The RFK Assassination

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"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live."

Robert F. Kennedy

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the fatal shooting of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles after he had declared victory in the California presidential primary.

He didn't die immediately. He lingered for about 24 hours.

I have written on this blog before about my memories of that event. What I am thinking about today is the aftermath — when his body was brought back to New York for the funeral, then carried by train to Washington where he was buried next to his brother in Arlington Cemetery.

I remember watching the funeral service on TV — and seeing Sen. Edward Kennedy's moving eulogy to his brother. I remember the stoic demeanor of Kennedy's widow, Ethel. In the context of what had occurred in the preceding days, it was heart–breaking.

But I suppose my dominant memory is of the train making its way from New York to Washington. It is a distance of only about 200 miles — ordinarily a four–hour trip by train, historian Theodore White observed, but more than doubled by the crowds that came out to pay their respects. It seemed as if nearly everyone who lived between those two cities came out and stood beside the railroad tracks until the train carrying Kennedy's body went by.

At first, the crowds were mostly small groups, but as the train proceeded, the crowds grew larger, standing three, four, five rows deep, sometimes more. Every segment of the American population was represented — young, old, black, white, affluent, poor. Sometimes they spilled onto the tracks, forcing the train to slow down even more. My memory is that a handful of people may have been killed after being struck by the train.

There have been museum exhibits recently that sought to capture that experience for those who have no memory of that time, but the sensation is incomplete without knowledge of the signs that were always present during Kennedy's life — and followed him to his grave.

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When Kennedy walked among us, those signs encouraged him to seek the presidency or demanded justice after he made his decision to run. After he was shot and his fate was still unknown but widely anticipated, the signs read "Pray for Bobby." Along the train route, they simply said, "Goodbye" or "So long."

White tried to describe the scene — but how do you describe the indescribable?

"There were the family groups: husband holding sobbing wife, arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her," he wrote. "Five nuns in a yellow pickup truck, tiptoeing high to see. A very fat father with three fat boys, he with his hand over his heart, each of the boys giving a different variant of the Boy Scout or school salute. And the people: the men from the great factories that line the tracks, standing at ease as they were taught as infantrymen, their arms folded over chests. Women on the back porches of the slum neighborhoods that line the tracks, in their housedresses, with ever–present rollers in their hair, crying. People in buildings, leaning from office windows, on the flat roofs of industrial plants, on the bluffs of the rivers, on the embankments of the railway cuts, a crust on every ridge and height. Pleasure boats in the rivers lined up in flotillas; automobiles parked on all the viaducts that crossed the line of the train. Brass bands — police bands, school bands, Catholic bands. Flags: individual flags dropped in salute by middle–aged men as the train passed, flags at half–staff from every public building on the way, entire classes of schoolchildren holding the little eight–by–ten flags, in that peppermint–striped flutter that marks every campaign trip. He turned them on, black and white, rich and poor. And they cried."

No other politician in modern history could connect with as many disparate groups as Bobby Kennedy. It is something no one tries to do anymore because it is so difficult to achieve. And in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

A Blast From the Past

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It occurred to me this week, when 72–year–old Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested under suspicion of being the infamous Golden State Killer of the 1970s and 1980s, that it was a lot like when Dennis Rader was charged in another cold case, the BTK slayings in Kansas, in 2005.

Rader's crime spree started roughly the same time as the Golden State Killer's — in the mid–1970s. He continued a few years after the Golden State Killer's known attacks ended. (I say known because more facts may yet emerge as this case unfolds.)

Both men were regarded as a bit quirky — even menacing — by others; they held positions of authority and lived for many years in the communities they terrorized.

If DeAngelo turns out to be the Golden State Killer — he entered no plea when he appeared in court yesterday — he had a slightly higher body count. Of course, that doesn't include the roughly four dozen rapes or the more than 100 burglaries that have been tied to the Golden State Killer. That makes him a far more prolific criminal.

The men are roughly the same age — and had no reason to be concerned about DNA evidence at the time they committed their crimes since the development of that technology was still in the distant future. They knew enough about contemporary forensic evidence to avoid the evidentiary traps of the times, but DNA, which played a role in their eventual captures, was not on their radar.

DNA was discovered in the 19th century, but how to apply it to criminal investigations evolved well into the next century. In the '70s, high school science teachers could tell their students about DNA, but they couldn't say how it would influence law enforcement — or anything else — in the years ahead.

It would be a couple of decades before most people would get that kind of exposure via the O.J. Simpson trial — and even then DNA was misunderstood by many.

Neither man said much during the arraignment phase. DeAngelo confirmed his name when asked; Rader said nothing during his arraignment.

All serial killers are not created equal, though. While DeAngelo apparently has kept mostly silent since being taken into custody, Rader seemed to derive pleasure in letting the authorities know how clever he had been, confessing to crimes in addition to the ones with which he had been charged.

It all comes down to what motivates a serial killer, and they are as individual in their motivations as people in any other walk of life. For those who study serial killers, it will be instructive to learn what motivated DeAngelo.

California, Here They Are

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It has always struck me as odd.

For most of my lifetime, California has been the largest state (by population) in the country. In November, the winner in California (and that is generally expected to be the Democrat; California hasn't voted for a Republican since Ronald Reagan was preparing to leave the White House in 1988) will win — by virtue of that solitary victory — one–fifth of the electoral votes needed to capture the presidency.

That is why many Democrats remain confident of winning this year. Throw in other large states that have been voting reliably for Democrats during that same period — New York, Michigan, Illinois — and those that have been voting almost as often for Democrats but usually by narrower margins — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida — and Democrats don't feel that they will need to win many of the mid–sized and smaller states to secure victory in the election.

(Any stock investor will tell you, though, that past results are no guarantee of future behavior.)

Yes, California is at the very heart of Democrats' general election battle plan.

And yet it is a virtual afterthought in the primaries.

The biggest reason for that, I suppose, is the fact that California's presidential primary is nearly always scheduled for the very end of primary season. By that time, party nominees have already been decided — usually — and California voters merely rubber–stamp the decision that has been made by others.

It seems to me that the last time California's Republican presidential primary had any relevance to the outcome of the race for the nomination was in 1976 when California's former governor, Ronald Reagan, needed to win there to remain viable in his race against President Gerald Ford. Reagan did win the primary by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, but Ford still won the nomination.

Democrats moved California's primary up to what was known as "Super Duper Tuesday" in March 2008 so the state could wield greater influence on the nomination. But that was the year of Hillary Clinton's duel with Barack Obama that went down to the first week of June before Clinton conceded defeat.

Clinton won California's primary in 2008, but nearly two dozen states and territories voted that day. When the smoke cleared, Obama had secured more delegates than Clinton and was on his way to the nomination — although, as I said, the campaign went on for three more months before Clinton finally conceded what most observers already knew.

Before that, I guess you would have to go back to 1968 — when primaries were not yet the preferred method for selecting delegates — to find a California primary that was expected to influence the nomination — even though it, too, was held at the end of that year's primary season. In 1968, the presumptive front–runner, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated after claiming victory over Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the California primary, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who entered no primaries that year, won the nomination the old–fashioned way — behind the scenes.

