How long, O’ Lord … How long? Where willl it end? The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasing likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct.
— Fear and Loathing ’72

Sixteen years is plenty of time for even dumb people to learn just about anything they need to, especially when the difference between winning and losing is usually a matter of life or death, professionally, in the business of big-time politics. It is a question of enlightened self-interest — learn quick or die.

But there are exceptions, as always, like Joan of Arc, Lyndon LaRouche, and even Gary Hart — which is not really fair in Gary’s case; it was not that he couldn’t learn, he just had different priorities. They jeered and called him crazy when he quit, but polls taken immedieately after the election had him as the Demo front-runner for 1992.

It was the kind of news that nobody wants to hear, like having your pre-marriage blood test handed back to you in a lead bag or getting a job as the next sherrif of Sicily … Richard Nixon might handle a horror like that , or maybe William Burroughs, but no other names come to mind. Some things are too ugly to even gossip about.

Gary was unavailable for comment on the ’92 poll, and his former campaign manager, Bill Dixon, has long since moved to Bangkok. Other Democrats wept openly at the news, but most just stared blankly. “The front-runner for ’92?” one asked. “Are you crazy? I’d rather have a truckload of pig entrails dumped in my front yard by some of those tattooed guys from Yakuza.”

It is an ancient and honorable method of colleting debts in Japan, but not yet chic in this country. The Yakuza, however, are said to be infiltrating American cities at a rate that will soon make them the second most powerful political organization in this nation, behind only the Republican Party.

The Mafia ranks No. 3 — followed by the Roman Catholic Church, the IRS, the U.S. Congress, and American Marijuana Growers’ Association.

Indeed. There are many rooms in the mansion. James Angelton said that back when the CIA was still a ranking power. …

The Democratic Party is not even listed in the top twenty, despite a number four ranking two years ago. It was a shocking plunge.

“The Democrats shouldn’t even be listed in the top forty,” said political analyst Harold Conrad. “They have become the party of losers.”

That is probably wishful thinking — but at ten to one it might float, even in Las Vegas. The last time a major political party self-destructed was in 1853, when the Whigs went belly-up despite the leadership of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Quincy Adams. They had ceased to stand for anything except pure politics.

“They refused to learn,” said Conrad. “they became the New Dumb, and then they died.”

If that is the only issue, the Democrats appear to be doomed. They have not learned anything about presidential politics since 1960, and have lost five out of the last six elections despite a consistently powerful showing in state and local elections. While Dukakis lost in forty states, the Democratic Party added to its control of Congress with a net gain of five seats in the House and two in the Senate.

The dumb are never with us for long, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Republicans learn faster than Democrats. … Consider the crude learning experience that fell like a huge snake around the neck of the national Republican Party in 1964, when they were forced to go public as the party of Dumb Brutes and Rich People, and then see themselves flogged in the general election by 16 million votes.

When Goldwater was forced to wallow in the horror of public defeat, many experts said he was not wallowing alone, that the whole Republican Party was wallowing with him. The GOP was doomed, like the Whigs, to a cheap and meaningless fate.

But not for long. Four years later, Richard Nixon came back from the dead and ran the Democrats out of power with a 500,000 vote victory over the wretched arch-liberal, Hubert Humphrey. …

It was 1969 — the Death Year — and this time it was Democrats who ran amok. If the campaign had been conducted under the Rules of War — which it was: a civil war — thousands of hate-crazy young Democrats would have been tortured to death by their own kind, or killed in the streets like wild animals. Both Johnson and Humphrey would have been executed for treason.

We were all crazy, that year, and many people developed aggressive attitudes. When I packed my bags for Chicago, there was nothing unusual about including a Bell motorcycle helmet, yellow ski goggles, a new pair of Chuck Taylors All-Stars, and a short billy-club. Packing for Chicago was like taking off for Club Med.

The Democratic Party has never recovered from that convention. It is a wound that still festers, and these people are not quite healers. They have blown five out of six presidential elections since then, and their only victory came after a criminal Republican president was dragged out of the White House in a frenzy of shame.

It was no big trick to beat Gerald Ford in 1976. He was clearly Nixon’s creature, and the GOP was massively disgraced. It was a friendly preacher from Georgia against a gang of crooks. … And even then Carter blew a big lead and won by only two points.

Four years later he was crushed by Ronald Reagan, a goofy version of Goldwater, who ruled for two terms and then anointed his successor while Democrats embarrassed themselves once again.

Party Chairman Paul Kirk should be whipped like a red-headed stepchild, and the others should be deported to Pakistan. Any major opposition party dominated by shaggy whores and failed dingbats not only cripples the two-party system but insults the whole democracy.

Found in Generation of Swine and found in Songs of the Doomed.

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