13 thoughts on “California parole panel votes in favor of release from prison for Sirhan Sirhan”
Lastly, not that this really provides evidence that Robert Kennedy wouldn’t have won the Democratic nomination in 1968, but just for its own interesting historical sake and also to show the state of the Democratic Party, there were many pundits in 1984 who made this comparison to the 1984 Democratic nomination with 1968, and generally unfavorably with the 1984 candidates.
Walter Mondale = Hubert Humphrey
Gary Hart = Robert Kennedy
Jesse Jackson = Martin Luther King Jr (who, of course did not seek the Democratic Party nomination, but was still a fairly towering figure in 1968.)
That Mondale won the nomination in a far more open and Democratic process than in 1968 showed the strength, not only of the party insiders, but of the party regulars, teachers, public sector workers, union members (not that these don’t overlap) in supporting the establishment candidate, and Hubert Humphrey, just like Walter Mondale, was the establishment candidate.
My impression at the time was that Humphrey indeed had it locked up before California. I also remember how extremely pissed off I was at McGovern for jumping in – I had gone “Clean for Gene” and spent a long weekend going door to door in the fabled metropolis of Muncie during the leadup to the Indiana primary.
I seem to remember that most McCarthy supporters were angrier at Bobby than at McGovern’s doomed 11th hour efforts.
At this remove, I’m thinking that the feeling against Bobby was that he was chickenshit for not getting out earlier against LBJ while we simply considered McGovern a backstabbing weasel.
Disagree with Nixon’s assessment. There may may well have been a popular surge in the direction of RFK but the Hump’s delegates weren’t going to bolt.
All speculation and guesses but this article puts close what could of have happened would not had been all decided for Humphrey as you think. But we will never know
From the article:
“Had Kennedy not been murdered by an Arab nationalist 50 years ago this week, he still would have faced long odds in the presidential contest. Besting Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s handpicked successor, to win the nomination would have been difficult.”
Sirhan Sirhan, like Charles Manson was sentenced to death only to have his sentence, like Manson’s, commuted to life when California briefly abolished the death penalty. I suppose Sirhan Sirhan never carved a swastika into his forehead and is thus deemed rehabilitated and ready to rejoin society. I was 5 months old when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. My parents hadn’t even met when JFK was killed. My parents are no longer with us. But they told me what it was like, the way the assassinations made everyone feel. I suppose there are fewer and fewer people alive today that remember Bobby’s murder, much less both. Personally, I think there are some crimes that are so serious that capital punishment is the only appropriate sentence. Assassinating a defacto presidential nominee is one such serious crime. That is especially true when that defacto nominee is the brother of a recently assassinated president. But if, for whatever reason, execution is not possible or appropriate, at a minimum that assassin must send the rest of his life in prison. As I understand it the final decision will be Gavin Newsome’s, assuming he survives the recall election. I wonder if Sirhan Sirhan’s parole will become an election issue?
Bobby Kennedy was not a ‘defacto Presidential nominee.’ The Democratic Party made the Presidential nomination process (more) democratic as a result of the contentious 1968 convention as the delegates there voted to approve a committee that examined the nomination process. That committee, co-chaired by Senator George McGovern, recommended doing away with the system that had been used prior to 1972 and institute primaries and caucuses in every state.
In 1968 only 15 states held primaries, the rest of the delegates were chosen by party insiders in individual states, unless the delegates were the party insiders in the state. Prior to the California primary even being held, Hubert Humphrey put out a press release stating that he had secured the support of enough delegates to claim the nomination. He may have been afraid that a loss in the California primary would cause some of his supporting delegates to waiver so put out the press release at that time, but I don’t think there was any real question that had Kennedy not been assassinated that he would have lost the nomination to Humphrey.
As a sidebar to this. There are people who like to make a big deal of Senator McGovern co-chairing this committee, and then leaving it to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972 which he happened to win, on the basis of a process that he himself helped to create. However, the evidence seems pretty clear that McGovern himself did not fully understand what he had recommended and that it was Senator Gary Hart, the head of McGovern’s primary campaign, who convinced McGovern to focus on the states with caucuses as a way to secure a large number of delegates without having to get a large number of votes. Hubert Humphrey received more than 3 million primary votes more than McGovern.
You may be right about that, but a certain Richard Milhous Nixon commented when Bobby’s California victory was announced, “It sure looks like we’ll be going against Bobby,” and later wrote in RN, “I saw no way a Kennedy juggernaut could be stopped once it had acquired the momentum of a California victory.”
