Did anybody see the PBS special on Hubert Hunphrey that was just on?

[Ken Burch]

(it was shown in Alaska last night).

That special pretty much proved it was ALL Lyndon Johnson's fault that Humphrey lost to Nixon in '68, thus beginning what we can now call the Second Republican Ascendancy.

Humphrey WANTED to pass a peace plank at the Chicago convention, but Johnson ordered Humphrey to make his delegates pass a hardline prowar plank that could have been written by Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater.

Humphrey WANTED to speak out against the war in the fall campaign, but Johnson threatened to block any major cash donations to Humphrey's campaign unless he robotically toed the line.

Finally, at the end of September, Humphrey broke with the war. But by then it was too late to matter.

Lyndon Johnson doomed the Great Society and doomed US to Nixon, Reagan and the Busherasty just to avoid letting his own party defy him on what he knew was an unwinnable war.

We should throw his bones in the Pedernales.

[patrice]

1. Nixon ALSO did his version of an "October Surprise" by dealing with the Viet Namese behind Johnson's

back, telling them he'd give them a better peace deal if they'd stall Johnson's long-standing peace initiatives until after the vote and, thus, making Democrats/Humphrey look in-effectual in re the war.

Thom Hartmann plays a taped phone conversation between Johnson and Evert Dirkson in which Johnson asks Dirkson to do something about Nixon and, in the course of the conversation, Dirkson says that what Nixon is doing is Treason.

Nixon, of course, didn't deliver for the Viet Namese when he won the election, so the war went on another (what?) 12 years.

[Ken Burch]

4. Well, of course Everett Dirksen wasn't going to stop Nixon

All Dirksen cared about was getting a Republican in the White House.

[patrice]

6. Oh, I'm sure he double-crossed Johnson, but it's a mark of how desparate Johnson must have been to

go to Dirkson in the first place.

[Ken Burch]

7. That's the other thing.

Johnson refused to go public with the proof that Nixon was doing that.

Johnson's only possible motivation was to make sure his party lost the White House as punishment for dumping him.

[patrice]

11. . . . dumping him for a Labor (!) candidate.

[Ken Burch]

12. Well, the dumping was in the primaries

Humphrey didn't run as a labor candidate, he ran as a status quo candidate and was ONLY nominated because the process was controlled by right-wing hacks from non-primary states who cared solely about making sure the war kept going rather than electing a Democrat to the White House.

If we'd nominated McCarthy or McGovern(or if Teddy had been willing to be drafted), Nixon wouldn't have had a chance.

[valerief]

2. He and his won the war. They won $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. nt

[patrice]

3. Johnson was doing a deal and he needed others to stay out of it, including his own party. nt

[Ken Burch]

5. Johnson KNEW that, if Humphrey was still fifteen points behind at the end of October

(which he was certain to be without his Salt Lake City speech)that no peace deal could possibly come in time for Humphrey to close the gap.

Johnson WANTED his party to lose.

[patrice]

8. k, so the point of the phone call was?

You don't open yourself up to demands from the opposition like that unless you NEEEED to, so . . . ?

[patrice]

9. I guess he wouldn't have had anything else they could have got out of him at that point anyway.

[Ken Burch]

10. Who knows?

It clearly couldn't have been to actually help Humphrey. All he had to do to guarantee a solid Humphrey win was to go public with Nixon's treason.

LBJ REFUSED to do that. What does that tell you?

Clearly, it proves he wanted the Democrats to lose the White House. That's also the only explanation for his insistence that Humphrey make his delegates spend the whole week in Chicago effectively saying "fuck you" to the millions of Democrats who had voted to end the war in the primaries.

[patrice]

13. Yeah, Dirkson would have wanted a little "help" with it, from Johnson, wouldn't he have.

Makes you wonder what the hell the leverage is that makes them always cover for each other, even for the bad guys. Unless it's no leverage at all, NOTHING, except the assumption that any and all of us are expendable for "the greater good" of their agendas.

Have you ever examined the logic of that assumption, "the greater good"? It's quite common and it's also just horse-shit. If something is based on counting, there's always something else that can be counted too, so which is "greater"? There has to be a line somewhere, so what they are trying to hide and what they refuse to debate is where and how the line is drawn.

I think we, the grassroots, should decide that the line is drawn at 1. That way all of us will have to stick together, when they try to pedal this crap on us.

[Ken Burch]

14. I'm with you on that.

n/t.

[Ken Burch]

15. A few "all the way with LBJ" types must be around...

that's the only thing that explains the "unrec's".