Pivotal Tuesdays by Margaret O'Mara

Author:Margaret O'Mara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 2015-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 20. Eugene McCarthy at Campaign Headquarters Opening, Manhattan, 23 April 1968. Once Robert F. Kennedy entered the race, he siphoned off both supporters and media attention from McCarthy. As McCarthy geared up for the New York State primary, he could not escape the looming presence of student activists who now backed RFK. Bettman/Corbis/AP Images.

The reputation of Kennedy grew, especially among the under twenty-five generation. Many college students still gravitated to McCarthy, but Kennedy had the star power McCarthy lacked. Posters of RFK became a dorm room staple. One sign in the crowd at a Kennedy rally proclaimed, “Bobby is Groovy.” He held fundraisers featuring the Byrds and Sonny and Cher. Crowds surged around him at his appearances, reaching grasping hands toward him, to touch him, to feel the magic. Kennedy started to knit together the different groups who were turning their back on big politics and embracing identity politics. He was no longer a consensus liberal. He was a standard-bearer for the New Left. He had the youth and charisma to glue together these anxious and agitated interest groups into a larger cause.45

The primary season was full of tightly fought contests. Kennedy won Indiana and Nebraska and South Dakota. McCarthy won Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Oregon. By April, Humphrey had officially thrown his hat into the ring and was zinging his Democratic rivals relentlessly. “I do believe,” Humphrey said of Kennedy, “there is such a thing as too much ambition.” He decried both of his opponents for their dour assessments of America’s trajectory. “You won’t make this country better by leading from fear, despair and doubt,” said the vice president. Instead, Humphrey made his campaign theme “the spirit of happiness.” Yet Hubert Humphrey, for all his intelligence and likability, was such a workmanlike politician his optimistic urgings had little of the emotional pull of Robert Kennedy’s poetics or even Gene McCarthy’s low-key persuasion. “There’s very little poetry in him,” one Democratic senator confided of Humphrey. “He says very few things you want to remember, let alone quote.”46

With the Democratic establishment behind him, however, Humphrey was still the man for McCarthy and Kennedy to beat. By late spring, all the key elements of the Democratic power structure forged by the New Deal order had come down on the side of Humphrey: the labor unions, business leaders, and big-city political bosses. It all came down to the California primary on 5 June. The winner of that would be the person who would take on Humphrey for the nomination.

Kennedy won, narrowly. He gave a rousing victory speech just before midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Then, as he exited through the hotel kitchen, six shots fired out. Robert Kennedy was dead, killed by a gunman angry about Kennedy’s support of Israel.

The nation once again went into mourning. Crowds lined the tracks as the train bearing Kennedy’s body rolled across the country, from California back east for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Before that, his body lay in state in New York City’s St.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.