Thanks for a great post. And for the summary of the 1996 primary. I take it that the California primary would have put either candidate over the top, so it really was a horse race; meaning the race up to then truly was neck and neck by the standards of the party rules. Did I understand it correctly?

Hey Des, I absolutely love the first part of your post. Left me wanting to hear more about your experiences from back then.

As to the second part, it still seems to me that the analogy is not a good one.

For the record though, at this point it makes little sense to me not to just finish out the primaries.

Question for you though Des, do you want her to take it all the way to the convention?

Des, I was being walked in a baby carriage when my Mom heard the news.

She told me about it often enough.... her distress, and her a Republican.

Go figger

Great post. Recommended.

This post supports the fact that Sen. Clinton was just bringing up RFK's death to remind us that primary fights have extended into June on occasions past. Isn't that something we ALL do from time to time? How many times have you said, "Taxes are due April 15th, and that was the day Lincoln died by an assassin's hand." Just the other day I was thinking, "It's time to see Dr. Weiss about upping my Thorazine, and, by the way, it was a Dr. Weiss who shot Sen. Huey Long." Or, "Gotta remember to oil that squeaky poultry defeatherer, and wasn't it someone named Squeaky who tried to shoot Ford in Lincoln's theater?"

Clinton won the nomination in 1992 by about 3000 to 600 delegates. Yes 3000 to 600.

Pitting, patting, trying not to step on the cracks
In Europa, where we saw no sharecropper shacks
Reciting our Mallarme
Those films with Tom Courtenay
And your hand in mine
One the sidewalks of Calais
Oh no, I shan't forget ...

1992 update:
3 of 4 defeated candidates won't endorse Clinton

Jerry Brown and his convention fight:
Mr. Van Dyk said that "what the committee decides will go a long way toward determining what we do, on endorsement and on a floor fight." He said that he and former Governor Brown had met in Santa Fe over the weekend and had discussed the possibility of a common challenge to the platform on July 14, when the convention is scheduled to vote on it, if the Clinton majority on the committee did not compromise.

"We have 600 delegates," Mr. Brown told reporters at the Santa Fe gathering. "I don't think they are going to New York to be extras in a 'B' political movie. They want to be participants in a live debate and process."
============================================
Brown's site:
Despite limited financial resources, Brown defeated Bill Clinton in Maine, Colorado, Vermont, Connecticut, Utah and Nevada during the 1992 Presidential primaries and was the only candidate other than Clinton to receive enough voter support to continue until the Democratic National Convention.

In June 1992 before California, Clinton's main strength had been the South, and he had had trouble winning outside of the South. (Shades of Jesse Jackson). He was behind both Bush and Perot in the polls. Even after California, there were enough opposition delegates to give him grief at the convention, and with 3 of the 4 Democratic candidates he defeated not endorsing him, there was no party unity and a good chance he would be crippled going into November.

Like Waldo in Repo Man, when people talk about "unity" among Democrats, I respond "fuck that". At least when they trot out the Unity Pony under mythical circumstances.

So here we have 1968, 1980 and 1992 as 3 strong examples when the primaries went on until June and there were issues into the convention.

Interesting item from 1988: "Jesse Jackson's campaign believed that since they had come in a respectable second, Jackson was entitled to the vice presidential spot. Dukakis refused, and gave the spot to Lloyd Bentsen."

Impressive argument, Im convinced.

Llola you could ignore history and pretend it means nothing or you could listen and maybe learn something. Your choice. But don't be surprised if no one takes you seriously when you spout silly stuff that has no grounding in the past the rest of us know or have learned.

Bee, have you visited quasar's home site, pleaseaccepttheseturdblossomsandexcusemystupidity.com?

Poor Des

Most of the following comes from this article:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/01/is_1992_the_model_1.html

In the 4th quarter of 1991 Bill Clinton was leading handily in the polls. Then Gennifer Flowers blew up in his face. Bill and Hillary appeared on 60 Minutes after the Super Bowl and effectively blunted the scandal.

Of the contests prior to Super Tuesday, Clinton lost 7 of 9, but no frontrunner emerged. Those 9 contests split five ways: Harkin, Kerrey, Tsongas, Brown, and Clinton all won at least one contest before March 10. There was no significant consolidation of the race because the early states kept disagreeing with one another.

But early on everybody knew Clinton was well placed to win. Not just because he was a superior stump speaker with almost supernatural political skills. Not just because he was a policy wonk without compare. Not just because he offered hope and change to a Democratic and American electorate left behind by the Republican revolution. Not just because of high poll numbers either.

It was because Super Tuesday loomed large over the nomination process and the South dominated Super Tuesday, which was the reason why it was created.

