Remember Lyndon Johnson please while you are trashing the Democrats

[Mend]

learn from those of us in the 60's so outraged by his war in Vietnam...forgetting about his war on poverty, starting Medicare, Medicaid, all the civil rights bills...we young Democrats made sure he was thrown out of office. We got our anti-war liberal McGovern to run, we got our asses kicked, ended up with almost two terms of Richard Nixon, fascism, Watergate, tons of repukes in power, a worse war in Vietnam...and many of the good things stopped or gone. Be careful who you throw under the bus. If it is us, all that is left will be them. Be there, done that, and it really sucked.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. LBJ was exactly who I was thinking of.

He sent soldiers off to die in a war he knew we couldn't win, only because he thought it would be good for his reelection.

[Mend]

4. I think he really believed in the domino theory, as stupid as that sounds

now. A lot of those guys then were paranoid about communism. The point is we got a psychopathic paranoid nixon in his place and it was a million times worse. Johnson's social agenda was awesome.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Yeah, yeah.

We fought them over there so we didn't fight them over here.

[spooked]

22. Funny, Dominoes was LBJ's favorite game

And, Yes, there was never a better Social agenda...

[WI_DEM]

18. Wrong. The major decisions on Vietnam were made in '65 after he

was elected by a huge landslide. Yes, there was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in '64 but the big investments in troops didn't happen until '65.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

40. Yeah, and he was still hoping for reelection in 1968.

He was counting on the hawks to support him.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Good history reminder. Thanks!

Edit to add--he fucked it up on Vietnam, but at least he was tormented by it...unlike Chimpy the Boy-King.

[Sapere aude]

3. I can remember seeing that speech on TV, I had just gotten back from Vietnam a few months before.

I thought, you son of a bitch, leave us hanging and ducking out of the mess you created!

[Mend]

5. you are so right...he should have stopped it when he could have. eom

[Gregorian]

6. This Dkos post might be relevant.

And like I've been saying, all we can do is fight. It's a shame. A total shame. We could have such a fantastic country if it were not for the conservatives. I would not have said that too long ago without feeling guilty. But I just said it, and I mean it. We're at war. And I'm not talking about Iraq. We're at war with an agenda that values money more than human life. Fortunately, this entire universe operates from life. Not money. But in this little world they've made, we are fighting for our lives.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/24/174749/625

[pnwmom]

8. It seems that a lot of people around here are determined not to learn

from history.

Thanks for the timely reminder.

[EFerrari]

10. Particularly history that never happened. lol

[EFerrari]

9. Wtf? No one threw Johnson under a bus! He took himself out

of the race.

:wtf:

[Mend]

12. we never left him alone...endless demonstrations.

[EFerrari]

14. Viet Nam took him out. That and the Civil Rights Act.

Please.

[Mend]

23. Our objections to him took him out...if you don't believe me, try

wikipedia. He was destroyed by his own party and he was not replaced by a better man but by a monster.

[EFerrari]

28. Mend, no one threw Johnson under a bus. I was there, too.

Thanks for your activism.

[mmonk]

11. Remember I have an extended family member in Iraq

for a war based on lies.

[Mend]

13. we never forget and hope your family member stays well...we need

our party to stop this war, not to destroy our party. repukes are never going to end the war, never...just like nixon. We have to push on our party, not castrate it.

[mmonk]

20. Without someone pushing and fighting for change

experience has shown me change is slower to come.

[Mend]

25. true, but if you push the Dems too hard, we will lose, and then we have 0.

[mmonk]

27. I don't really understand.

[Mend]

36. back in the sixties, we young liberal hippies screamed, shouted, rioted, and

marched against Lyndon Johnson over the war. He pulled out of running for president and we pushed an anti-war candidate, Gene McCarthy, who lost to richard nixon in a landslide. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Johnson was a bad but nixon was horrendous. We need to push but not destroy our candidates or the other side will win...8 more years of republican president and this country is finished.

[H2O Man]

15. Better yet,

remember that LBJ recognized that the Vietnam war destroyed the dream of a Great Society.

[mmonk]

17. Yep.

[WI_DEM]

16. Johnson was a tragic figure if not for Vietnam he would have been one of the Greats

he certainly showed more social passion for the poor and the minorities than JFK ever did. He also inherited JFK's "Best and brightest" who all were agreement to go forward in Vietnam. He should have trusted his own instincts. Without Vietnam he accomplished more good than most presidents.

[DemoTex]

32. LBJ lied to Congress about Viet Nam to protect his other programs. Period.

Read Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. By H.R. McMaster. HarperCollins 1997.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. I remember LBJ all too well. An unindicted war criminal.

Who was responsible for the deaths of millions and insured that the Democratic Party would be consigned to the wilderness of Nixon and Reagan by stubbornly sticking to an immoral and unwinnable war.

[porphyrian]

21. What have they done that compares to the war on poverty, starting Medicare, Medicaid, ...

...all the civil rights bills? There is no comparison.

[Mend]

24. we haven't had any power for years...I think the Dems are trying to get back the

presidency and the congress and then do all that needs to be done. We have to win first. That is my whole point...we have to win elections with voters across the spectrum and if we call our own party weasels, we will lose and all is then lost.

[WI_DEM]

26. Not if we get another "triangulation" president like Bill Clinton

[porphyrian]

35. "...if we call our own party weasels, we will lose and all is then lost."

