this is from July of 1968 and the publication Pageants: "Eugene McCarthy is the political heir of Adlai Stevenson, who said that people get the kind of government they deserve. If this is true, then 1968 is probably the year in which the Great American Chicken will come home to roost either for good or ill."

I've made mention of a watershed year of 1968 before, and I think that my notions of parallels between 1968 and 2020 may amuse some and prod others to nodding, but I've been working on an angle of comparison between 1968 and 2020 that is totally political and may make some readers wince while others may ponder at their leisure. This conjecture, by the way, will only hold true if Democrats take the brass ring, so to speak, but here goes.

By the spring of 1968, the democratic party had basically run its course at that time. Its strengths had been temporarily sidetracked by the Eisenhower/Nixon era of 1952 to 1960. But in reality, the Roosevelt/Truman years of 1932 to 1952 had the Democrats on the rise in power, Republicans as the loyal opposition, contrarians and mumbling on the back bench. Hubert Humphrey, John Kennedy, and especially Lyndon Johnson had staged of resurgence, which echoed the pre-war democratic party and was in power due in large part to north-east urban centers and the so-called 'Solid South'. This was all in the 1956 to 1960 movement to Kennedy's election in 1960.

Remember the Solid South? It was a democratic stronghold, which attempted to stop every civil rights bill by filibuster and had been a democratic wall since Reconstruction days and was quite racist in its makeup. Barry Goldwater had cracked that wall in 1964 as an avowed state's rights candidate, but by 1968 Lyndon Johnson, who wielded enormous control as Senate majority leader, then vice president and then president, and essentially used up his power as the Democratic South abandoned him over civil rights, the Northeast and rust belt and abandoned him over Vietnam, and by the way, George Wallace saw an opening that almost led to an electoral college stalemate in 1968.

Johnson declined to run and Richard Nixon had performed an impossible rise from the ashes of 1960 and 1962 to reestablish what essentially became a renewed Republican dominance of American politics, that except for Jimmy Carter's malaise-driven for years lasted until 1992. During those years, my political animal memory can recall a good 20 names who were in there news as Republican lawmakers, headline, grabbers and policy dictators. Aside from Jimmy Carter -- remember the so-called Solid South? -- Democrats had no power brokers or deal makers worth remembering, including presidential contenders. It was Republicans who were essentially running the country from Nixon through Ford, through Reagan and Bush the First. And just to dot the I's and cross the T's, these were the years of William Barr, Dick Cheney, and others who were the quiet backroom policymakers in the eighties and nineties, along with notables, such as Frank Church, Charles Percy and George H. W. Bush.

The reason I'm looking at 1968 as a watershed year is because it was a sea change dynamic in Washington power, and who was pulling the strings as well as setting national policy over a period of more than 20 years. Exact dates are not the key here, but players are, and how they maintain their places on the chess board until the new Democrats, again, many from the new South, came into play during the one term of George Bush the first. Here comes Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and remember -- Arkansas and Tennessee and new directions for the new Democrats of 1990 and 1992. I hear echoes of the 'New Nixon' from 1966 to 1968 in this space.

What's the deal? I have a sense, and my political news can be as wrong as well as right, but here it goes -- that that sea change is upon us. Donald Trump has essentially been a one-man wrecking crew of the moderate modern day Republican party, which Reagan had built and George Bush the second came close to wrecking with his war vengeance on Iraq, is now old, creaking, and seen as obstructionist, especially in the current Supreme Court controversy. It may or may not be such, but the media has turned on the Republican machinery much the same as it turned on the Democrats in 1968. This time it's not LBJ -- it's The Donald that is doing scorched-earth to the remnants of a party still in shock about 2016. People like Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity can hear the angry crowd behind them with pitchforks and breathing down the neck.

If Biden wins, and that's still a toss-up as of this writing, there could easily be a down-ballot tsunami such as 1968 and 1974. They could sweep three or four Republican Senate seats to Democrats and strengthen the house Democratic voting block, while giving the White House and the Senate to Democratic power.

I think this is a distinct possibility, not even commented on in 1968 as Nixon defeated the Democratic machine with a subtle call for 'law and order'. Not only that, but Nixon had Supreme Court appointments that changed that institution for years and swept what was left of Democrats under the proverbial rug until the late eighties.

The Republicans, if this pans out the way I think it will with Graham, Collins and possibly even McSally sentt home, we'll be left with Mitt Romney, Ben Sass and Charles Grassley. Some bench!

The weird and scary year of 2020 harks memories and parallels that are just too eerie to dismiss. There is no George Wallace on the ballot this year as in 1968. Not even Green or Libertarian presidential candidates are listed on the ballot. So it's Biden and Trump mano a mano. And I'm going to bet with the payoff many years out, perhaps passed my demise, that there is a political sea-change coming in America and harks interesting times ahead.

Those interesting times, even my psychic friends dare not predict. And even if you are dismissing my pondering, make sure you vote if you haven't yet. By the way, take care of each other. And thanks for listening.