The concept of voters actually playing a role in the parties' presidential nomination processes is fairly new in the American experience. It is not how most of our presidents — the great and the not–so–great alike — won their parties' nominations.

But it is the expectation of modern voters that they will be allowed a legitimate opportunity to have a say in the nomination process. (Considering that this has apparently produced two unpopular nominees this year, both parties may want to re–evaluate how they choose their nominees when this election is over.)

And expectations have always played an important role in presidential politics.

Those expectations have shifted dramatically in California.

A little over a month ago, polls were showing Clinton with a double–digit lead over Sanders in California. Polls continued to show her comfortably in front as recently as two weeks ago. Expectations in early May were that Clinton would win easily in California and become the presumptive nominee. Thus, the Clinton campaign scheduled stops elsewhere in the weeks before California, and the candidate turned her attention to her presumptive Republican rival instead of her challenger within her own party.

But in a new poll released today — two days before the primary — Clinton's lead over Sanders is down to two percentage points, which is well within the poll's margin of error. In recent days, Clinton has canceled planned stops in other places and returned to California to woo the voters in the Golden State.

As CBS News observes in its report on today's poll, Clinton does not need to win California outright — or New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico or the Dakotas, all of whom hold their primaries on Tuesday as well. She only needs to keep adding to her delegate total.

But Sanders voters — at least the ones in California — indicate that they are not motivated so much by a belief that Sanders can still win the nomination as they are by the desire to influence the direction of the party.

And running out the clock is not the kind of finish Clinton's supporters were hoping for. They were looking for a Secretariat–like 31–length win, not a photo finish in which she limped across the finish line barely ahead of a 74–year–old socialist from Vermont. Especially with the help of so–called superdelegates who are obligated to no one.

Clinton's supporters were expecting a decisive, double–digit win in California — and, given the unpredictability of modern American politics, that may still happen, but the record of this campaign has been that Sanders has tended to underperform in polls leading up to primaries and then overperform (in the context of those polls) on Election Day. Clinton has won in more places than Sanders has but, outside of the South (and its high population of blacks, most of whom have been in Clinton's corner), typically by margins far lower than are expected from candidates who are thought to be historically inevitable.

Clinton needs a solid victory on Tuesday in the largest state in the union to build pressure for Sanders to withdraw in the sake of party unity — but, as Sanders insists there will be a contested convention in Philadelphia next month, his withdrawal after Tuesday's primaries does not seem likely.

Another narrow Clinton victory certainly won't change that.

Hillary's husband, a much more gifted politician than his wife will ever be, would know that the wise thing to do is eliminate your in–party opponent before turning your sights on your general election rival. Learning that lesson now could come at a high price.

Cruz's Gambit

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We have a Republican presidential primary coming up on Tuesday along with two caucuses (Utah and American Samoa) — then two weeks until the next time voters go to the polls. Time is short — almost two–thirds of the states have been heard from now.

I hear a lot of talk of a contested convention, but there has only been one convention in my lifetime — the 1976 Republican convention — that went down to the wire. I have my doubts that this year's convention will be the second almost–contested convention in my lifetime.

See, the thing is that Donald Trump's candidacy is the kind of phenomenon that political observers have rarely seen. They function in a world of conventional wisdom, but what is happening is spinning conventional wisdom on its ear. In 1976 conventional wisdom eventually won out, and President Gerald Ford defeated challenger (outsider?) Ronald Reagan.

Trump reminds me more of Ross Perot in 1992 — a wealthy man who promised to run government efficiently, like a well–run business. Trump has gone far beyond where Perot ever did, perhaps because he has pursued the presidency through an established party rather than seeking the office as an independent.

Trump also reminds me, in a way, of Barack Obama eight years ago. Trump is not the first outsider businessman to seek the presidency, just as Obama was not the first black man to seek the presidency. But Obama capitalized on and exceeded the achievements of his predecessors, and Trump appears poised to exceed Perot's achievements as well.

It's easy to forget from the perspective of 2016 what Perot achieved in the general election of 1992. He didn't carry any states, but he received nearly 19% of the national popular vote.

On the Republican side it is, essentially, down to two candidates, Trump and Ted Cruz. There is a third candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, but he is already mathematically eliminated from a first–ballot nomination even if he runs the table the rest of the way in this new winner–take–all delegate environment. He is no longer focused on winning the nomination on the first ballot, when most delegates are committed to certain candidates by the voters of their states. He is looking beyond that.

However, with Marco Rubio out of the picture, Cruz appears to believe he has a chance to inflict some damage on Trump and, if not secure enough delegates going into the convention to assure himself of the nomination, have enough delegates committed to him to prevent Trump from winning the nomination on the first ballot.

Cruz has been talking about how well he has performed in closed primaries — primaries held in states where voters are required to declare their party affiliation upon registering and vote in only that party's primaries. And that's true.

But there are two sides to this coin.

Cruz contends he is the best choice to be a standard bearer for Republicans because he has outperformed Trump in primaries in which only registered Republicans can participate.

Trump has performed better in the open primaries where voters can declare in which party's primary they want to participate, and he has been drawing support from Democrats and independents. Some have been motivated by a desire to throw a wrench into the works, but others have been motivated by genuine support for Trump. Consequently, Trump can argue — with at least some validity — that his victories in the open primaries demonstrate his appeal for the broader electorate in the general election.

This phase of the electoral calendar may tell us who is right — or, at least, whose case makes the most sense to Republican voters.

The primary on Tuesday is being held in Arizona; it's a closed primary that will award all 58 of its delegates to whoever finishes first. Based on Cruz's logic, he should do well there, right? Well, the latest Merrill Poll, released just a few days ago, found the winner is likely to be Trump.

Kasich's strategy is different. He knows he can't win the nomination on the first ballot so his objective is to prevent Trump from reaching the magic number and force the Republican nominating process to a second ballot for the first time since 1948. If Cruz can win in the West, Kasich will be trying to win in the East — in places like Pennsylvania and New York.

Call it a triangulation theory. It's also a longshot, at least at this stage of the race. Trump is more than halfway to the number of committed delegates he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot.

The New York primary is a closed primary that will be held on April 19. According to the Emerson Poll that was released Friday, Trump has a decisive lead over Cruz there. Kasich is no help; he barely drew 1% in the poll. New York is a winner–take–most primary, which most likely means Trump will win about 80 or 85 of the state's 95 delegates.

Pennsylvania's winner–take–all primary is a week later — on April 26. The most recent survey I have seen from Pennsylvania was published about a week and a half ago. It was Harper Polling's survey, and it showed Trump with a 2–to–1 lead over Marco Rubio, who suspended his campaign after losing in Florida about a week after Harper's poll results were published. Unless something dramatic happens, Trump seems well on his way to winning Pennsylvania's 71 delegates.

There will be other primaries, too, but the ones I have just mentioned are the ones that are likely to get the most attention in the next five weeks. Anyway, for Cruz and Kasich, the news doesn't get much better in those lesser primaries.