I don't know that I agree with that statement, for a number of reasons. First, we don't have to win elections with voters across the spectrum. Less than half of all possible voters actually vote. Though some right-wing Democrats won't admit it, it is just as easy, if not easier, to court non-voters to vote Democrat as it is to court republicants. Their preference exposes their personal biases, however. Second, we can't hurt ourselves by calling a spade a spade. What hurts with voters, and ask around if you don't believe me, is that everyone assumes they're all full of shit. If we lie about the obvious, or even fail to point out blatant weasel-y behavior in our camp when we're trying to take the high road, we all become as full of shit as everyone assumes politicians are. However, if actually show things like honesty, integrity and a no-bullshit way of trying to do the right thing even if it appears doomed to fail, we will impress both non-voters and people who usually vote republicant and maybe win for real.

[MadHound]

29. Yeah, I remember LBJ

Do you remember all of the people's lives he cost? I do.

Sure, he was great on foreign policy, but it all came at a very high bloody price, one that nobody should have paid.

[UTUSN]

30. Excellent o.p. K&R # ONE!!1 n/t

[David Zephyr]

31. "Trashing LBJ" did not result in Nixon's two terms. RFK's assassination did.

LBJ benefitted from JFK's assasination.
RMH benefitted from RFK's assassination.

Without the murder of those two men, neither would have ever been president.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Seabiscuit]

34. For someone who claims to be one "of us in the 60's" you sure have things mixed up.

NONE of us forgot "about his war on poverty, starting Medicare, Medicaid, all the civil rights bills." And "we young Democrats" did NOT "ma(k)e sure he was thrown out of office." We supported Eugene McCarthy, an antiwar candidate in 1968 until Bobby Kennedy threw his hat in the ring, and then we got behind Bobby, another antiwar candidate. Johnson, meanwhile, seeing the writing on the wall, made his famous speech that "I will not seek and I will not accept the nomination" for Democratic presidential candidate.

After Bobby was assassinated, we did NOT "get our anti-war liberal McGovern to run". The Democratic machine nominated Johnson's VP, Hubert Humphrey at the Chicago convention while we protested outside while being attacked, tear-gassed and clubbed by Mayor Daley's rioting police goons. McGovern didn't come along until 4 years later, 1972, in the middle of Nixon's term.

Johnson deserved to be thrown under a bus, but we didn't have to - he quit. What we didn't deserve was a Democratic machine throwing Hubert Humphrey at us, a man who despite a sterling record on civil rights, vocally supported Johnson's Vietnam War from the beginning.

And we don't deserve the current crop of Democratic sell-outs either, or we'll end up with more of the same right-wing crap in this country.

I was born in 1945. I find it hard to believe you were born before 1965.

[Mend]

37. my husband served in Long Binh Vietnam...I remember quite well those two

years. Sorry about confusing McGovern with McCarthy...old timer's disease.

[Seabiscuit]

39. OK, but I think you still have something backwards...

If you recall the 1968 election, "we", the young Democrats, backed first one, and then another anti-war candidate, and if the second one, Bobby Kennedy, had lived, he would have won the election in a landslide. Because Bobby entered the race after McCarthy won New Hampshire, and because those of us who had worked for McCarthy jumped on Bobby's bandwagon (as an Edwards supporter today, I'd jump on Al Gore's bandwagon if he threw his hat in the ring the way RFK did in 1968), McCarthy's campaign was too weakened to overcome the centrist/right-wing tide within the Democratic party at the Chicago convention which took place shortly after RFK was murdered, events which scrambled the brains of us young anti-war Democrats, temporarily leaving us in enough dissaray to allow Humphrey to win the nomination).

Instead, the DNC saddled us with a pro-war candidate in Hubert Humphrey, and ironically, Humphrey was up against the "anti-war" Republican of the day, Richard Nixon, who claimed to have a "secret plan to end the war". So Nixon, although it was nothing more than his usual mealy-mouthed deception, came across as the anti-war guy while the Dem candidate was the pro-war guy during the election. Nixon's "secret plan" turned out to be nothing more than his sham "Vietnamization" game, while continuing to escalate the war including the bombing of Hanoi and Cambodia.

In other words, we lost the 1968 election because the Democratic party did not have a strong anti-war candidate after RFK was killed, and as a result the cynical, dishonest Republican, Nixon, stole our anti-war thunder. I don't think there's a political historian in this country who would not agree that had RFK lived, he would have wiped the floor with Nixon and would have ended the Vietnam war in 1969.

So I think your premise is backwards, if you want to use 1968 as an historical model. It was actually the anti-war candidate, Nixon (even though we know his stance was a fraud), who won the election.

What did in McGovern 4 year later was not his anti-war stance. It was a combination of 3 things: (1) Columnist Jack Anderson exposed McGovern's running mate, Senator Tom Eagleton, as having voluntarily checked himself into a mental hospital for a month or so for "depression" ten years prior; (2) Then the right-wing voices in the press of the day hounded McGovern to drop Eagleton like a hot potatoe, and while McGovern continued to support Eagleton for over a month before finally replacing him on the ticket, the same press went after McGovern as "indecisive" and "weak", the "flip-flopper" words of the day; (3) While successfully doing everything possible to conceal the Watergate scandal before the election, Nixon stole all the headlines leading up to the election with his surprise visit to China, where he toasted Mao Tse Tung, and "opened the door to China", doing photo-ops walking along the Great Wall, and telling Mao "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", a thinly-veiled reference to the Soviet Union (where he probably also said the same thing in private to Brezhnev about Mao). He returned home to thunderous applause from the media, who ran article after article and broadcast programs after programs about what a great "statesman" Nixon was. Meanwhile, McGovern was the lone voice talking about Watergate, and he got little to no press (a small piece buried on page 10, etc.).

Anyway, that's about all I have to say - the subject matter kind of got me going... :)

[rucky]

38. I guess we can never run a liberal. ever.

thanks alot, McGovern.