Man, adaher can’t even resist slagging a non-existent Obama from an alternate time-line.
:rolleyes:
The only problem I see with his comment is possibly they word “they”. And I see nothing to indicate that it was used in an “us or them” context. It shows pretty good understanding of the root problem IMHO.
That’s how I remember it too.
You beat me to this one.
He wasn’t going to win the nomination any which way, so I don’t know that it ‘killed’ him.
But that aside, did it really make that much difference in how he did in subsequent primaries?
New York was actually one of his better performances. It probably hurt his efforts to be named Vice-Presidential candidate or influence the platform.
No Democrat was going to beat Reagan in 84, it was an election about the future of the party. Jackson didn’t get what he wanted in that sense, though the path of anti-Semitism that people to the left of the Democratic mainstream are now on was certainly emboldened by the fact that nobody outside of a few Jews seemed to care about the incident.
Ted Kennedy misses it pretty close, with the Roger Mudd interview that aired during the hourlong primetime special days before Kennedy entered the primaries.
“Why do you want to be President?”
<long pause; you start to wonder, but you give him the benefit of the doubt.>
“Well, I’m . . . um.”
<long pause; you wonder, wait, did he really never think this through?>
“Were I to, to make the, uh, the announcement and, uh, to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country. That it is. There’s more natural resources than any nation of the world…”
<this is where you decide maybe don’t let this guy run even an ice-cream parlor.>
(Google “kennedy” and “mudd”; page one is “The Day The Presidency Was Lost”.)
Bob Dole didn’t help his case in 1988 when he refused to sign the No New Taxes pledge. It came up in one NH debate (that I remember) Dole winced and fumbled around, finally saying ‘Give it to George, he’ll sign anything.’
I believe that his/her point was that these sorts of “your finished” moments are usually decided retroactively. Can anyone thing of a campaign where, right then & there (let’s say within a couple of weeks, max) it was obvious that this bozo was going down in flames?
I’d say Rick Perry came close, with being unable to name the 5 Federal agencies he had claimed should be shut down, followed by “Oops.” He was an immediate laughingstock.
Gary Hart “suspended” his campaign five days after the story about him and Donna Rice was published.
Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce and remarriage were quite a controversy in 1963. By 1964, some of the uproar had died down, until Rockefeller’s wife gave birth three days before the California primary. Rockefeller, who had been leading the race, lost to Barry Goldwater.
George Romney’s 1967 comment that he had been “brainwashed” about the Vietnam War caused his polling numbers to drop from 24% to 14% almost overnight, and he never recovered.
Not a Presidential candidate, but Thomas Eagleton was nominated as George McGovern’s Vice Presidential running mate on July 13, 1972. Within days there were reports that Eagleton had undergone elctroshock therapy, and Eagleton was pushed off the ticket by August 1.
I think it had a serious effect on Jackson’s political career. It separated him from his base. Jackson had been portraying himself as the political heir of Martin Luther King and the spokesman for black voters. Other candidates like Mondale and Hart were running against Jackson for the nomination but they also couldn’t afford to alienate him - at some point, they would want to make a deal with Jackson to get his endorsement.
Jackson’s Hymietown remark gave everyone an opening to cut Jackson off. Other black leaders distanced themselves from Jackson after he said it. That gave other Democrats the opportunity to oppose Jackson without having to worry about a backlash among black voters.
Hymietown didn’t really kill Jackson though. He came back strong in 1988 and even had his own night at the Democratic National Convention . In fact , you could see red Jesse signs along with the blue Dukakis/Bentsen signs the first 3 days of the convention. I think Jackson is the last candidate to have supporters allowed to waive his signs during the convention.
Three, sire!
I did not know about that. Although candidates were still truly chosen at the convention back then, that’s a great example. His serious contention for getting the nod went down in flames with the California primary.
Tru dat. In 1984, Mondale got 1,606 delegates, Hart got 1,164, and Jackson got 358. In 1988, Dukakis got 1,792, Jackson got 1,023, Gore got 374, Gephardt got 137, and Paul Simon got 161.
So whether or not it hurt how Jackson did the rest of the way in 1984, it didn’t hurt his political career.
It’ll be interesting to see if Jeb Bush’s comment about his brother bring his most important advisor will be the death nail for the Bush campaign. I’m sure all the other candidates are looking for ways to make him regret those words
I thought even Republicans had had enough of GW.
I’m pretty sure it was the fact that every damned one of his current advisors are people who worked for his brother pretty much sealed his fate. Especially when he was trying to claim that he was soooo different.
A bit of a sideline to the topic, but I’ve been hearing about the “anti-Semitism of the Democrats/Left” recently.
Who’s feeding you that meme?
How do you get “Democrats believe X” from “people to the left of Democrats believe X?”
As for leftists and their attitude towards Jews, I dunno, maybe read anything ever.