The Biggest Loser of All

This commentary explains who constitutes a winner in life, and who is actually a loser.

He looks at two people who have recently made the news: the late South Dakota senator George McGovern, who is remembered as losing in one of the biggest landslides in the history of American presidential elections; and Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest winners in the history of sports.

Guess who really IS the winner and who is really the loser?

"Winning" and "losing" have little to do with placing first or getting all kinds of material goodies. It has to do with conducting oneself in an ethical manner and treating others with respect; in short, with integrity:

Yet, though he took controversial stances and paid for it politically, McGovern is remembered today as a man of uncommon decency and principle, a man who was true to himself. When he died, former GOP Sen. Robert Dole saluted him, writing in the Washington Post of how McGovern attended the funeral of Pat Nixon, wife of the man who handed him that bruising defeat. Asked why he would want to be there, McGovern replied, “You can’t keep on campaigning forever.” The remark, wrote Dole, was typical of his former political foe, “a true gentleman who was one of the finest public servants I had the privilege to know.”

If you’ve got to be a loser, there are worse ways to be remembered.

And that brings us to the winner — Lance Armstrong — who made headlines by cheating, allegedly. Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, has been dogged by allegations of doping for years. His steadfast defense has been that he never failed a drug test.

But a few days ago, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a damning report describing Armstrong as the ringleader of “the most sophisticated, professional and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” The report, said to be based on sworn testimony from 26 people, including 11 former teammates, depicts him as threatening anyone who might rat him out and pressing other cyclists to join him in using banned substances.

Some people, like Lance Armstrong apparently, operate on a different moral plane, if you can call it morality at all.

Etc.

Millions of people are without power thanks to the hurricane.

Things are very slowly getting back on track.
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Lance Armstrong remains an admired figure throughout the world:

Adelaide, Australia:

The Australian city of Adelaide has stripped Lance Armstrong of its highest honor — the key to the city — following the removal of his seven Tour de France titles.

Edenbridge in the U.K.:

The disgraced American cyclist has been chosen as the latest celebrity to be burned in effigy during an English town's nationally famous Bonfire Night celebrations.

Edenbridge in southeast England has built a 30-foot model of Armstrong, who was stripped recently of his seven Tour de France titles for doping offenses.

The effigy, to be burnt Saturday, sports a sign saying "For sale, racing bike, no longer required."

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I will make a prediction for Tuesday: Senate stays Democratic, House stays GOP though it loses some seats, and Obama will carry all of the states he carried in 2008 except for NC and IN but still will win.

The election was over when Mitt messed up with the Libya question in the second debate. The October Surprise with the weather sealed the deal.

Speaking of the election, lots and lots of letter writers decided to give the Des Moines Register a piece of their collective minds after that paper decided to endorse Mitt Romney.
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The WSWS had a nice write-up on the late senator George McGovern. His campaign and defeat are seen as pivotal in the rightward lurch of the Democratic Party.

Obituary: George McGovern

Former South Dakota senator George McGovern, 90, has finally died after suffering from some health problems in the past year. In the past few days, he was in hospice care.

McGovern was a truly kind man who held high standards. He was a World War II hero and later went into politics. He was one of the brave few who opposed the Vietnam War before it became "fashionable" to oppose it. McGovern ran for the presidency in 1968, but he didn't get very far. He would make that attempt four years later. However, that run was complicated thanks to dirty tricks by Nixon's henchmen in their desire to have an easy opponent for Nixon to beat.

