Working on a piece about conventions, I found this picture from 1968.
The man in the middle is my father, Jay. He and Senator Eugene McCarthy are watching Bobby Kennedy announce that he was finally getting into the presidential race against LBJ. They are in Green Bay, WI.
The back story: throughout 1967, anti-war Dems had begged Bobby to challenge LBJ, but Kennedy refused. So McCarthy decided to pick up the banner instead, running a quixotic campaign against a sitting president. My father was his Wisconsin campaign director
After McCarthy surged in New Hampshire and was poised to win the WI primary, Bobby decided that maybe Johnson was vulnerable after all, and decided to jump into the race. He hoped McCarthy would just step aside in his favor, but he didn't. And this is the moment it happened.
You can see from the body language that McCarthy and my dad were more than a bit annoyed by Kennedy's Bobby-come-lately move.
Over the next few months, McCarthy and Kennedy faced off in several primaries. In June, after winning in California, Kennedy was assassinated.
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Ruy Teixeira has been making the case that Democrats need to move to the center, because it is the “center of gravity of American public opinion.”
ON PATRIOTISM: “America is not perfect, but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.”
71% of Democrats and 93% of Republicans agreed.
ON IMMIGRATION:
“America benefits from the presence of immigrants, and no immigrant — even if illegal — should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.”
A bit of personal nostalgia for me tonight. I’m about to do the final show on Milwaukee’s 620 WTMJ broadcast from legendary Radio City… With my old producer, Scott Warras…Lots of memories.
Imagine a short history of the near future: in 2023/24 a GOP Congress held hostage by its president-in-waiting, who would bully, threaten, and goad it into overreach and paralysis. morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/the-one-thin…
Trump would have Kevin McCarthy’s testicles in a lock box, next to Lindsey’s — and even Speaker Marjorie Taylor Greene would be loath to vote for anything that Trump would shadow veto.
So we’d get endless hearings into Hunter’s laptop, one or two impeachments of Biden, radical culture war legislation, national abortion bans, endless relitigation of the 2020 election, gridlock, government shutdowns, and perhaps even defaults on the debt.
Two years ago today (when Pete was 15 1/2 yrs old):
Every morning he would lead the German Shepherds on a ramble through the woods. He was the Alpha and an adventurer 1/6
But as he got older he knew his limits.
This was our ritual every morning:
He’d wake me up but wait at the top of the steps; he wanted to snuggle.
Then I would put my hand on him and walk him down the stairs…