Growing up

I’m old enough to remember the 1960 Republican National Convention, when Senator Barry Goldwater’s supporters were angry and disappointed because the convention had chosen Vice President Richard Nixon to be the GOP standard bearer. Goldwater, in that raspy voice and plain-speaking manner, urged his supporters to get over it: “Grow up, Republicans!”

Eight years later, in 1968, the Democrats were fractured, apparently beyond repair. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet, and the Democratic National Convention was in the process of choosing Vice President Hubert Humphrey. (Most of the primary elections that year were won by either Kennedy or Senator Eugene McCarthy, whom I supported.)

I was outraged as I watched the convention on television. I was outraged at Chicago’s “finest” clubbing and tear-gassing Americans who were exercising their right of free speech in the streets of the Windy City. I was outraged at Vice President Humphrey, who had gone from the hero of the 1948 convention--the young mayor of Minneapolis pushed for and won adoption of a strong civil rights plank in the party platform that year--to the villain of the 1968 convention: In 20 years he had regressed from a progressive to a supporter of Lyndon Johnson’s unpopular war.

But, I remembered Barry Goldwater’s rebuke to his followers eight years earlier: I supported and voted for Hubert Humphrey in November 1968.

Now, it’s 2008, and many supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton are saying that they plan either to “sit this one out” or--God forbid--to vote for Senator John McCain. As I type these words, the 2008 Democratic National Convention is only beginning, but I’m confident that both Senator Clinton and her husband will be as forceful with her supporters as was Senator Goldwater with his in 1960.

Clinton supporters: Do you understand that, unlike 1968, the positions of Senator Obama and Senator Clinton on the major issues are virtually indistinguishable? If large numbers of you Clinton supporters don’t support the Obama-Biden ticket, and if the Democrats don’t win the White House, it won’t be you whom the historians write about. The historians will blame Senator Clinton (and her husband) for the loss. If you don’t support the Obama-Biden ticket, you’ll be tarnishing the legacy of the very person whom you claim to support.

Grow up, Democrats!