The reason I don't get all worked up about Democratic primaries any more

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=420401&mesg_id=420401

I worked for the campaign any way I could. The candidate appeared to be everything anyone could ask for. He was destined to become president. Then he was murdered. I was 13 years old. Edit: I posted this in the General Discussion: 2004 Primary yesterday just as the exit poll results started coming in so it didn't have much of a chance. I thought it would be OK to repost it here? If it isn't please lock or ignore. Thanks

Don

http://www.robertfkennedy.net/thedaytheunitedstatesdied.htm

Thursday June 6, 1968


The Day The United States Died


by Mark R. Elsis

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it."
Robert F. Kennedy


Right after delivering a rousing speech to an overflowing ballroom of exuberant campaign supporters thanking them for helping him win the big prize of the California Democratic primary for President, the junior Senator from New York State, Robert Francis Kennedy was shot at by an assassin four times within a couple of inches. He was wounded by three of the bullets with the fourth bullet going through his jacket. The exact time was 12:15am Wednesday morning June 5, 1968. The location was the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. I was only a 10 year old boy back then, but I somehow knew the day Bobby Kennedy died, the next day, Thursday June 6, 1968, was the day the United States died.

If this assassination of Bobby Kennedy didn't happen, he would have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968. He then would have faced the Republican presidential nominee, Richard Milhouse Nixon, in the November election. Bobby most likely would have won and been the next President of the United States. Since Bobby was opposed to the Viet Nam War ( police action ), this would have put an end to it in 1969 instead of 1975.

This death by assassination of Bobby Kennedy occurred only 63 days after the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and also less then 5 years after his older brother, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas. snip

Six people were shot in the kitchen pantry that night. Lying on the floor, shot three times, Bobby’s last audible words were "Is everybody okay?"

more

[trotsky]

1. I wasn't born yet...

but thinking about how the world would be different had RFK won the presidency, it makes me want to cry. His last words typify the difference between liberals and conservatives.

[Maeve]

2. I remeber that very vividly

I cut a picture of Bobby out of the newspaper and carried it in my wallet for years. I was just old enough to care about politics that year and I thought my country was falling apart around me.

It was.