On April 5, Wisconsin holds a winner–take–all primary. It will be an open primary, too, so Democrats and independents can participate if they wish, and Wisconsin is the only state doing anything that day. Whoever finishes first wins 42 delegates. I haven't seen any polls from there so I don't know who is leading, but I can say that Wisconsin was one of those Rust Belt states that was hurt by trade agreements in recent years. That seems to have benefited Trump in Michigan and Illinois.

New York also will have the political spotlight to itself, but Pennsylvania will be one of five states holding primaries on April 26. Those states are mostly in the Northeast, which will be a test for Kasich's appeal to a presumably more centrist electorate.

The other four states to vote on April 26 are Connecticut (26 delegates), Delaware (16 delegates), Maryland (38 delegates) and Rhode Island (19 delegates). All but one of those April 26 primaries will be closed. Rhode Island's primary is "semi–closed" — whatever that means.

And most of the primaries being held that day will be winner–take–all contests. Connecticut is winner–take–most and Rhode Island is proportional. Since most of the primaries that day are closed, that should favor Cruz, based on his own assessment, but the region of the country should be more favorable to a moderate like Kasich. Polls indicate, however, that Trump is leading and may improve on his lead in the weeks ahead.

And, of course, looming out there on the Western horizon is California with its winner–take–all prize of 172 delegates. California Republicans won't vote until June 7, but in the latest poll I have seen 38% of likely voters favored Trump. It is worth noting that the poll results were released the day of the Florida and Ohio primaries. Rubio was still in the race, and Kasich had not yet won his home state, but both were included in the poll with Trump and Cruz. Rubio polled 10%, which by itself would not be enough for Cruz to overtake Trump. Neither would the 9% who said they were undecided.

Together, though, they would be enough — as long as not too many of those voters broke for Trump. That is how sizable Trump's lead is in California.

Clearly, it's a pretty steep mountain Cruz and Kasich must climb if they are to prevent Trump from claiming the nomination in Cleveland this July.

The Return of the Bradley Effect

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I have written here before of the "Bradley effect," but that was in the context of the 2008 presidential election, a time when voters were deciding whether to elect the first black president. That wasn't as inconsequential a decision as you might think now, more than seven years after the fact. After all, Barack Obama has been elected president twice now. Voters face a different kind of decision in 2016.

Simply put, the Bradley effect refers to the 1982 California gubernatorial campaign of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Bradley was black, and polls prior to the election showed him leading the race. But he lost — narrowly — to Republican George Deukmejian (who won by less than 100,000 votes out of more than 7.5 million).

I suppose it goes without saying that the outcome of that election prompted a lot of soul searching, and the general conclusion that most people seemed to reach was that Bradley fared better in the polls because those who were polled did not wish to appear racist — so even if they were undecided or leaning toward the Republican, they told the pollsters that they would vote for Bradley, thus creating an artificial lead for him.

When they went into the voting booths, though, the voters did not have to concern themselves with what others would think of them, and they pulled the lever for the Republican — regardless of what they may have told the pollsters.

I bring this up because I think we could be seeing a new — and fascinating — twist on that theme in the campaign of Donald Trump. It isn't necessary to say much about Trump. So much has already been said about him, including the seemingly daily assertions that the Trump campaign has peaked, which always seem to be followed by a new poll showing Trump with even more support than he had before. Clearly, this guy is tapping into something, with his rhetoric about Muslims and immigration, but it's something a lot of people don't seem to want to acknowledge.

It's all about perceptions. Thirty–three years ago, a lot of Californians didn't want to appear to be racist. Today, perhaps a lot of people don't want to appear to be supporting a racist. Well, a perceived racist.

In case you haven't heard, a Quinnipiac University poll that was released today suggests that half of Americans would be embarrassed if Trump became the president. Could the same dynamic be at work here?

It reminds me in a way of a congressional campaign in my district in central Arkansas a couple of years after the Bradley election. There was a rather flamboyant sheriff in Pulaski County at the time named Tommy Robinson, who had apparently been angling for higher office with some publicity stunts.

Now, that district was represented for decades by Democrat Wilbur Mills, and he was succeeded by a Democrat when he stepped down, but that Democrat chose to run for the U.S. Senate after serving a single term, and a Republican was elected to the seat. The Republican held the seat for six years, then he, too, chose to run for the Senate, and Tommy Robinson announced he was running for the House seat as a Democrat. Historically, it was the right choice. Until the Republican incumbent was elected, the district hadn't been represented by a Republican since Reconstruction.

I don't remember much about the advertising in the Democratic primary (which Robinson won in a runoff) or the general election, but I do remember one of Robinson's ads. I think he used it in both the primary and the general election. It showed a series of vignettes in which friends were talking and one would say, "Who are you voting for for Congress?" and the other would say something like, "Well, you'll probably be surprised, but I'm voting for Tommy Robinson."

And that opened the door to confront all the negative stories that had been circulating about Robinson for years.

Now, as it turned out, Robinson was a crook who got caught up in the House banking scandal. But that was still several years in the future when Robinson first ran for the House.

And my memory of that campaign is that pollsters were quite certain that Robinson's Republican opponent, Judy Petty (who lost to Mills 10 years earlier), would win. Polls were showing her leading, which wasn't really hard to imagine. Petty was running as a Ronald Reagan Republican in a year when Reagan carried three–fifths of the vote in that district.

But the Gipper's popularity didn't trickle down enough for Petty to prevail. Or perhaps those people who told the pollsters they would vote for Petty actually voted for Robinson instead.

And perhaps Donald Trump, like George Deukmejian and Tommy Robinson, will have the last laugh.

Cut to the Chase

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On this night in 1994, O.J. Simpson led the police on a slow–speed chase.

Many Americans were watching coverage of the NBA Finals. Houston and New York were tied, 2–2, when they tipped off Game 5 in Madison Square Garden that Friday night, and it was an exciting game. The score was tied at the end of the third quarter. On top of that, it had been a close series.

The NBA Finals were being carried by NBC, the network for whom Simpson had been an NFL analyst, and, when Simpson, a passenger in a white Ford Bronco driven by his friend and ex–teammate Al Cowlings, began leading the Los Angeles police on the chase on the freeway, NBC gave it split–screen coverage with the game.

Actually, the game got the short end of the stick while the chase was in progress. The game was shown in a smaller portion of the screen while the chase was in a larger portion of the screen.

NBC's affiliate in Los Angeles didn't even show the split screen. It just showed the chase — until after Simpson surrendered to police. Then it showed the split screen — when there really wasn't a reason to show what was happening in the yard of Simpson's estate.

By that time, the truly dramatic part of the chase was long over.

When the chase was in progress, though, there was a lot of drama. Viewers learned that O.J. had a gun with him.

June 17, 1994, would have been a rather dramatic day in sports even without the NBA game. The New York Rangers celebrated their first Stanley Cup in more than 50 years. Arnold Palmer played his final round at the U.S. Open. In baseball, Ken Griffey Jr. matched Babe Ruth's record for most home runs before June 30. But that Bronco chase is what people remember.

