Miami and the Siege of Chicago - Nelson Rockefeller

Mailer on Nelson Rockefeller, on the eve of the 1968 Republican Convention:

"Still, Rockefeller was trying. He had been mounting a massive offensive for weeks. In speeches which came most often as prepared announcements for television and in full-page advertisements in newspapers all over the country, he had been saturating America with Rockefeller philosophy... He was like a general who had mounted the most massive offensive of a massive war but had neglected to observe that the enemy was not on his route, and the line of march led into a swamp."

I could not help but be reminded of Hillary Clinton when reading this passage from Mailer. Willing to fight to the very end for the nomination, even after all had been lost. The only difference being, Hillary sank more money into her campaign while she still had a shot of taking home the nomination and then dropped out before the convention when she was mathematically eliminated in the delegate count, while Rockefeller kept the fight going right up to the convention, even though the numbers were heavily against him and he had entered the race too late to really make up ground on Nixon.

And yet, we always hear the comparison to 1968 in Chicago to the Democrats this year, when I feel this situation was much more comparable, with the exception that the fight was longer and took to the convention floor. Chicago 1968 was more about ideals and the platform than what candidate was being picked; this GOP convention was about the candidate, rather than the ideals. Same situation in 2008 in Denver. The Democrats were not riled up along pro- vs. anti-Iraq lines, like the 1968 Democrats were on Vietnam. It was all about the candidates, just like 1968 in Miami when Nixon and Rockefeller were the choices.

The Republicans still managed to win the presidency that year despite the fighting, so we will see how things shake out for the Democratic Party this year.