The hate against George McGovern is so stupid, it is hard to read it again.
Confrontng his critics, McGovern wrote a column in the Washington Post during the 2004 presidential campaign, about it. That time, I posted a diary about it. I link to it because the story is no longer on the website of the WP.
And several paragraphs are worth reading today:
"There seem to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But here at home, 100,000 Americans die each year from alcoholism. Multitudes are suffering from clinical depression or obesity or other disorders. And in the world at large a child dies from hunger every five seconds. Those are the weapons of mass destruction that disturb my rest. <...>
Is the central lesson of '72 that George McGovern lost everywhere except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia? If so, what is the lesson of 1984, when my friend Walter Mondale lost everywhere except Minnesota and the District? Is the lesson of these campaigns that Midwestern liberals can never reach the White House? [...]
Isn't the big lesson of 1972 this: Beware a president whose campaign dishonesty got him expelled from office shortly after his landslide win? Is winning an election worth dishonoring the nation? Am I the one who should be ashamed about 1972?"
Good luck today.