Shortly before, one of Simpson's defense attorneys appeared on TV to read a rambling letter from Simpson to the media, in which Simpson told those closest to him, "Don't feel sorry for me. I've had a great life." He urged them not to remember "this lost person." Many who heard the letter being read believed it was a suicide note. Simpson's lawyer urged him to give himself up, as he had promised (but failed) to do earlier in the day.

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I have heard it said that the image of that Bronco was one of the most memorable moments on TV in the last half century — exceeded only by TV coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the scene of Simpson's eventual acquittal, the Challenger explosion and the death of Osama bin Laden.

The O.J. case polarized the nation by race. Whites overwhelmingly thought he was guilty of the crimes; blacks overwhelmingly thought he was innocent.

Twenty years later, blacks are more inclined to say he was guilty, CNN reported recently.

But 20 years ago tonight, the nation sat transfixed in front of its television sets watching the Juice's slow–motion run. Americans would take sides later. Twenty years ago tonight, they were wondering how it would end.

Remembering the Simpson-Goldman Murders

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It is still vivid in memory.

It's been a couple of decades, but, in many ways, it seems as if it happened yesterday.

Sometime during the evening hours of June 12–13, 1994, the ex–wife of former pro football star O.J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, was murdered in the courtyard of her southern California townhouse. The body of a young man, Ron Goldman, was found a few feet from her.

They had both been stabbed repeatedly. Nicole's head had nearly been cut off her body.

The bodies were found shortly after midnight, about half an hour after a Chicago–bound airplane on which O.J. was a passenger left Los Angeles International Airport.

There were a lot of other details that emerged in O.J.'s trial, which came to be regarded as the trial of the century. It was also — as far as I can tell — the public's first real introduction to DNA evidence.

But, on that mid–June day in 1994, what was widely known was that Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were dead. From outward appearances, Goldman was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He worked as a waiter at the restaurant where Nicole had dined with her family that evening, and her mother had left her glasses there. Nicole called the restaurant and was told that they would be brought to her home. Goldman, who was working in the restaurant that night, apparently volunteered to take the glasses when he finished work.

The assumption at the time was that Goldman had interrupted the attack on Nicole.

It was revealed later that Ron and Nicole were friendly. They had been seen riding together in Nicole's car, and the exact nature of their relationship remains uncertain to this day.

As for the DNA evidence, people had to be educated about that by the prosecution when O.J.'s trial got under way in 1995. But all of that was still in the future on this day 20 years ago.

O.J., of course, was acquitted of the murders — but was later held liable in a civil trial. Years later, he was convicted of an apparently unrelated offense in Nevada and given a sentence that, while not a life sentence, was expected to wind up being a life term, given O.J.'s age. After recent legal rulings, though, O.J. could be released as early as 2017.

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But that wasn't the end of it.

I guess it was to be expected that the 20th anniversary of the murders would bring new revelations, and it has. The National Enquirer, for example, recently published an article claiming to tell why O.J. killed Nicole.

Goldman's sister recently told the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles that forgiveness for the murder of the brother to whom she was especially close is not possible for her.

Last month, Lili Anolik suggested in Vanity Fair that the Simpson trial was the first reality TV show. It was a point I hadn't considered before, but it made sense.

Or perhaps it was more like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The trial brought forth a string of witnesses for the prosecution who could have been a 1995 version of the cast of Desperate Housewives with all achieving a certain amount of rather short–lived fame. It was established during the trial that at least one of Nicole's friends/house guests had a cocaine problem, and it was suggested by the defense during the trial that drug dealers could have committed the murders and that their actual target had not been Nicole but rather her friend.

By the time the trial began, the murders themselves were almost afterthoughts; the human tragedy was mostly ignored. Ron and Nicole were vivid as people only in the memories of those in the court — and outside the court — who knew them. To everyone else they were props in a courtroom drama.

There was a wide range of human wreckage left in the wake of those two deaths.

The image that stays with me is of the streams of blood that could be seen on the pavement outside Nicole's townhouse in the news reports 20 years ago — and the children who were left without a mother. At some point, O.J. was awarded custody of his children, and they moved to Florida.

Those children are adults well into their 20s now. I often wonder what their lives were like after their mother was killed and their father was accused of the crime.

All I know is that the oldest, Sydney, was arrested in connection with a school incident nearly 10 years after her mother's death and sentenced to 50 hours of community service. Last I heard, she was waiting tables in Atlanta.

I think her brother is still in Florida.

The Revival of the Gun-Control Discussion

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It is hard to imagine anyone feeling anything but empathy for Richard Martinez, the anguished father whose statement following the murder of his 20–year–old son Friday night must have been the embodiment of every parent's fear.

I feel for him, I really do, just as I do for anyone who loses a loved one to random violence. And that is what Friday's killings were — random. I have seen no evidence that Elliot Rodger shot at anyone he knew. Apparently, he did stab three people to death, and he knew at least two of them because he lived with them, but the rest of his victims seem to have been strangers to him.

Just like the children in New Town were strangers to their murderer.

Just like the victims in the Colorado theater were unknown to their killer.

Just like most of the victims at Virginia Tech.

That seems to be a common link in these kinds of stories. The attacker is seething with rage over something, but rarely is that murderous rage aimed at the person(s) who committed the perceived slight.

Well, it should be obvious that if a person is irrational, he/she will take an irrational course of action.

Another common link between those cases and the one in Isla Vista, Calif., last Friday is this — mental illness. The perpetrators are almost always mentally unbalanced.

If the mentally ill are intent upon attacking others, they will use a gun if they can, but they will use something else if they must.

Rodger clearly demonstrated this. He stabbed his first three victims. He proceeded to shoot most of the others, but he also used his vehicle as a weapon.

He was clearly mentally ill. Could there be any doubt? Have you read his manifesto?

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Or have you seen his "retribution" video, the one he apparently made about 24 hours before he went on his rampage? He was eagerly anticipating what he was about to do.

I suspect he would have used anything that was available to him to achieve what he wanted. If you're willing to stab three people to death — which is about as up close and personal as a killing can get — you wouldn't hesitate to choke someone or pummel that person to death with something that could be used as a club.

In the aftermath of something like this, there are always a couple of knee–jerk reactions with which I find myself losing patience.

I suppose it is only human to look for reasons why something like this happened, but among the usual scapegoats are violent movies and video games. Rodger apparently played video games as a form of escape, and he lived in the land of make–believe, the movie culture of southern California. Both his parents were connected to the entertainment industry.

Well, millions of people play video games, and millions of people watch action/adventure movies, but very, very few of them become multiple murderers.

When something like this happens, a cry goes out across the land to ban automatic weapons. That demand consistently ignores the facts that (a) none of these crimes in recent years has been committed with an automatic weapon and (b) it is possible to acquire an automatic weapon, but existing law already forces such a gun buyer to jump through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops.

Any gun legislation that would be proposed as a result of this would be feel–good legislation that would have no affect.

What would have an impact? Well, I think one thing that needs to be done is to evaluate the state of mental health in the United States — and start giving people the treatment they need.

That's not going to solve the problem — I don't know what the long–term solution is — but renewing our commitment to defeating mental illness will get us closer to solving it than we will ever get with more gun–control legislation.

