Eugene McCarthy, Rest In Peace

Senator Eugene McCarthy died today. The AP has the story:

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.

McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.

Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.

Of course, the 1968 presidential campaign may have seen the height of Oregon's prominence in presidential politics. That year, Robert Kennedy was winning primary after primary - but lost to McCarthy in Oregon, in a dramatic upset.

On May 28 McCarthy won in Oregon, 46 percent to 36 percent. Kennedy had refused to debate McCarthy in Oregon, but the reasons for Kennedy's defeat—the first ever for a Kennedy—went deeper than that; the debate, in fact, might have helped him.

McCarthy had had a strong organization in Oregon for months, while Kennedy's campaign, a last‑minute affair, of course, was ineptly managed—or so Kennedy people felt in retrospect. Also, Kennedy, a fearsome campaigner, was exhausted.

And finally, McCarthy, at last, had developed a fighting speech that he gave in both California and Oregon just before the Oregon primary. In it he attacked Kennedy and the entire Dulles cold‑war rationale that RFK continued, said McCarthy, when in his announcement for the presidency he spoke of America's assuming "the moral leadership of the planet." In other words, according to McCarthy, Kennedy still did not understand the reasons for the tragedy of America's involvement in Vietnam.

Kennedy partisans have never forgiven McCarthy for many things, that speech among them. Kennedy himself was more pragmatic. The morning after the election he sent a congratulatory telegram to McCarthy and moved on to California.

If you were here then, tell us your story of the 1968 Oregon primary. It is history worth remembering. And Senator McCarthy's long and meaningful life is one worth celebrating.

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    My first foray into Presidential politics was coming to Portland from my home in Olympia (a caucus state) at age 9 with my mom to go door-to-door for Gene McCarthy in the Oregon primary. My mom ended up getting elected as a McCarthy delegate to the Chicago convention and was tear gassed in the streets by Dick Daley's thugs. I didn't know a lot other than McCarthy wanted to end the war.

    It was McCarthy that had the guts to challenge President Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, leading to LBJ's withdrawl and Bobby Kennedy's entry into the race.

  • LT (unverified)
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    As a college student (Chico State in California) I was a McCarthy supporter--my first presidential candidate. A carload of us went to Chico airport to see McCarthy's first appearance after winning in Oregon.

    McCarthy, the independent thinker, encouraged his supporters to think for themselves. He had great wit. He satirized the "establishment". He will be missed.

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    Jill St. John's fur coat was draped over my arm while she gave speeches to the men in the saw mills in Grants Pass. Heck, they even stopped the Greenchain while she spoke. Driving her from one speech to the next, listening to her passion for peace and admiration for McCarthy, we campaigned throughout the Rogue Valley. Better still are the memories of east coasters jammed into our apartment, sleeping on every square foot of floor surface. We met our first Jewish person that weekend. We went door to door, we handed out leaflets, we called KAJO, the only radio station besides the Christian station and we wrote letters to the editor of the Grants Pass Courier. We weren't controlled by the state Democratic Party back then and we were more organized. We could admire and vote for Mark Hatfield and Tom McCall without feeling like a traitor to the party. Two months later my husband was shipped to DaNang.

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    I was "Clean for Gene.", running King's Park NY's McCarthy for President "headquarters" out of my bedroom...a junior in High School. Reading the NY Times obit this morning, I remembered how I was one of those "embittered" by Robert Kennedy's entering the race. Just as my Dad, an Adlai Stevenson democrat, hated John Kennedy's cold war posturing...which McCarthy had opposed. (Though years later, bizarrely, would support Reagan's "Star Wars" insanity.)

    No, I wasn't in Oregon in 1968, but would move there in 1972, as the place that supported McCarthy. How could I not move from NYC to a place out west named Eugene?

  • Steve DeShazer (unverified)
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    I was thirteen when Robert Kennedy visited my little Oregon town and spoke on the courthouse steps in May 1968. A bunch of us kids carried RFK signs and my parents were mortified, as they were McCarthy supporters.

    Just a few days later, he was gone. I'll always remember my mom waking me up and telling me.

    I handed out a lot of Wayne Morse buttons and stickers that summer. Then, along came Nixon. And Packwood. And bad times.

  • activist kaza (unverified)
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    He was the iconclastic poet/Senator from Minnesota, trying heroically to end a tragic war. I was an eight-year old kid (son of a very active D mother), selling bumper stickers and buttons from my front lawn. To those who think I was insane to challenge a sitting Congresswoman two years ago (and are still mad at me for it), you can partially blame Eugene J. McCarthy. If you read McCarthy's speech challenging RFK's thinking (referenced in this post), maybe you'll understand why I challenged Hooley over Iraq. And maybe (eventually) we'll end this war too...

  • rick metsger (unverified)
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    Eugene McCarthy was a heor of mine as a high school junior when I and a couple of my classmates volunteered for his portland office during the may primary. My most vidid memory was being at the Benson hotel hoping to get a chance to see him personally the night of the election. My classmate(and now business partner) Pat Donaldson and I were standing by the elevator when it opened and there was McCarthy. I fumbled a goly gee whiz "hello" and then scrambled for a campaign newspaper flyer of McCarthy I had been carrying around in my pocket. I asked him for an autograph which he politely obliged. I still have that flyer, boldly signed in blue ink. McCarthy had an enormous impact on politics because of his challenge of Johnson. Had it not been for the tragedy in Los Angeles a week later, McCarthy likely would be remembered today as the man who helped make Robert Kennedy President.

