EARNS 51% OF POPULAR VOTE
ANTIWAR CANDIDATES MAKE STRIDES ACROSS NATION
***The New York Times***

November 6, 1968

Democratic presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy, urbane Senator from New York, sailed to the presidency yesterday. Allying himself in defense of the urban poor, and positioning himself as a strong, if reasoned, critic of the Vietnamese intervention, he won majorities in California, Illinois, and Ohio while fortifying support in the Democratic strongholds of the Northeast. The 209 electoral votes of Richard Nixon, Republican nominee, reflect constituencies in the West and mid-latitude South. Meanwhile, George Wallace of the American Independent Party, on a pro-segregation, pro-white ticket, carried the Deep South.

Exit polls indicated extraordinary turnout among college students in support of Kennedy, which may have helped counter Nixon's "law and order" coalition of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant men over 40.

______________________________________________

What if?

The bullet missed wide right, grazed his brow, floated high, or wasn't fired at all. RFK's trajectory following his victory at the California primary remains one of the least ambiguous potential outcomes of 1968. We mourn his spontaneous eloquence and unfaltering optimism. His death represents the singular event in modern times at which America lost its innocence. It is an innocence infused with the perpetual dream of social justice and more so the utopianism that rendered everything and anything possible. Such innocence we still struggle to reclaim and at best we can only approximate.

A pervasive sense of doom has eclipsed progress; gloom is now a generational legacy, manifested in debt for wars our forebearers waged with wanton and imperialistic, even messianic hubris, manifested in a healthcare system crippled by the fat of HMO payoffs and the senseless deaths of thousands without health insurance. We do not inherit the just world RFK envisioned. Instead, a degnerate landscape awaits our rape and plunder.

But with sober expressions we march on, we dream on. RFK's ghost whispers from beneath the Los Angeles earth upon which America spilled his blood, and RFK says to us, quoting Aeschylus:

"He or she who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

Believe it. We shall find inspiration in our most impossible fantasies such as this one--indeed, from our idealism comes all the inspiration we have ever had. Let us discover beauty in our broken world, and let us carve our utopia according to the textures of RFK's heart and mind.

Peace.

P.S.: Feel free to post favorite RFK quotes and discussion points. (read less)

EARNS 51% OF POPULAR VOTE
ANTIWAR CANDIDATES MAKE STRIDES ACROSS NATION
***The New York Times***

November 6, 1968

Democratic presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy, urbane Senator from New York, sailed to the presidency yesterday. Allying himself in defense of the urban poor, and positioning himself as a strong, if reasoned, critic of the Vietnamese intervention, he won majorities in California, Illinois, and Ohio while fortifying support in the Democratic strongholds of the Northeast. The... (read more)