The Death of Harvey Milk

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"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country."

Harvey Milk
Nov. 18, 1977

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Since his murder 35 years ago today, I sometimes wonder if Harvey Milk anticipated the changes that have occurred for homosexuals not only in California, where he became the first openly gay individual to serve on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but in the nation as a whole.

A lot of things that were true then are hard for people of the 21st century to comprehend, but at the time of Milk's death, San Francisco did not have the reputation for being a haven for homosexuals that it has today. Many gay people had migrated to San Francisco during and after the counterculture days of the 1960s, but the demographic group really had yet to flex its political muscle.

I'm not homosexual, but I have friends who are, which has made me more sensitive to the gay community's issues and icons than I once was. In 1978, I paid little, if any, attention.

I remember hearing about the slaying at the time, but the victims and the killer were just names to me. I lived two time zones away, and the story didn't really resonate with me beyond the few minutes I heard about it on the evening news.

And, I must admit, from the vantage point of one living in Arkansas and hearing San Francisco mentioned in connection with the story, it was hard to differentiate between that news event and the story that broke a week earlier about mass suicides in Guyana — since many of those who died in Guyana came from San Francisco, as did the congressman who was killed at the same time. I'm sure it was different for people living on the West Coast, but that was kind of a vague reference point for me.

At the time, I suppose I reasoned that the two events were connected in some way. I may even have assumed that Milk's sexuality (if I even knew about it then, and I probably didn't) was the reason for what happened — in San Francisco, anyway.

In fact, there was a connection between Guyana and San Francisco of which I remember hearing nothing at the time. Milk was a big supporter of Jim Jones when Milk was a rising local political star and Jones was a prominent community activist. Reporters might have quoted Milk at the time on what had happened when Jones was in San Francisco, but I honestly don't remember anything like that.

Milk didn't start out in politics. In fact, his political career turned out to be very brief.

As a young man, he served in the Navy during the Korean War and attempted several occupations after his discharge. A native of New York, Milk came to San Francisco when he was 42 and opened a camera shop, but he gravitated to politics and followed a path that eventually made him the first openly gay politician to hold office in California.

In 1978, only a few months before his death and long before Bill Clinton was recognized as "the man from Hope," Milk delivered what has come to be known as his "Hope Speech," urging gays to come out of the closet.

"We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions," he said. "We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it."

Around the time that Milk was settling in San Francisco, Dan White, a native San Franciscan who had been working in Alaska as a high school security guard, returned to his hometown to work as a police officer. After that, he was in the city fire department.

In 1977, White was elected city supervisor and took office in January 1978 with Milk. I've heard that they had a cordial relationship at first, but things clearly went sour somewhere.

I gather that things began to go irretrievably awry between them over a proposal by the Catholic church to establish a rehab facility for young offenders in White's district. White was against it, and Milk was for it.

But I also gather that White had problems with others in city hall, not just Milk. And, by November 1978, he had reached the end of his rope. He resigned his seat early in the month, citing corruption in city politics and his limited income potential as his reasons. As a city supervisor, he was prohibited from holding a job as a policeman or a fireman at the same time. The law allowed no one to hold two jobs with the city simultaneously.

A few days later, White changed his mind and went to see Mayor George Moscone about being re–appointed to his old job. Moscone was agreeable at first but reversed himself after conferring with Milk and others.

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Then, on this day in 1978, White went to city hall with a gun, climbed in through a window to avoid the metal detectors that had been installed recently and went first to Moscone's office, where he tried once again to get his job back and shot Moscone twice in the head when the mayor refused.

Then White reloaded, went to Milk's office and shot Milk five times, the last two fired at Milk's head at close range. He fled the building.

The task of announcing to the public what had happened fell to future Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then president of the Board of Supervisors, who identified the bodies and was so shaken by what she had seen she needed to be supported by the police chief while she spoke in front of a shocked audience and numerous TV cameras.

That night, tens of thousands gathered for a candlelight march to the steps of city hall. Appropriately, a candlelight march is planned in San Francisco later today to commemorate the Milk and Moscone assassinations.

"[T]he time has come," writes Andy Towle, "to make their vision of a city of hope come alive."

The Day Nixon Won the Presidency

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There haven't been many cliffhangers in presidential politics, and one of the most interesting, from the perspective of an historian, has to be the one that occurred 45 years ago today.

It was the last truly paper–thin popular vote margin in a presidential election in the 20th century, and it was the last time for nearly 40 years that voter turnout in a national election exceeded 60% — in spite of the fact that the voting age was lowered to 18 before the next presidential election.

And, if the outcome had been different, the nation might have been spared the Watergate scandal that consumed the Richard Nixon presidency.

But the Democrats' nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, had to win the grudging acceptance of those who had supported antiwar candidate Gene McCarthy in the primaries. The war influenced most voters that year, either directly or indirectly, and McCarthy's supporters didn't completely trust Humphrey because of his role in the Johnson administration.

Gradually, Humphrey had been winning them over that fall; Democrats who had supported McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy earlier in the year apparently began to realize that, like it or not, the choice was between Humphrey and Nixon, the man they had been demonizing for a couple of decades. About two weeks before the election, when Humphrey announced in Salt Lake City that he would pull the plug on the bombing in southeast Asia as "an acceptable risk for peace," the momentum was on his side.

"Up until Salt Lake City," wrote historian Theodore White, "the position of the Democrats had been that any bombing halt in Vietnam must be coupled with reciprocity on the part of the enemy. Now, in a three–point program, Humphrey declared that he would risk a complete bombing halt in the interests of peace, and then see what response might develop, reserving the right to resume bombing if no such response was clear."

The impact on the polls was immediate. Gallup reported that Humphrey had cut Nixon's lead in half.

Then, less than a week before the election, McCarthy ("who had been pouting on the Riviera" since losing the nomination to Humphrey, wrote historian William Manchester) announced his support for Humphrey — and, at that point, wrote Manchester, "Humphrey was at the top of his form; Nixon had begun to sound uncannily like Thomas E. Dewey."

The late Humphrey surge would have changed the outcome, many people argued, if the campaign had gone on for a day or two more — and, in fact, the Democrats had no one but themselves to blame for that. The Democratic National Committee decided to postpone the Chicago convention until the end of August to coincide with the birthday of President Lyndon Johnson.

At the time, it was the latest start for a national convention since the Civil War more than a century earlier — and the change cost Democrats valuable campaign time that could have altered the outcome of the general election.

(It is worth noting that LBJ was much more popular when that decision was made than he was when the convention was held.)

In hindsight, the whole election really hinged on the outcomes in three states — California, Illinois and Ohio. Nixon carried them all by relatively close margins. If Humphrey had carried all three, he would have been elected president.

And if Humphrey had carried any two of those three — or California alone — the independent candidacy of George Wallace would have accomplished its objective of forcing the election into the House of Representatives — where Wallace, who had been fading in the polls that autumn and must have been aware that he could not possibly win, could play the role of kingmaker.

