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The Convention That Needn't Have Been The Great Democratic Sleep-in

The Convention That Needn't Have Been The Great Democratic Sleep-in image The Convention That Needn't Have Been The Great Democratic Sleep-in image
Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
August
Year
1976
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The Convention That Needn't Have Been

The Great Democratic Sleep-In

by David Fenton

The scene is the New York Hilton Hotel. Delegates, alternates, and big-shots representing the Michigan delegation to the 1976 Democratic convention are "caucusing" in a hotel ballroom.

Nobody is paying much attention to the proceedings. Instead, people seem far more interested in greeting their buddies or shaking hands with Jim O'Hara (D-Mich.), who's running tor the U.S. Senate. The hum of the room drowns out the podium speakers, until Morley Winograd, Michigan's Democratic Party chieftain, announces that we will now talk about who gets tonight's guest passes to Madison Square Gardens.

The room falls silent instantly, while all eyes switch to Morley to find out how to get friends and relatives into the convention's "honored guest" gallery. The guest passes are the hottest issue of the caucus.

This incident bespeaks much of the atmosphere and productivity of the great Democratic gathering two weeks ago in the Big Apple.

The consensus among the almost 10,000 reporters covering the event is one big yawn - about the hottest story they've had to work on was following Amy Carter to the Central Park Zoo. Network commentators are reduced to the familiar extemporaneous drivel. As the first Democratic Convention to be entirely a media event, the actual floor proceedings, votes, roll-calls, etc. were irrelevant - Jimmy Carters victory was cinched the night of the Ohio primary, anyway.

Watching the TV box is, this year, a far better way to get the story than actually sitting on the convention floor. Because the convention isn't designed for the delegates, it is designed for TV. After all, without network coverage, the convention would basically not exist.

Unity was the catch-word tor the Democrats

continua! on page 7

The Convention That Needn't Have Been

THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC SLEEP-IN

continued from the cover

this year, and one really cannot blame them for going to extreme lengths to preserve it. The memory of the 1972 floor fights which resulted in George McGovern's acceptance speech being delivered to a sleeping nation at 3 a.m. still haunts the Dems, from George Wallace to Jerry Brown. Still, watching the Carter deputies squelch an effort on the floor to allow one lousy hour of debate on three major issues is sobering indeed.

You have to hand it to Carter's mostly under-35 campaign staff, though. The whole thing is smoothly organized down to the smallest detail. An incredible engineering feat, both the campaign and the convention, and certainly a tribute to Carter's much-vaunted organizational skills.

After attending the Michigan caucus Monday morning, your reporter saunters stairs to check out the lively California delegation and ts zen prince emeritus, Jerry Brown. These people really are behind their 38-year-old governor - wild cheers, ovations and the like. I see more energy among the California delegation than anywhere else at the convention.

Then it's over to the Statler Hilton, across from the Garden, for a gathering of the Democratic left, hosted by Detroit Congressman John Conyers, where Torn Hayden is the featured speaker.

Hayden, fresh from gaining 1.2 million votes, or 40%, in the California Democratic Senatorial Primary (spending $1 million to do it) addresses about 200 people on the need to keep the progressive spirit of '68 and '72 alive in the party. He urges the crowd not to give up but to penetrate the Democrats more deeply so that future conventions could be less of a big sleep. Torn eloquently expresses confidence that the generation of activists of the late 1960's is now moving into positions of power and influence in politics and society at large, and that change s inevitable.

Conyers takes the podium next to reflect upon how political elections are second-rate affairs until corporate power is squarely confronted. "If we don't deal with the problem of the corporate, entrenched enterprise which now forms that part of government sitting in misery alongside all of us in the public government, making all the major decisions domestically and in terms of foreign policy, then we will have ultimately failed. ..."

Opening night at Madison Square is demonstration night. New York's hospital workers, under the banner of the very vocal Local 1199, are on strike, and 6,000 of them are rallying on Eighth Avenue. Leon Davis, the union head, is shouting at the delegates across the street that they "better not get sick in New York." The next instant, Davis collapses and is ushered off in a cab.

The Yippies - yes, some such assemblage s still around - are marching around with Wavy Gravy of the old Hog Farm and banners proclaiming "Nobody For President" in 1976. A gay march is dispersing at another end of the block, and the pro-abortion forces are finishing their rally. Meanwhile, the New York police are keeping everyone in their own little protesting niche.

But the high point of the opening night came after the convention dispersed. More stories were written about the Rolling Stone "Cracker Chic" party than just about anything else in the New York press. Stone's editor Jann Wenner, after endorsing Carter, decided to throw a gala and invite Congressmen and women, Senators, stars and media heavies of all stripes in the Stone's continuing quest for legitimacy.

