IT'S THEM!!! 😱

A lesson on the problem with theyism among quasi-oppositional talking heads, from the sub-sublime to the super ridiculous, and a look back at 1968

Here’s a little ditty I whipped up after listening to these two podcasts on Friday…

I do want to address some of the bullshit shoveled by Kim Iversen there - not the BS on what “they” will do to the nomination process, not the absurd suggestion that this “they”, the way Kim surely would define that, killed RFK Sr (although I kinda think They did), but what she said about the 1968 nomination process, which she distorted almost beyond recognition.

First a quick framework on it. LBJ was seeking to be renominated, of course, and his opponent going into the primaries (not primary) was Eugene McCarthy, who was running mainly to end the war in Vietnam. LBJ wasn’t officially running in the primaries, and he won the first one as a write-in candidate; the only candidate on the ballot was McCarthy. But the margin was narrow, 50% to 42%, and eventually he decided to drop out of the race. After that narrow win RFK entered the race (which he had decided to do before New Hampshire), a few days before LBJ dropped out of it. VP Humphrey (not Humphries, Kim) didn’t enter the race until more than a month after RFK did, and decided not to contest the remaining primaries.

There were only 13 primaries - McCarthy won six and RFK four; LBJ and two favorites sons won the others. Here is how that went:

And here is how the convention delegate vote went by state:

Most of the delegates were selected in state conventions/caucuses, which were more the norm up until then. And not all the primaries decided the delegates for those states. There were no superdelegates as such, that didn’t get added until 1980, so another error by Kim. McCarthy did have the most primary votes, but that was less than three million as you can see, which was a small percentage of the total registered Democrats. The reality then was that one could win the nomination without running in the primaries, or perhaps only a few selected primaries.

And the protestors outside the convention hall weren't outraged because the party apparatchiks had sleight-of-hand substituted “Humphries” for McCarthy, it was because they were against the war and the Democratic Party was in power prosecuting it. If there are similar protests at next year’s convention it won't be because the party apparatchiks committed the same crime for Biden and against RFK Jr, who those anti-war protestors really want and should be the nominee.

That's the product of Kim’s embrace of Bernie previously and RFK Jr now, and forcing a paralleling scenario that doesn’t fit so well. She is trying so hard to equate McCarthy/RFK Sr with RFK Jr, and I think that's almost obscene. And all built around her evil conception of “them”, this troublesome enabling mechanism.

The reality in 1968 was that the majority of Dems weren’t anti-war, and Humphrey was reasonably popular, particularly with the Dem rank and file. He was always considered the likely nominee once he got into the race, and when RFK defeated McCarthy in California and South Dakota the day he was shot, that made him so briefly the main challenger to Humphrey but not the favorite. Had he not been killed it was rather likely that McCarthy would have dropped out, especially if he had also lost in the next primary to RFK in Illinois. So at the moment RFK headed into the pantry in the Ambassador Hotel McCarthy was basically dead meat as well, and not the so-popular frontrunner that Kim suggested.

Four years later, after four more years of the war, the Dem rank and file was almost certainly more anti-war, by then Nixon’s war, and here is what the 1972 primary process looked like:

McGovern was the major anti-war candidate and he ended up winning the nomination, which was determined in large part by significantly more primaries than in 1968, as you can see - they could no longer skip the primaries. But he only got a quarter of the vote, and that was (a close) second to Humphrey and he barely beat Nuke’em George Wallace in third in votes.

Btw, McCarthy ran again in 1972 as well, but you don't see him mentioned there because he did so poorly and dropped out early in the primary race. A fart in the wind.

McGovern went on to be absolutely crushed by Nixon in the election, who won the popular vote 60.7% to 37.5% and won 49 states. (Nixon barely beat Humphrey 43.4% to 42.7% in the popular vote in 1968, with 3rd-party Wallace getting 13.5%.) That ‘72 defeat was what eventually resulted in the creation of the superdelegates - basically too much democracy was damaging the party and its chances; they also needed the contribution of the battalion of sage “wise men” who supposedly knew who could actually win.

What Kim skips over completely in her idiotic prediction is how the delegates to next year’s convention would get selected if the party somehow “canceled the primary”. Somebody has to nominate a candidate and those somebodies are called delegates, and they have to get selected in some manner. If it’s not through a primary then it would almost certainly be by caucus and/or convention - but there’s no reason to radically change anything now, there's no contest.

If Newsom was to enter the race, it would most likely be because Biden had dropped out. If Biden stays in the race and no one of substance enters it, he would have enough delegates to guarantee a first-ballot nomination, with certainty. At that point he could decline the nomination and release his delegates, I suppose, which would then result in a floor fight over the nominee. That process wouldn’t help the Dems win in the fall, because running in the primaries builds candidate stature and voter familiarity and comfort; just crowning someone at the convention means starting from zero only a few months before the election.

The reality today is that there are certainly people out there who are doing the groundwork to pursue the nomination, if Biden drops out. Newsom is almost certainly one of them, but not likely the only one. For instance, I kind of doubt Kamala would just step aside; that's not what veeps generally do when number one is done.

If Biden is to drop out, the sooner the better for the party, because a quasi-legitimate process will look better to the electorate than some kind of smoke-filled room-based coronation of some untested lightweight, determined at the last minute up in the Dem pyramid by “THEM!”….