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Nixon, a native Californian, never really seemed likely to lose his home state (although the Republican ticket did lose the home state of the vice presidential nominee, Spiro Agnew). Oh, sure, some major party presidential nominees had lost their home states over the years — Democrat Adlai Stevenson even managed to do it twice — and, if that had happened in 1968, Nixon would not have won in the Electoral College (and, given his final popular vote margins in both California and the nation as a whole, he might not have won the popular vote, either).

But, contrary to what modern political observers may think of California's electoral tendencies, the fact was that, in 1968, the state had voted Republican in three of the previous four presidential elections, and it had never rejected Nixon in a national campaign.

Realistically, California was off the table.

But if Humphrey could have won about 67,000 votes from Nixon in Illinois and about 45,000 votes from Nixon in Ohio, he could have prevented Nixon from receiving enough electoral votes to be elected. And if he had carried both of those states, along with California, he would have won the election outright.

That kind of scenario (or something like it) seemed like a real possibility on this day in 1968 — even moreso after midnight, when all three states (along with Missouri and, for a time, Texas) remained too close to call.

Humphrey and Nixon were even with each other in the polls heading into Election Day, and many states remained too close to call well into that evening — and the early morning hours of the next day. In fact, it was not until the next morning that the TV networks called the election for Nixon — and, even after they did that, some states stayed too close to call for awhile.

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My memory of those days is vague, owing primarily to my youth. But one memory stands out.

As I have written here before, I grew up within 350 miles of my grandparents. It wasn't all interstate in 1968, but my family still managed to visit my grandparents frequently. My father taught at a local college, which did not have summer sessions in those days, and my mother stayed at home until she re–entered the workforce in the mid–'70s so my family typically made two, even three trips to visit the grandparents in the summers — in addition to trips we usually made at Christmas and sometimes at Thanksgiving or during spring break.

I loved my grandparents and wanted to please them, and I'm sure I must have heard them talking about the election that summer. My mother's parents, with whom we always stayed when we visited Dallas, were Nixon supporters. My father's mother was a Democrat, and I am sure she supported Humphrey, but my maternal grandparents spent more time with me and had more influence on me.

Anyway, I must have heard them speaking of Nixon that summer. My grandfather could be — shall we say? — loquacious on certain topics, one of which was politics. My best guess is that I must have boldly asserted, at some point, that Nixon would win — and, then, as children will, I forgot about the conversation.

Until a day or two after the election.

It was then that I received the first telegram I had received in my then–brief life. It was from my grandparents and a couple of their friends (who must have been there when I made my prediction) congratulating me.

I wish I could say I still have that telegram, but I don't. As nearly as I can remember, it said something like this: "Congratulations on your prediction! We're all proud of you!"

At that point in my life, I knew nothing about politics, but I guess my grandparents' praise made me feel like I was some sort of prodigy, that I was destined to be some kind of political historian.

Maybe I was. After all, I still enjoy analyzing election returns, and I still like to make predictions.

I must confess, however, that those predictions involve considerably more thought and research than the one I made in 1968.

Good Riddance to the Night Stalker

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"I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm all over the place and then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife and watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood."

Richard Ramirez

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Ordinarily, it is not my habit to rejoice upon hearing that another human being has died.

But there are exceptions to that rule. And Richard Ramirez is one of them.

If you are under 35, you might not know who Ramirez, who died of natural causes today, was.

He was known as the "Night Stalker," a brutal serial killer who absolutely terrified southern California in the mid–1980s. In 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. He was given the death penalty but remained on Death Row nearly 25 years later because of California's lengthy appeals process.

Frankly, I was never quite sure what there was to appeal. From everything that I read, the case was a slam dunk. But appeals are mandated by California law.

(Since California reinstated the death penalty in the late 1970s, it has been more likely that an inmate who was sentenced to be executed would die of other causes.

("Ramirez is the 59th inmate condemned in California to have died of natural causes since the state reinstated capital punishment," reports CNN. "Twenty–two others committed suicide, and six died of other causes. The state ... has executed 13 inmates since 1979; one other California offender was executed in Missouri.")

The name "Night Stalker" was given to him in a newspaper report because his crimes always took place at night. It was inspired by the name of a TV movie from the 1970s starring Darren McGavin as a newspaper reporter.

McGavin was the original night stalker, but he committed no crimes — so, in that sense, the name was a misnomer. Ramirez was named after a fictional character who tried to prevent people like Ramirez from committing violent acts.

It would have been more appropriate to name him after the title of one of the songs ("Night Prowler") on his favorite record album, AC/DC's "Highway to Hell."

An avowed satanist, Ramirez's reign of terror began in 1984 and ended in 1985 when, the day after his picture had been made public, he was cornered and beaten by a group of angry Los Angeles residents. They held him until police arrived.

His trial began in 1988; he was convicted the next year and had been in prison ever since.

Because he had been in custody for nearly 25 years, Californians almost certainly gave him no thought anymore — until today when they learned he had died.

No doubt, there are some for whom his death will be the closure for which they have been waiting — perhaps some of his victims who were not killed (and there were a few of those).

For those people, I am happy — especially if the knowledge that Ramirez was behind bars all these years brought them no peace.

Perhaps they will find peace now.

As for Ramirez, well, I'm just glad he's gone.

If he, too, has found some measure of peace, I'm glad.

The Pink Lady and Tricky Dick

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"There's not much to say about the 1950 campaign except that a man ran for Senate who wanted to get there and didn't care how."

Helen Gahagan Douglas
A Full Life (1982)

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Do you think the just–concluded midterm election campaign was vicious, mean–spirited, polarizing?

Well, it was. And it was expensive, too.

But, from what I have read and heard, you shoulda seen the California Senate race 60 years ago. That was a costly one, too. The amount isn't eye popping by today's standards, but in 1950 it was a fortune.

Tomorrow will mark 60 years since Republican Rep. Richard Nixon defeated Democratic Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Sheridan Downey.

Some people say Nixon won because he smeared Douglas that fall, accusing her of being, at the very least, sympathetic to communist causes. The repeated accusations gained credibility when Douglas was slow to respond, in spite of the fact that former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose son was running for governor, urged her to respond more decisively.

If Douglas had been quicker to retaliate, some say, Nixon would have lost that Senate race, and he would have been a man without an office, having abandoned his House seat. He would have been a has–been in California politics, never would have been chosen to run on Eisenhower's ticket two years later and, in the long run, the nation would have been spared his presidency and the Watergate scandal.

I have written here before about the "what–ifs" of history. They're certainly fun to think about. They make great topics for speculation, and I think we're all curious about the road not taken.

But I am doubtful about whether it is true that Douglas could have beaten Nixon. Even in a fantastical alternate reality. And thus it is wrong to give her too much credit/blame for what happened in the next quarter of a century.

It all probably would've happened, anyway.

Nixon and Douglas both entered the race in 1949; at the time, no other politicians were willing to take on Downey. But polls indicated that, when people were asked to choose between Downey and Douglas, Downey came up short, and the incumbent withdrew in March 1950, claiming that his health was not good.

Nixon and Douglas won their primaries, setting up one of the nastiest campaigns in American political history.

