Friday, August 09, 2024

What comes around ...

The New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie offers the observation [gift article] that, by nominating a couple of unattractive weirdos, the Republicans seem to be ceding to Democrats the terrain of the "normal" in US politics.

It's a delicious column, reaching into recent political history as Bouie often does. He points out.

... they’ve given Democrats an opportunity to do what Nixon did: to make their party the party of the silent majority and to define Republicans as one of the worst things a party can be in modern American politics.

Weird.

However I can't let pass what Bouie also reminds me of: GOPer Richard Nixon prosecuted his case that Democrat George McGovern was outside the bounds of normal Americaness by representing the party of “acid, amnesty and abortion,”

Nixon's charge hasn't aged very well.

• Today the Dems are the party of legalizing weed -- an overwhelmingly popular position.

• "Amnesty" referred to re-incorporation of Vietnam war resisters in the political mainstream. Though there's still some residual heat among some old people, the national consensus has long hardened that the US campaign against Vietnam was, at most charitably, a murderous mistake and that the draftee army which fought it had to be completely reconstituted in the 1970s.

• As for abortion, Dems are now firmly the party of "mind you own damn business!" when it comes to women's reproductive choices.

Times have changed and look who is weird now ...

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