I can feel the end of this primary season. I can feel the breakthrough in the dam that has held up progressivism for 40 solid years. You wanna know what we’ve got coming for John McCain? Here’s what.
That’s RFK campaigning in California. He’s got Deacon Jones and Rosie Greer in his ride. How cool is that? But we all know that even all that protection couldn’t keep him safe. They were facing what Richard Nixon called very terrible forces:
The right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler, who had also been a ferocious critic of F.D.R. and the New Deal, welcomed the possibility that, as he put it, “some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his [Kennedy’s] spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies,” and J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy Clyde Tolson remarked offhandedly, “I hope that someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.”
Hopefully, our country doesn’t have the same violent streak it clearly suffered from in the 1960’s. We shall see. When the Deputy Director of the FBI openly hopes for the assassination of a Democratic candidate for office, a mere five years after his brother was gunned down, you know you’ve got some serious problems with political violence in the country. I am not detecting that level of hate this time around. I’m thinking that, this time, we’re gonna make it to the promised land.