Copyright by John T. Reed

I write this on Super Tuesday II—the night of the Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont primaries.

Democrat nomination will not be decided in primaries

It now looks like the Democrat nomination will be decided by the superdelegates and uncontested-and-not-supposed-to-count Florida and Michigan primaries.

I agree with Jesse Jackson that if it appears that the white woman used back-room political maneuvers to cut the black man out of the presidential nomination, the Democrat convention in Denver may look like the 1968 convention in Chicago. The angry Obama supporters would include not only blacks but also the many young Obamaniacs of all races. I even wonder if our city streets may not look like the race riots of the summer of 1967 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_Street_riot, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Newark_riots, http://www.google.com/search?q=1967+race+riots&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_en___US231&start=10&sa=N, http://www.putnampit.com/milwaukeepress/riots.htm).

1968 Democrat convention

My wife went to the 1968 Chicago convention as a McCarthy supporters. McCarthy was the Obama of 1968. McCarthy lost the nomination to the Hillary of 1968: Hubert Humphrey. My wife was so traumatized by the hatred directed at her by the Humphrey delegates that she promptly went back to college in Philadelphia.

In the spring of 1968, I was one of two West Point cadets sent to a national college student conference at Principia College in Elsah, IL to discuss the 1967 race riots. I was chosen for this because I was the only cadet who had read the full Kerner Commission report on the riots. At the time, I was a student in a course at West Point that focused on poverty and NATO. The professor teaching that course selected me.

Clinton attempts to steal the nomination

Blacks have had their hopes—if you’ll pardon the expression—raised to the highest heights by Obama’s candidacy and his success in taking the lead in delegates. I suspect blacks will accept the result if Hillary makes a great comeback and wins in the primaries. But I cannot make that statement if Obama wins the most delegates in the primaries and the Clintons do their normal win-at-all-costs, amoral, sleaze and manage to steal the nomination in back room arm-twisting with superdelegates and/or by getting the uncontested Florida and Michigan Clinton delegates seated at the convention in contravention of the Democrat party rules and the written promise that Hillary and the other candidates signed.

I have seen various lawyers like Clinton bigshot Lanny Davis as well as non-lawyers like Alan Colmes quoting the fine print of Democrat party rules to prove it’s OK for the Clintons to use the Superdelegates and Florida and Michigan primaries to take the nomination. Before long, they will be asking what the definition of “is” is.

Congenital lawyers

The public does not like lawyers. This goes back at least to William Shakespeare (First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” from Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Act IV, Scene II written in 1594). Having the Clintons, who are both lawyers, steal the election explaining that a bunch of lawyers said it was OK will not satisfy a single Obama supporter. It would probably be in the best interest of the Republicans if the Democrats would do just that. So the issue to be decided is whether the Democrat lawyers, including Hillary and her husband, will display the usual lawyer’s blindness to the public’s notions of truth, justice, and the American way and try to use a twisted interpretation of an obscure party rule to deny Obama the nomination and thereby destroy the Democrat party for a generation.

I hope that blacks do not react the way “negroes” did in 1967 and 1968 (when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated). Many, if not most, of the communities where the 1960s riots occurred still have not recovered more than 40 years later. But the extreme high turnouts and extreme high share of black votes that Obama has gotten convince me that blacks will be extremely unhappy if the Clintons steal the nomination after Obama wins the most delegates.

Boycott?

I would also not be surprised if the black and young supporters of Obama boycott the election either formally or just out of individual anger on the part of tens of millions of people. I do not know if Obama would threaten the Democrats with a third-party run. Maybe he should. That would essentially give him veto power over Hillary’s nomination. If he goes third party, the Democrats go down in November and they can watch four more years of Iraq war. Hillary has no comparable power to threaten a third party run. No one would follow her.

Aftermath of 1968

Oh, what was the aftermath political result of the 1968 convention decision to nominate Humphrey?

Richard Nixon won his first term as president. He continued the Vietnam war—including sending me there in 1969 as a West Point graduate first lieutenant. Ending the Vietnam war was McCarthy’s main goal. Richard Nixon claimed to be the “law and order” candidate—a phrase which was generally considered to mean he would keep the blacks from rioting anymore. In other words, the Republican candidate used the race riots of 1967 and 1968 and the anti-war riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention to convince Americans that they needed to elect a Republican president. In 1972, he won a second term in an election against another anti-war candidate—George McGovern (the only Democrat I ever voted for, Reagan was the only Republican) in an election marred by the Watergate scandal which lead to Nixon’s impeachment and resignation from the presidency.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Going into the current 2008 campaign, it was generally believed that the Democrat nominee would win easily because of the unpopularity of the war in Iraq. Now, it is even possible that the supremely selfish Clintons may wreck the Democrat party and elect a pro-Iraq war RINO who did not even have the full support of his own party. In other words, the Clintons may single (double)-handedly snatch Democrat defeat from the jaws of victory in the middle of an extremely unpopular war.

If Hillary were a statesman,

[I pause for the prolonged laughter to subside]

she would see the dangers in attempting to win the nomination by back room maneuvering and concede after the primaries are all over and Obama still has the most delegates.

But then she wouldn’t be a Clinton, would she?

I appreciate informed, well-thought-out constructive criticism and suggestions.

John T. Reed