Tricky Dick was a lyin’, schemin’ scalawag, to be sure, but he knew a thing or two about politics, so I’d say there had to be at least some room for doubt about that Humphrey victory.
An aside, most political pundits at the time, and who doesn’t love political pundits :-P, thought if the campaign went another wk Humphrey would have beat Nixon.
And the not so dirty little secret was many Kennedy supporters voted for Wallace much like many Obama voters voted for Trump! 😮
Also, many fools er pundits er fools thought Kennedy would recover from being shot in the head and were speculating when he would return to the campaign trail. He wasn’t actually pronounced dead until late the next day, Saturday IIRC. Was 14 in 1968. Was in 4th grade when JFK was assassinated. Saw Oswald shot dead on live TV. Indeed, the wonderful ’60s. At least “we” had the space program to distract in a positive way.
Have a vivid memory of the ’60s unlike Robin Williams lol. Didn’t start smoking weed until after joining the USN ie the ’70s. 😉 TMI
Yielding back the balance of my time …
Another aside/anecdote ~ the day after RFK was shot “we” had our 8th grade graduation party at a local swimming facility.
Even leaving aside that Nion was a lyin’ shemin’ scalawag , I think it’s fair to say, and not necessarily without good reason, that Nixon was obsessed with the Kennedys, so he maybe wasn’t the most reliable judge of the Kennedys.
I can understand why Nixon wouldn’t have believed Teddy Kennedy when Kennedy constantly said he wouldn’t run for President in 1972 given that Robert Kennedy said that he wouldn’t run for President in 1968, but I don’t think that rationalizes the early obsession Nixon’s ratfucking campaign had with Teddy Kennedy at the expense of the other potential and announced Democratic candidates.
It was, of course, Nixon’s ratfucking campaign that put out the ‘Canuck letter’ that ended Senator Muskie’s already declining campaign, but some time before that Nixon ratfucked Teddy Kennedy. Some of it was quite amusing as when the ratfuckers started up a fake organization in New Hampshire called something like ‘New Hampshire Citizens for Safe Driving’ and gave Teddy Kennedy its first award in order to put Chappaquiddick back in the news.
‘but I don’t think that rationalizes the early obsession Nixon’s ratfucking campaign had with Teddy Kennedy at the expense of the other potential and announced Democratic candidates’
‘Exclusion’ is the world I was looking for, not ‘expense,’ sorry.
Lastly, not that this really provides evidence that Robert Kennedy wouldn’t have won the Democratic nomination in 1968, but just for its own interesting historical sake and also to show the state of the Democratic Party, there were many pundits in 1984 who made this comparison to the 1984 Democratic nomination with 1968, and generally unfavorably with the 1984 candidates.
Walter Mondale = Hubert Humphrey
Gary Hart = Robert Kennedy
Jesse Jackson = Martin Luther King Jr (who, of course did not seek the Democratic Party nomination, but was still a fairly towering figure in 1968.)
That Mondale won the nomination in a far more open and Democratic process than in 1968 showed the strength, not only of the party insiders, but of the party regulars, teachers, public sector workers, union members (not that these don’t overlap) in supporting the establishment candidate, and Hubert Humphrey, just like Walter Mondale, was the establishment candidate.
My impression at the time was that Humphrey indeed had it locked up before California. I also remember how extremely pissed off I was at McGovern for jumping in – I had gone “Clean for Gene” and spent a long weekend going door to door in the fabled metropolis of Muncie during the leadup to the Indiana primary.
I seem to remember that most McCarthy supporters were angrier at Bobby than at McGovern’s doomed 11th hour efforts.
At this remove, I’m thinking that the feeling against Bobby was that he was chickenshit for not getting out earlier against LBJ while we simply considered McGovern a backstabbing weasel.
Disagree with Nixon’s assessment. There may may well have been a popular surge in the direction of RFK but the Hump’s delegates weren’t going to bolt.
All speculation and guesses but this article puts close what could of have happened would not had been all decided for Humphrey as you think. But we will never know
From the article:
“Had Kennedy not been murdered by an Arab nationalist 50 years ago this week, he still would have faced long odds in the presidential contest. Besting Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s handpicked successor, to win the nomination would have been difficult.”
