Saturday, February 22, 2020

Right-wing support for left-wing candidates


Reports that Putin’s Russia has been attempting to load the electoral dice in favor of Bernie Sanders,  likely startled adherents of monolinear manicheanism, but that sort of thing is a time-tested gambit.  There is a notable parallel from the Presidential campaign of 1972.  A historian writes:

What all the 1972 dirty tricks that had become known as “Watergate” were intended to accomplish:  sabotaging all the other Democratic candidates  in order to leave Geroge McGovern, the field’s weakest link, as the last man standing.
-- Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge (2014), p. 170.

Additionally, Nixonian operatives went about “drumming up fake enthusiasm for the black female candidate Shirley Chisholm" (id., p. 171)

The strategy worked.   McGovern received the nomination, then a shellacking in the general election, losing in 49 states.


~


Hunter Thompson, describing the Democratic convention in his entertaining Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72,  via interviews with the pols and pros of the delegate floor, describes considerably more byzantine maneuvers -- feints, pawn sacrifices, “shaving”, sitting-out a round, taking a dive, lowballing your vote-totals till the propitious time -- telos and kairos being the watchwords.




No comments:

Post a Comment