Fred2Blue

Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up;
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!

You got rats on the West Side;
Bed bugs Uptown.

What a mess this towns in tatters;
I’ve been shattered;
My brains been battered;
Splattered all over Manhattan.

At at the beginning of the 1980 campaign season, Sen. Ted Kennedy announced he would challenge incumbent President Jimmy Carter.  But the Kennedy ‘80 campaign got off to a rather wobbly start when - during an interview with CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd - Sen. Kennedy became flummoxed by one of Mudd’s simplest questions:  Senator, why do you want to be President? 

That Roger Mudd Moment knocked normally resilient Teddy Kennedy for a loop.  Yet despite the bad interview – and with each passing day that Americans abroad remained held hostage - Kennedy’s campaign gained momentum.  By the end of the primary season, Senator Kennedy had won primaries in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Massachusetts. 

I recall that the first day of the Convention included a live performance of Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, a simple, elegant, yet powerful piece of music written solely for brass instruments; it recalled a time of ascendancy for the Democratic Party when the nation had escaped financial clamity only to be thrust into world war.  So many years ago.

After collecting most of the uncommitteds, Ted Kennedy garnered close to 1,400 delegates, well-short of the number he needed to capture the nomination.  And to make matters worse a formidable obstacle remained; some of Carter’s supporters had drafted a rule that if adopted by the Convention would have bound delegates to vote on the first ballot for their pledged candidate. 

Kennedy remained hopeful that – as the mood of the nation had turned somber and as some Carter-committed delegates suffered buyer’s remorse - that a “no” vote was still possible.  After a nasty floor debate, which lasted for what seemed like an eternity, the motion failed and Kennedy quickly conceded the nomination to President Carter.  Game over.

Kennedy’s name would not be placed in nomination.  And as evidenced by the suddenly slouched shoulders of many delegates, the Convention mood went from somber to downright funereal.  Normally funny and brilliant Congressman Mo Udall - who 4 years earlier narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter – would rise to the podium that evening to deliver the Convention’s keynote address.  All I remember of that tepid, tentatively-delivered speech was Udall’s assessment of Democrats chances in November:  “It’s not going to be easy.”

(Thud.)

On the second night of the Convention – August 12th – Sen. Kennedy was scheduled to deliver his concession speech.  As was customary back in the day, press aides from the campaigns would pre-deliver  photocopies of draft speeches to any reporter wanting them . But with my sudden amazement of getting a seat with an unobstructed view of the podium and then discovering that I had the great good fortune of sitting next to Jane Pauley (then co-host of NBC’s Today Show) and her husband, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, I quickly forgot that I was holding Sen. Kennedy’s speech.   

I recall being so star-struck by the celebrities to my right that I barely scanned the text in my hands.

But then Sen. Kennedy reached the podium.   The speech he delivered that night, flawlessly I might add, is to this day considered one of the greatest in U.S. politcal history; a rowsing address, it ended with these words:

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

At the conclusion of the speech, I noticed that even hard-boiled “newspaper men” seated around me seemed moved.  Some in deed wept. 

President Carter would address the Convention on the final night, but the speech was flat, badly delivered, and poorly received.  Teddy Kennedy would not, as was customary, approach Carter on stage after his acceptance speech to offer the President congratulations.  Teddy Kennedy knew he had won the hearts of those gathered in the Garden, yet he seemed unreconciled and unable to do what was expected of a runner-up.  It was a bitter nomination battle.  And noticing Teddy avoid eye-contact with Jimmy made it all the more painful to watch.

I once read that the Dream Shall Never Die speech would be dubbed by some academics Requiem for Liberalism for it marked the end of Democratic Party hegemony that had – despite some Republican-led Houses and Senates in between – spanned nearly 50 years.   Reagan’s landslide election swept Jimmy Carter from office, and flipped majorities in both Houses of Congress to the Republicans.  The magnitude of the landslide was so big that voters in ordinarily safe Democratic districts - like the Connecticut 3rd - elected Republicans. 

Conservative writers – I am not sure who in particular, but I’ll go out on a limb and guess that one of them was the late William Buckley – would celebrate the Reagan Revolution and pillory Democrats.  Ted Kennedy would for many years be fodder for so many conservative Republican direct mail pieces.  (The mere mention of Ted’s name would spike thousands in political contributions, so we were told.)

Denver: August 25-28, 2008

By most accounts, even among the punditocracy that is mainstream media, the Convention in Denver was an unqualified success.  And our Fred2Blue Land delegates agree, saying that there was hardly any disharmony.

Mark Udall, the late Mo Udall’s son who is now running for the U.S. Senate from Colorado rose to the podium to deliver an upbeat and well-received address.  Unlike his poor unfortunate pop 28 years prior, the younger Udall was cheered on by some 80,000 in Invesco Field .  Udall has an excellent shot of winning a Democratic pickup seat in the U.S. Senate.

Unlike what happened to Ted Kennedy in 1980, the name of Hillary Rodham Clinton would be entered into nomination in 2008, and rightly so.  Hillary gave perhaps the greatest speech of the Convention, and during Roll Call it was she who motioned to suspend and declare Barack Obama the Democratic Party nominee.  Hillary showed grace, class, and true leadership.

And Ted Kennedy, who now suffers terribly from brain cancer and the radiation and chemotherapy prescribed to treat it, remains steadfast; Kennedy is certain he will join his fellow Senators on January 21, 2009 to support President Barack Obama.  The Senator gave a rousing, stem-winder of a speech before the Denver gathering.  Perhaps better than the one he delivered in New York exactly 28 years before.  Perhaps the best, the-most-memorable, of his 46-year Senate tenure.  It concluded:

And with that flourish, Sen. Ted Kennedy – a man who might have felt that the presidency in 1980 was his by birthright, but that it had been stolen from his grasp; a man who it is said at that Convention gave one of the greatest political speeches in American history, a so-called Requiem for Liberalism; a man who would discover his true calling not in quest of the Presidency but in the years following 1980 as the Lion of the U.S. Senate - would rise to the podium on an August night 28 years later to pass the torch to (the leader) of a new generation, Barack Obama. 

Those that traveled to Denver as delegates, alternates, or special guests, experienced the most-unconventional of Democratic National Conventions. And they left Denver believing that the future looks bright. And that the best days are yet to come.