Sirhan Sirhan, like Charles Manson was sentenced to death only to have his sentence, like Manson’s, commuted to life when California briefly abolished the death penalty. I suppose Sirhan Sirhan never carved a swastika into his forehead and is thus deemed rehabilitated and ready to rejoin society. I was 5 months old when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. My parents hadn’t even met when JFK was killed. My parents are no longer with us. But they told me what it was like, the way the assassinations made everyone feel. I suppose there are fewer and fewer people alive today that remember Bobby’s murder, much less both. Personally, I think there are some crimes that are so serious that capital punishment is the only appropriate sentence. Assassinating a defacto presidential nominee is one such serious crime. That is especially true when that defacto nominee is the brother of a recently assassinated president. But if, for whatever reason, execution is not possible or appropriate, at a minimum that assassin must send the rest of his life in prison. As I understand it the final decision will be Gavin Newsome’s, assuming he survives the recall election. I wonder if Sirhan Sirhan’s parole will become an election issue?
Bobby Kennedy was not a ‘defacto Presidential nominee.’ The Democratic Party made the Presidential nomination process (more) democratic as a result of the contentious 1968 convention as the delegates there voted to approve a committee that examined the nomination process. That committee, co-chaired by Senator George McGovern, recommended doing away with the system that had been used prior to 1972 and institute primaries and caucuses in every state.
In 1968 only 15 states held primaries, the rest of the delegates were chosen by party insiders in individual states, unless the delegates were the party insiders in the state. Prior to the California primary even being held, Hubert Humphrey put out a press release stating that he had secured the support of enough delegates to claim the nomination. He may have been afraid that a loss in the California primary would cause some of his supporting delegates to waiver so put out the press release at that time, but I don’t think there was any real question that had Kennedy not been assassinated that he would have lost the nomination to Humphrey.
As a sidebar to this. There are people who like to make a big deal of Senator McGovern co-chairing this committee, and then leaving it to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972 which he happened to win, on the basis of a process that he himself helped to create. However, the evidence seems pretty clear that McGovern himself did not fully understand what he had recommended and that it was Senator Gary Hart, the head of McGovern’s primary campaign, who convinced McGovern to focus on the states with caucuses as a way to secure a large number of delegates without having to get a large number of votes. Hubert Humphrey received more than 3 million primary votes more than McGovern.
You may be right about that, but a certain Richard Milhous Nixon commented when Bobby’s California victory was announced, “It sure looks like we’ll be going against Bobby,” and later wrote in RN, “I saw no way a Kennedy juggernaut could be stopped once it had acquired the momentum of a California victory.”
Tricky Dick was a lyin’, schemin’ scalawag, to be sure, but he knew a thing or two about politics, so I’d say there had to be at least some room for doubt about that Humphrey victory.
An aside, most political pundits at the time, and who doesn’t love political pundits :-P, thought if the campaign went another wk Humphrey would have beat Nixon.
And the not so dirty little secret was many Kennedy supporters voted for Wallace much like many Obama voters voted for Trump! 😮
Also, many fools er pundits er fools thought Kennedy would recover from being shot in the head and were speculating when he would return to the campaign trail. He wasn’t actually pronounced dead until late the next day, Saturday IIRC. Was 14 in 1968. Was in 4th grade when JFK was assassinated. Saw Oswald shot dead on live TV. Indeed, the wonderful ’60s. At least “we” had the space program to distract in a positive way.
Have a vivid memory of the ’60s unlike Robin Williams lol. Didn’t start smoking weed until after joining the USN ie the ’70s. 😉 TMI
Yielding back the balance of my time …
Another aside/anecdote ~ the day after RFK was shot “we” had our 8th grade graduation party at a local swimming facility.
Even leaving aside that Nion was a lyin’ shemin’ scalawag , I think it’s fair to say, and not necessarily without good reason, that Nixon was obsessed with the Kennedys, so he maybe wasn’t the most reliable judge of the Kennedys.
I can understand why Nixon wouldn’t have believed Teddy Kennedy when Kennedy constantly said he wouldn’t run for President in 1972 given that Robert Kennedy said that he wouldn’t run for President in 1968, but I don’t think that rationalizes the early obsession Nixon’s ratfucking campaign had with Teddy Kennedy at the expense of the other potential and announced Democratic candidates.
It was, of course, Nixon’s ratfucking campaign that put out the ‘Canuck letter’ that ended Senator Muskie’s already declining campaign, but some time before that Nixon ratfucked Teddy Kennedy. Some of it was quite amusing as when the ratfuckers started up a fake organization in New Hampshire called something like ‘New Hampshire Citizens for Safe Driving’ and gave Teddy Kennedy its first award in order to put Chappaquiddick back in the news.
‘but I don’t think that rationalizes the early obsession Nixon’s ratfucking campaign had with Teddy Kennedy at the expense of the other potential and announced Democratic candidates’
‘Exclusion’ is the world I was looking for, not ‘expense,’ sorry.