40 Years Makes No Difference

Forty years ago in the summer of 1968 the Democrats met in Chicago for their National Convention. It turned out to be the most disastrous modern day political convention, contributing to the election of Richard Nixon and the prolonging of the Vietnam war. That convention set the Democratic party on a course that it has never really recovered from.
Martin Luther King was murdered only a few months before the convention began, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June and I was staring at the military draft hoping the war would be over before 1970. Like a lot of other males my age I was not a natural born bomb thrower but I recognized the temptation and even the need for a shake up of our country that existed then just as same needed shake up exist today.
There has always been two wings to the Democratic party. The middle income, middle minded, socially more conservative, bread and butter Democratic party vs the better educated, higher income, socially liberal Democratic party. I find myself with one foot planted in each wing of the party but sometimes I intellectualize myself out of either wing because I think I know better. Intellectual or not, even a brain the size of a walnut should know its time to take the power away from the Republicans. They will do the same thing they always do if they remain in power. They will trick voters into thinking that they will do the best they can when really what they will do is enrich the deep pockets of corporate America by the sacrificing the common Joe.
This years Democratic Convention in Denver has a chance to restore the damage done forty years ago in Chicago. If the Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Whites, African Americans, and Latinos can come together with a platform of strong national defence, assertive foreign policy, economic growth and social justice at home, there won't be a need for the bomb throwing mentality.