Actually, the campaign got nasty in the primaries, which, it should be noted, were handled considerably differently then — in some places — than they are today. The campaign Nixon waged was merely a continuation of the one against Douglas in the primary.

In 1950, the practice of cross–filing — in which a candidate ran not only in his/her own party's primary but the opposing party's primary as well — was permitted. California abolished the practice in 1959, but both Nixon and Douglas ran in each other's party primary, and both finished third.

The runnerup in each primary was a newspaper publisher named Manchester Boddy, a Democrat with no political experience who entered the race after Downey withdrew (and with Downey's blessing) and cross–filed in the Republican primary.

You have to imagine the atmosphere in which the campaign was conducted. It was early in the Cold War. The Russians had only recently successfully detonated a nuclear weapon. Joseph McCarthy was at the height of his anti–communist rhetorical powers.

Boddy never really provided much explanation for his candidacy, as far as I can tell. He had been approached by Democrats in the past to run for office, but he had declined, protesting that he had no interest in elected office. And his reasons for deciding to enter the 1950 race remain unknown.

But, once in the race, he apparently decided he wanted to win.

Unfortunately for Boddy, though, he appears to have had little charisma or flair for public speaking. The only other way to make his campaign competitive appeared to be the use of the smear.

Such McCarthyesque tactics already had been fairly successful that year, resulting in the primary defeats of two Southern senators, so Boddy tried to link Douglas to a congressman named Vito Marcantonio, a notorious New York radical who was said to be a supporter of communist causes. Boddy circulated the accusations in pamphlets printed with red ink.

Picking up that theme, Douglas was labeled "decidedly pink" and "pink shading to deep red" by Boddy's newspaper and others that were affiliated with it. She was called "the pink lady," and Boddy alleged, in his newspaper column, that Douglas belonged to "a small minority of red hots" who were determined to "establish a beachhead on which to launch a Communist attack on the United States."

About two weeks before the primary, Downey re–emerged and made a speech in which he said he did not believe Douglas was qualified to serve in the Senate.

Boddy wasn't successful in winning the nomination, but he did succeed in dividing the party and severely weakening Douglas, whose reluctance to retaliate to the smear campaign encouraged the Republicans to expand on the theme in the fall.

Nixon had been building his anti–communist credentials in his two terms in the House, and he wasted little time linking Douglas to communists.

I guess one of the "highlights" of the Nixon campaign — if one can call it that — was the "Pink Sheet," a flyer printed on pink paper that suggested that sending Douglas to Washington to serve in the Senate would be no different than voting for Marcantonio.

Douglas, the Pink Sheet alleged, had voted with Marcantonio on national security issues. Is that what Californians wanted? the sheet asked.

Eleanor Roosevelt recognized what the Pink Sheet meant and advised Douglas to respond without delay, but Douglas did not. Not long after the debut of the Pink Sheet, an alleged whispering campaign was launched, in which it was said that Douglas' husband, actor Melvyn Douglas, was a communist. His Jewish heritage also was mentioned.

The Pink Sheet appeared to be paying off for Nixon about six weeks before the election when 64 prominent Democrats endorsed him, ostensibly because Douglas' voting record so closely resembled Marcantonio's.

Nixon said Douglas was "pink right down to her underwear."

On Election Day, Nov. 7, 1950, it wasn't even close. Nixon received 59% of the vote, which seems like a pretty impressive achievement for a Republican in a state where voter registration was 58% Democrat and only 37% Republican — except for the fact that most of the statewide officeholders, including the state's popular governor, Earl Warren, were Republicans who had won Democratic support in the past.

But Douglas, too, was deceived by the numbers, and she apparently believed that most Democrats would vote for their party's nominees.

It's hard for me to understand why she might feel complacent. The 1950 midterms — conducted at a time when Gallup reported that the Democratic president had an approval rating of 41% in late October and 33% in early December — would have been difficult for Douglas, anyway, and she must have known it. The Korean War, suspicion of the administration's foreign policy in general and inflation made the electoral environment a hostile one.

Democrats lost ground in both chambers of Congress that November — not as much as they did in this year's midterms but enough to set the stage for Republicans to seize control two years later.

Democrats complained, in the aftermath of the election, that Nixon was another McCarthy and Douglas had been crucified, and there was certainly some truth in that.

Douglas "had been crucified, all right," wrote historian William Manchester, "but the worst spikes had been driven into her by fellow Democrats." Boddy's smear campaign, he said, guaranteed she would lose before the Republicans ever nominated Nixon.

It was suggested that sexism played a role in the vote, and perhaps that was true as well. There was certainly a greater reluctance to elect women to statewide office in 1950 than there is today — when California is represented by not one but two women in the U.S. Senate.

But I also think it was a time when the Cold War/Red Scare was at its most effective as a political wedge in the United States. Boddy and his newspaper made another contribution to American politics in the form of nicknames hung on Douglas and Nixon. In his newspaper column, Boddy dubbed Douglas "the Pink Lady," and someone at the paper called Nixon "Tricky Dick" during that campaign.

Douglas is an interesting figure in American political history. There is a kind of bipolarity in her treatment of that election. She insisted, in her posthumously published memoirs, "Nixon had his victory, but I had mine ... He hadn't touched me. I didn't carry Richard Nixon with me," but she seems to have carried a grudge for the rest of her life.

She campaigned for John F. Kennedy when he narrowly defeated Nixon for the presidency 10 years later, and she campaigned for George McGovern even though he was on his way to a landslide defeat when Nixon sought re–election as president in 1972.

Pollyanna, Please Consult Your Answering Service

Do you recognize the name Robert Shrum?

He's a speech writer and a political consultant. In fact, his greatest claim to fame may well be the memorable speech the late Ted Kennedy delivered at the 1980 Democratic National Convention.

Throughout his career, Shrum has worked for mostly Democrats — I suppose an argument could be made over his first speechwriting job, which was for New York Mayor John Lindsay, who famously switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in the early 1970s.

In his career, he has worked for practically a who's who in Democratic politics — Kennedy, Ed Muskie, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (briefly), Dick Gephardt, Bob Kerrey, Al Gore, John Kerry.

So I guess it goes without saying that he leans toward Democrats, even in times such as these — and even though he has compiled a dismal track record in presidential campaigns.

All things considered, you might want to take his assessment with a grain of salt.

Anyway, Shrum says, "I now think the Democrats will hold the Congress —yes, the House as well as the Senate — and turn back high–profile Republican challengers in California and elsewhere."

As Arte Johnson used to say on Rowan and Martin's Laugh–In, "Very interesting ..."

Shrum contends that the seemingly dormant Democratic base is "stirring" and that, in true Karl Rovian fashion (circa 2004), it will rise from its slumber and save the Democrats in next month's midterms.

On what does he base this reasoning? Well, a few things, actually.

For one, he asserts that recent polls, like Gallup's generic congressional ballot, have been tightening because "African–Americans and Hispanics are re–entering the likely electorate."

Now, let's be clear about a few things. Black voters have long supported Democrats, by wide margins, in good times and bad. So the real question is not whether black voters will support Democrats — they will. The real question is how many will show up to vote without Barack Obama at the top of the ballot — and the best guess that I hear from most observers is "not that many." At least, not enough to make the kind of difference Shrum thinks it can.