We know now what the Watergate scandal was truly about. It was about rigging an election to help President Richard Nixon in his re-election bid. He was having problems during his first term, especially regarding his Vietnam War policies, and a number of Democratic candidates rose up to challenge him. These challengers included George McGovern, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and Ed Muskie. Of these five main Democratic candidates (there were about a dozen originally), the most difficult challenger for Nixon's people was Ed Muskie, regarded at the time as more a "centrist" Democrat (he would be a card-carrying "socialist" these days). In fact, Nixon was in serious trouble politically and it was not at all certain early in 1971 and going into 1972 he would get another term. Nixon, in his paranoid state, felt he had to do something. He and his associates hired some people to do dirty tricks on the Democratic candidates, especially focusing on Muskie, and those tricks (memorably called "ratfucking" by dirty trickster Donald Segretti) succeeded beyond the henchmens' wildest dreams. The goal was to get the more competitive candidates out of the way to make way for the easiest candidate for Nixon to beat, McGovern. McGovern, for all of his virtues, was basically a one-issue candidate (Vietnam). Nixon's boys also committed a variety of other dirty tricks and outright crimes, including the Watergate break-in, to solidify Nixon's re-election chances, but the primary rigging was critical. Thanks to the dirty tricks campaign (and the attempted assassination of George Wallace), George McGovern would be the last candidate standing.

It was smooth sailing for Nixon, or so his people thought, but the Watergate scandal gradually unfolded until it consumed the United States government during the years 1973-1974, culminating in Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency.

McGovern, buried in a 49-state defeat in the 1972 elections, continued his work in the Senate until he was defeated for re-election in 1980. I would say the surprise wasn't his defeat but that he managed to be a liberal senator in a conservative state for so long. He remained in the public eye, giving his opinions on various subjects and being an elder statesman of the Democratic Party until shortly before his death.

From the obit:

Mr. McGovern left teaching to become executive secretary of the South Dakota Democratic Party, and almost single-handedly revived a moribund party in a heavily Republican state.

Month after month, he drove across South Dakota in a beat-up sedan, making friends and setting up county organizations. In 1956, gaining the support of farmers who had become New Deal Democrats during the Depression, he was elected to Congress himself, defeating an overconfident incumbent Republican. He became the first Democratic congressman from his state in more than 20 years.

After two terms he left the House to run for the Senate in 1960 and was soundly beaten by the sitting Republican, Karl E. Mundt. He then became a special assistant to the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, and director of Kennedy’s Food for Peace program, an effort to provide food for the hungry in poor countries.

In 1962, Mr. McGovern ran for the Senate again, and this time he won, by 597 votes, defeating Joseph H. Bottum, a Republican filling the term of Senator Francis H. Case, who had died in office.

The acceptance speech, given in the wee hours of the morning:

One Republican-Picked

sacrificial lamb decides to ditch Clinton and endorse another GOP-picked stooge.

How apt. Obama, though, could actually lose all 50 states because right now he is tied with McCain in Massachusetts, the only state McGovern won in 1972.

Democrats really have a death wish this election. These dumb shits would rather lose all 50 states than alienate a key constituency.

That is what this is all about.

Campaign Notes.

Chelsea Clinton let a questioner have it when he asked about the idiotic Lewinsky mess.
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It may be true, George that it would be easier for a black man to be elected president than a woman, but that does not mean Barack Obama is more electable than Hillary Clinton.

In fact, Obama would lose so badly to John McCain it would make McGovern's landslide loss to Nixon look like a landslide itself.

Obama can't win a single state against McCain. Clinton would do much better, although I doubt she could pull off a victory in the Electoral College.
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CBS wants a debate in the worst way, and that's probably the way it will get it.
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Campaign Notes.

Presidential campaigns are scrambling to find volunteers here in Reno and the surrounding area.

I plan to do some volunteering during my upcoming break and off and on until the caucuses.
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To the cynical among us, former senator George McGovern's endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president is apt, for if she ever got the nomination she could wind up losing the way he did in 1972.

I exaggerate just a tad, of course. Hillary would win some states, but she simply wouldn't win enough to prevail in the Electoral College, at least in a two-way match-up. She could conceivably win if by some chance the right wing runs a third-party candidate, but I don't think the religious right is going to do that. I believe that in order to pacify that group, Mike Huckabee will be on the GOP ticket.

But always remember the voters didn't actually choose McGovern in the primaries; thanks to Nixon's dirty tricks mob, they made sure more electable candidates such as Muskie, Humphrey, and even Scoop Jackson were out of the running.

The 1972 election was an early example of sophisticated election rigging, and it got perfected over the years.
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