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    Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thomson Gun and bought it--Warren Zevon

    Wow. In '67 my dad returned from a San Francisco business trip a changed man. Severely rattled by the Viet Nam future that he saw looming for his eldest son (me) and the incomprehensible anarchy of The Summer of Love, he moved his entire family to Paraguay by the end of '68.

    In some ways he was precient. Boomers on the liberal side have had a sucicidal tendency ever since. McCarthy, Nader, Ramsey Clark, Edward Abbey, Maxine Waters, and Roland the Headless Thomson Gunner.

    We've been trying to win back the blue collar voters that we lost in the face of those hubristic visions for the past 35 years........

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    We've been trying to win back the blue collar voters that we lost in the face of those hubristic visions for the past 35 years........

    Bull. I skipped out on Woodstock because I had a chance to work overtime at Verly Plastics that weird summer of '69. Later worked a deburrer in a steel mill. Post Office. Pulled rubber parts off the Desma machines at the rubber plant where OPB now sits off Macadam.

    Workers mostly think "we" don't support them because..."we" don't. And it's not the hubris of sixties activists that offends, but the oh-so-boring sellout politics of middle-of-the-roaders, who don't know what it means to work a graveyard shift, or hock a watch to buy a pound of ground beef. Or suffer under a sell-out union contract, or see your kids sent off to die in a bs war by "liberal" democrats voting in favor of it.

  • LT (unverified)
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    Boomers on the liberal side have had a sucicidal tendency ever since. Thank you Pat for showing why I don't trust people who use the word "liberal".

    In ways I don't remember in detail any more (like remembering the melody but not the words), Mort Sahl used to skewer "liberals" as the people who would go to fundraising dinners in big hotels and treat the wait staff as if they were not real people.

    The carload of people who I went to the Chico airport with to see McCarthy in 1968 were not of that variety. They were fairly ordinary college students.

    Please don't confuse the McCarthy of 1968 with Ramsey Clark and Ralph Nader. Some of the people who got involved in 1968 went on to become the poltical activists of their generation, incl. being pct. people, campaign volunteers, paid staffers, later national convention delegates, and in some cases volunteers for Clinton because the "refighting of Vietnam" which GHWBush and Quayle did in 1992 brought back memories of 1968.

    Whatever you may think of Maxine Waters (and why mention her but not Ron Dellums?), she represents a constituency which elected her to Congress. You may not like her, but some people in her California district do or she wouldn't have been elected to Congress.

    Pat, if you think "the blue collar voters" all think alike, I suggest you study the politics of Macomb County, MI. Those were the most geographically identifiable of the famous Reagan Democrats. As I recall, they voted for Clinton.

    When I was a member of the Dem. State Central Comm. here in Oregon, I spent a lot of time with down to earth union people. At one time, the state chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon was someone from the United Steelworkers.

    I didn't go to Woodstock either. In 1968 my family moved from California to Oregon, and I went to a college week retreat for kids of my denomination at a summer camp. In 1969 I worked at a cannery to earn money to attend a national church convention.

    I find stereotyping to be repulsive whoever does it. Let me give you an example of why it is a political mistake. A friend of mine lived near a winery and often was a server for some of their social events (wedding receptions, political fundraisers,etc.). She also worked as a receptionist. Her family owned a business and belonged to Chamber of Commerce. She once invited me to a Chamber event in the State Capitol one evening early in whichever legislative session that was (1990s sometime). She said that regardless of what issues a campaign talked about, if she was a server at a fundraiser for the campaign her experience as a server determined her vote.

    If the candidate came over and talked to her as a potential voter, they had a chance of earning her vote. If, however, the candidate treated her like "the help", all bets were off. She told her friends how various candidates treated her when she was a server. The campaign people probably didn't realize that the person serving the wine wasn't just a wine server but was also involved in Chamber of Commerce and thus had lots of friends.

    I was never a fan of Ralph Nader (except for his efforts to get unsafe cars off the road). I have no idea who "Roland the Headless Thomson Gunner" is. But it is possible that in the time I have spent as a political volunteer and working in retail (not exactly "blue collar" but hard working people none the less often ignored by political campaigns)I have learned more about the political opinions of ordinary working folk than people who complain like Pat does--even if I am proud to this day to have been a McCarthy supporter in 1968. Because of my work in retail I have not been as surprised at some of the election results because of conversations I heard in the break room while eating lunch, etc. One of my high school friends was a Vietnam casualty that year 1968. Pat, are you saying I should have supported someone else for president in 1968? Who?

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    Gene McCarthy was my Mom's first political hero, and the first campaign she worked on. I remember the "Clean for Gene" program, where various of my parents' friends promised to put down the cheeb while canvassing.

    Gene was a lot like Paul Wellstone, another great Minnesota champion of the people. Taking a stand because it was right, not because it was popular.

    Me, I think it sucks that Gene McCarthy had to up and die while I'm still trying to process the loss of Richard Pryor. If humanists had saints, they'd both be canonized.

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    Frank,

    With all respect due to your having brushed shoulders with the lumpenproletariat between college courses, I've spent my entire life in the trenches and continue to believe that my anecdotal evidence trumps yours on this particular issue.

    It is, has been, and will be, about whether the "progressive leadership" can be as successful as the Right Wing Machine Boys at concealing their contempt for the unenlightened.

    The Boys at the Shop aren't stupid, just willfully ignorant, and they can smell a patronizing attitude pretty readily unless it comes wrapped in machismo or patriotism.

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