Super Tuesday was designed by southern Democrats after Mondale's nomination in 1984. They wanted to use their weight to nominate a more moderate candidate who would better reflect their interests. The plan backfired in 1988, when Al Gore and Jesse Jackson effectively neutralized one another in the South, and Michael Dukakis won the nomination.

But the plan succeeded in 1992 - as Bill Clinton lost seven of the first nine contests, but still won the nomination by taking six southern states on Super Tuesday : Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas. Tsongas won Rhode Island and Massachusetts that day.

The race essentially ended on March 17 when Bill took Illinois. Jerry Brown was considered a serious candidate in 1976 but not 1992 even though he won CT the week after IL. He had little money because of his pledge to take only $100 donations or less. He prided himself on running what was considered "a Nader type" campaign at the time, emulated in recent elections by Kucinich and Gravel. It took a candidate with Bill Clinton's oratory, political and policy skills to mesh that small dollar donor base with a huge grassroots army and turnout, better internet tools and yes a large dollar donor base too to make it work: Barack Obama.

There were a lot of rumors back in late spring of 1992 in the media about new bimbo eruptions that might derail Clinton. He was in a tough three way race with Perot and Bush. I liked Bill Clinton a lot and wrote my local paper to tell them to either get it out in the open and publish any proof they had so we could nominate someone else or stop the rumormongering.

The interesting thing to me about the 1968 race is that Bobby's base seemed to be blacks, Catholics, Hispanics and other minorities in the cities. With the exception of blacks, who, of course, have rallied to Obama during the primary, that's pretty much Clinton's base.

The intellectuals, upper income liberals and anti-war people were supporting McCarthy who refused to quit even after Bobby narrowly won California.

The "realignment" of the Dem Party has simply been the black vote following (or some might argue being lured by) Obama over to the McCarthy side of the Party to join the intellectuals, anti-war and upper income dems.

Labor seems split, but we probably can count on it in the Fall.

The big question is what will the lower income white (or, if you prefer, the Appalachian) vote that went to Wallace do in the Fall.

It's pretty clear it might have gone to Clinton had she been the nominee, considering how unpopular Bush is, but it probably will go to McCain if we nominate Obama.

Des, your information about Brown's 1992 gaffe made me wonder what David Axelrod was up to in '92. I found an interesting profile in the NYT Magazine from April '07 called Obama's Narrator. Here's a quote that aligns with Billy's one-of-the-dirtiest-campaigns-in-history comment about Axelrod above:

Axelrod is known for operating in this gray area, part idealist, part hired muscle. It is difficult to discuss Axelrod in certain circles in Chicago without the matter of the Blair Hull divorce papers coming up. As the 2004 Senate primary neared, it was clear that it was a contest between two people: the millionaire liberal, Hull, who was leading in the polls, and Obama, who had built an impressive grass-roots campaign. About a month before the vote, The Chicago Tribune revealed, near the bottom of a long profile of Hull, that during a divorce proceeding, Hull’s second wife filed for an order of protection. In the following few days, the matter erupted into a full-fledged scandal that ended up destroying the Hull campaign and handing Obama an easy primary victory. The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had “worked aggressively behind the scenes” to push the story. But there are those in Chicago who believe that Axelrod had an even more significant role — that he leaked the initial story. They note that before signing on with Obama, Axelrod interviewed with Hull. They also point out that Obama’s TV ad campaign started at almost the same time.

Billy may be interested in this paragraph:

Axelrod wasn’t the most attentive student; he took so many incompletes in college that he ended up having to finish a quarter of his credits in his last semester. When he was 19, a junior, his father, divorced and living in a Manhattan studio, killed himself, and Axelrod was notified as next of kin. The consultant still has tacked to his wall a fierce self-portrait his father drew in his 20s. Axelrod threw himself into journalism, working after classes at a tiny paper in Hyde Park and covering, among other things, Chicago’s roaring, pitted racial politics; he knew who all the aldermen in the city were by the time he graduated. The Chicago Tribune took him on right out of school, sent him to the night desk for a couple of years of hardening and then turned him loose on City Hall. It was 1979, Axelrod was 23 and the whole politics of the city were caught up in the race thing. Axelrod was inclined toward the reformers, even after his great hope, a white mayor named Jane Byrne, turned out to be a hack and a dud. “I should have known,” he says. In 1984, Axelrod decided to get into politics himself. He signed on with Simon’s senatorial campaign as communications director, became campaign manager and, after Simon won, opened his own shop.

I know someone who is familiar with the Jane Byrne days in Chicago. Per Wiki, she endorsed Ted Kennedy in 1980 instead of Jimmy Carter.