In 1988, I really, really, really wanted the Democrats to win the presidential election. The last two presidential elections before that had been bitter fruit. Three losses in a row, even a close one, would be too much to bear. The Democrats had to win.
I say Democrats here instead of Michael Dukakis, because mostly I didn't care who the Democratic nominee was. As a political junkie, I found the horse race fascinating, of course, but at the start of the primaries that spring the only criterion I had for the Democratic nominee was that he (or she) be able to defeat the Republican (who turned out to be George Bush).
Lately very Democrat I've spoken about the upcoming presidential election, or whom I've read on social media or seen in a video clip, has embraced this attitude, even the Bernie Sanders supporters. I completely understand where they are coming from.
In the 2016 election, smart Democrats on social media realized this early, like my old friend David in Oakland, who has extended to me the most gracious hospitality over the years in the Bay Area. In the spring, when Bernie Sanders was making his surge against Hillary, David was highly active on Facebook haranguing the Bernie-or-Bust people against launching divisive attacks against Hillary. Vote for Bernie in the primary if you want, but keep any criticism of Hillary to yourself. It was just helping the other side. Grumble if you will, but be chill and vote for her in November. You know you will anyway. No matter what centrist triangulations she has to make during the campaign to win the battleground states, you'll be more than happy with what you get once she's in power. Whatever you want beyond that can be achieved in the next round. Just get with her. It's exactly what I would have told people, and what I would tell people today, if I were still a Democrat believer.
Most Republicans have long known that unless they choose the right guy, even if he gets elected, he'll fold like a house of cards in the storm of the constant attacks on him. He'll be a slave to media approval of him, bending his knee to the legitimacy of progressive rhetoric to propitiate them even while insisting it has to be implemented in a "conservative way". The rest of the party, even when in the majority, will dive for cover and settle for meager consolations like tax cuts and being rear guard "obstructionists," even as they eventually concede to the progressive will over time.
To Democrats, you just need to get your team in power. Everything else you want can follow fall into place that, if you play your cards right. Biden could literally be in a coma, or running into walls like a zombie, and it wouldn't matter, so long as they think he will win. In fact, it would be better if he were in a coma, perhaps an ideal situation, as then his administration would be completely transparent to the will of the Party and its supporters. No one really wants or needs Biden to be president per se. Behind the scenes, the real president could be someone they actually like and trust.
Going into the 1988 election, we were sure that the conditions were right for a big Democratic year.. After eight years of Reagan, and the blowout of '84, the country would want a change. The Democrats had won back the Senate decisively in the recent midterms. Reagan was taking a pounding from Iran Contra and looked old. Nobody had much love for George Bush or the other Republicans running. The pendulum would swing our way, if we would just let it.
It hadn't helped that Gary Hart, the promised champion who looked to be a winner coming out of '84, had taken himself out of politics entirely by his pride and stupidity. But there were plenty of other fresh Democrats coming up through the ranks, untainted by humiliating defeat, who could project a robust image as a leader. By then, because of Reagan, every Democrat had accepted the axiom that victory in the presidential election required that your nominee looked vigorous on television.
Winning was just a matter of finding the strongest Democrat in the primaries, one we could all agree on, without damaging him too much by forming a circular firing squad, as Democrats were famous for doing. Reagan We knew that Lee Atwater's Republican attack machine would swing into gear once the general election started. No need to help it in advance.
Because of this assumption that the political winds favored us in '88 no matter who the nominee was, I didn't pay much attention to the primaries, as I might normally have done. I didn't have a television at the time and there was no Internet yet. I got most of my news from newspapers, which I usually read only when I found copies of the Oregonian lying around in the campus bistro.
Moreover, the Spring of 1988 was my last full year of college. It was one of those golden times of youth for me, with so much happening at once that I wanted to experience. Despite my political obsessions, I was distracted from the play-by-play of current events, busy living my life as a 23-year-old.
To be sure, I had been meh about Dukakis, and probably would have chosen someone else if it had been up to me, but he was infinitely more attractive than Mondale had been. He projected a scrappy vibe that we thought Americans would accept in a president. He could actually speak on television without making you cringe from the first words that came out of his mouth. The party would rally around him. I told myself that I was satisfied when he emerged from the pack, fresh and ready to take on Bush.
In other words, I was completely willing to ignore the warning signs about what was about to happen.
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