The crush gets so bad at the door and inside that the entrance is blocked by police, and celebrities Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Paul Simon, politicians McGeorge Bundy, Bella Abzug, and Torn Hayden, journalism types Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Cari Bernstein, Dorothy Schiff, and Seymour Hersch - among many others-simply can't get in. Not so Walter Cronkite - he gets his own police wedge right through to the door. So the celebs and celeb-watchers who can't get in hold a block party on East 68th Street.

Tuesday Barbara Jordan, the black Texas Congresswoman who gained fame during the Nixon impeachment proceedings, I gets the strongest response of anyone at the event. A cry goes up from the floor calling for Jordan as Vice President, but some of it seems slightly patronizing. John Glenn gives a speech so spacey that no one listens.

Walking around the floor, I spot Mayor Daley talking with his wife and cronies. Dan Rather looks better with make-up on TV than in the flesh. A rather sporty-looking George McGovern is signing autographs. The floor is so crowded one can hardly move.

Hubert Humphrey really is pink and bubbling with amphetamines. But he gets his dander up about these Republicans who "preach the work ethic and then insure unemployment." The old fire is still burning in Hubert. McGovern takes the podium to preach that the disunity of the Democrats elected Richard Nixon twice. No disunity here, George.

Wednesday is roll call day, but the Ohio delegation's vote-putting Jimmy over the top is anticlimactic at best. During the afternoon Jerry Brown hosts a benefit party for Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of California. Brown later has Chavez nominate him at the convention.

Thursday is the most moving day of the whole shebang. Fritz Mondale, a V-P choice obviously made in concession to the doubting liberal wing of the party, gives a rousing, arm-waving speech that mentions Nixon and Watergate for the first time at the convention.

And then Jimmy himself mounts the podium. Slowly, methodically, relishing every dramatic moment, and quoting (slightly mis-quoting, actually) from Bob Dylan, Jimmy delivers his version of the Sermon on the Mount.

Not for nothing is this man a Sunday School teacher. The speech promises to heal the nation's wounds, to not let "the big shot crooks go free while the poor ones go to jail," to revamp the disgraceful wealth-protecting U.S. tax system, to reorganize government, to end waste, to guarantee jobs and income for all. It is a masterful speech, thoroughly platitudinous, but all in all very moving.

In fact, Carter has delegates and spectators literally crying n the aisles. As in the primaries, the Atomic Peanut displays his obvious talent for uniting those present in the hope that the nation can change positively.

As a finale, Carter brings Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. to the podium to deliver a benediction. "I've been up to Heaven," the eider King offers, "while watching Carter and Mondale speak." Coretta King is standing nearby. People are visibly moved again by the rousing revivalist proceeding. Here stand the Democrats, united, a white southerner running for president being blessed by a black southerner whose son was murdered in the struggle for equality.

Then the entire assemblage launches into "We Shall Overcome." A nice vision. It would feel good to believe in something like that. But Lyndon Johnson sang "We Shall Overcome" too, then went right on overcoming the Vietnamese people with death. Politicians will say anything to be elected.

Afterwards, at the Carter victory party at the Americana Hotel, one of Carter's press secretaries tells me that he feels his work with Carter is a logical progression from his anti-war student activist days. He is 26. Carter's chief of scheduling, 28, saved my ass from the security forces attempting to eject me, and sermonizes that I'll trust Jimmy after he is elected.

These southerners at the party are a breed of young activists who have never held power before, and the Washington and New York establishment is apparently scared to death, because this time, the nominee isn't one of them.

Or is he? A week after his rousing, populist acceptance speech and promises of economic reform, Carter s covering second base at the "21 Club" by assuring top business leaders like Henry Ford II, J. Paul Austin of Coca Cola, and Edgar Bronfman of Seagram that "I don't intend for government to dominate business" and reaffirming his belief in "free enterprise in the multinational corporation."

But hanging with his campaign staff until five in the morning, I can be sure of one thing. Jimmy Carter has some very bright, committed, and socially conscious people working very hard for him, and they pulled off what everyone said was impossible. Since Carter is pretty much a sure win against Reagan or Ford, it will be interesting to see how long they're able to stick with him, and how much power he puts into their hands come next January.

All photographs of the convention were taken by Steve Kagen, a freelance photographer from Ann Arbor.

Here stand the Democrats, united, a white southerner running for president being blessed by a black southerner whose son was murdered in the struggle for equality.