It reminds me of something my Democratic friends repeatedly told me in the weeks before the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama's presence on the ballot, they told me, would motivate so many black voters that they would put Southern states that hadn't voted for a Democrat since Carter or Lyndon Johnson solidly into the Democratic column.

And, to be fair, states like Virginia, North Carolina and Florida did vote Democratic — but none of the other Southern states, even the ones with extraordinarily large black populations, voted Democratic. Black voters were clearly enthused in 2008 — but they were outnumbered at the polls.

As Gallup's poll observes, the current enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats is still in the 20–point range. Democrats would need a virtually unanimous turnout from all blacks who are old enough to vote — and many of them aren't even registered.

And, while Hispanics are the fastest–growing demographic group in America today, their participation in elections has been sparse in the past. Perhaps, in House districts that lie along or near the U.S.–Mexican border — where immigration debates have been the most intense and Hispanic populations tend to be larger than they are in many places — Hispanic turnout may be higher than it has been in the past.

But, nationally, even fewer Hispanics (proportionately) are registered to vote than blacks. And, considering the meager Hispanic populations in many states that are north of the border, it's hard to see how they can have that much influence.

To capitalize on those two groups, as Shrum apparently thinks Democrats will, would require a massive national registration drive (and I have neither heard nor seen anything that suggests something like that is in the works) followed by a massive get–out–the–vote effort on Election Day.

Both require more motivation than I have seen from most Democrats this year.

Anyway, this inexplicable surge in black and Hispanic voters in which Shrum places so much faith apparently will be responsible for saving Sen. Barbara Boxer and former Gov. Jerry Brown in California.

But how much of an accomplishment would that be? California voted Republican in presidential politics when Californians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were running, but it's been in the Democratic column for the last 20 years.

And Californians haven't sent a Republican to the Senate since 1988. So the fact that Boxer is leading in recent polls shouldn't be a surprise. What has been a surprise is the fact that her race against former Hewlett–Packard CEO Carly Fiorina was ever close enough to be considered a tossup.

If Boxer wins another term, it will not be remarkable that she was triumphant. That was expected all along.

Likewise, Brown — whose eight–year tenure as governor predated the passage of the state's term limits law — had to be the favorite in the governor's race. At least, I always thought he would be the favorite over former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

True, the incumbent governor is a Republican. And, since World War II, Republicans have been more successful in California's gubernatorial races than its Senate campaigns. But Brown is the only Democrat to be elected governor of California twice in the last 40 years.

Perhaps it is that reputation that prompted Shrum to speculate that Brown " has pulled ahead" of Whitman. Or maybe he's seen a poll that I haven't. The results I have seen indicate a still–volatile race. In recent days, a survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California shows a deadlocked race — which is, essentially, what Rasmussen Reports and the most recent Field Poll were saying.

Maybe Shrum is writing about the CNN/Time poll that was released around the same time. It shows both Boxer and Brown leading their Republican opponents by nine percentage points among likely voters.

But that seems like an awfully wide margin in a race that most other polls have found to be much closer. And, whether fairly or not, CNN's poll has been accused in the past of a Democratic bias. So there is reason to be suspicious of its results.

Shrum also is encouraged by his belief that Washington Sen. Patty Murray "strengthened her position" against her Republican challenger, businessman Dino Rossi.

But this is truly a baffling conclusion. I mean, Murray led by nine points in an Elway Poll in early September and a CNN/Time poll in mid–September, but since that time, a SurveyUSA poll shows her lead at two points — and Rasmussen Reports actually shows Rossi in front.

Then Shrum asserts that the Tea Party is "the gift that keeps on giving" — and it may turn out to be precisely that, but Shrum's arguments sound screwy when compared to poll findings.

"The tea–imbibing Republicans are a twofer for Democrats," Shrum writes. "They scare mainstream voters and motivate the Democratic base, too."

While Christine O’Donnell may be "unelectable" in Delaware, as Shrum suggests, his faith in the Tea Partiers to unite Democrats and mainstream voters seems a bit misplaced.

After all,

• he writes that "the ultra–conservative Pat Toomey ... has suddenly hit troubled waters" in Pennsylvania. Really? He's been consistently leading by 5–7 percentage points in recent polls.
  
  But Shrum points to a single exception — the Susquehanna Polling & Research survey from Sept. 23–26 showing Toomey's lead down to three points
  
  "A race that was written off is winnable," he claims — yet he ignores a Rasmussen Reports poll in which Toomey's lead is nearly double digits.
  
  And a Franklin & Marshall College poll showed the same margin in favor of Toomey — albeit with nearly one–third of respondents undecided.


• and Shrum writes that, in Kentucky, "Jack Conway's making his case for [Democrats] to come home. Or perhaps [Tea Partier] Rand Paul is making it for him."
  
  Paul's lead is within the margin of error, he asserts, but the left–leaning Daily Kos/Public Policy Polling survey in mid–September showed Paul leading by seven points and a recent Rasmussen Reports poll found Paul was leading by 11 points.

He gets around the polls that don't conform to his particular world view by telling the readers, "I'm dispensing in every race with the riotously Republican Rasmussen surveys, which are the psephological counterpart to the Laffer Curve on a cocktail napkin."

Problem is, it isn't just Rasmussen that is reporting findings that contradict his conclusion.

Nevertheless, he says, "So I believe the Senate's safe. But what about the House?"

He asserts his unfounded confidence that "[t]he change in the makeup of the electorate can close the gap in the generic vote and let the Democrats inch ahead — but the base has to continue tuning in and then it has to turn out. That depends on President Obama — and on progressive Democrats deciding that right now the stakes in this campaign are more important than the reflex instinct to complain."

Happily — for Shrum — "[t]he Obama of 2008 has returned with a message and a mission," which is tax cuts for the rapidly vanishing middle class as opposed to retaining the "Bush tax cuts for the wealthy."

Admit it. You knew that, somehow, he'd find a way to work in Dubya. Yep, he doesn't like it when voters "complain" about Democrats who are in office right now and must defend their turf in a hostile environment — but it's OK to keep flogging a former president who has been away from Washington for nearly two years.

On top of that, though, I am skeptical of the coalition that Shrum is relying upon — minorities, liberals ... and the young, who Obama has been courting lately but who remain unpersuaded of the need to return to the polls to help people they just elected two years ago. Shrum concedes that they "haven't yet followed Hispanics and African–Americans into the likely voter column."

Shrum's problem is that Hispanics and African–Americans haven't arrived in that column yet, either.

"Obama can change the political weather by a few degrees," he writes, "and that might be just enough. In the process, he has to inspire and not just scold disappointed progressives."

That's another substantial "if." Scolding has become SOP for the parental/professor president.

Frankly, there are too many "ifs" and not nearly enough time — particularly when the overall objective can be summed up this way: Victory is possible "assuming Democrats, especially the young, are sensible enough to understand that we are past the excitement of 2008. There is more to achieving change than standing, cheering, and voting for it once, and then standing aside."

Pollyanna, please call your office.