Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics

by Lawrence O'Donnell

Now a Kennedy would be attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The New Left had cast that convention as a Festival of Death, presided over by chief pig Lyndon Johnson for his ongoing murderous war machine in Vietnam. Bobby Kennedy, running against the war, would cast a new glow of life and hope and youth over politics as usual in Chicago. Gene McCarthy was one thing. But Bobby was something else. Hayden scorned McCarthy as a weak reformer, a shill for the system, while the Yippies expressed a condescending affection for Gene. Rooting for McCarthy, Abbie Hoffman said, was like rooting for the New York Mets. McCarthy couldn’t win, and once he lost, the Clean for Gene kids were sure to go radical: that was the way everyone planning demonstrations at the convention saw it. Then came Bobby.