love and loyalty.

Bill Clinton, the smartest politician alive today, said this - "Democrats like to fall in love, and Republicans like to fall in line." I would add one other note about my political party - Democrats like to fall in love first, and fall in line later.

2004 - We fell in love with Howard Dean and fell in line with John Kerry.
2000- We briefly fell in love with Bill Bradley, who ran to the left of Gore. Gore beat Bradley 52 to 48% in New Hampshire. And then never came close again.
1996- We had a lover.
1992- If you look at it closely Harkin, Tsongas and Jerry Brown all titillated - as did Clinton until the sex scandals broke - and then he made his "comeback" by coming in second in N.H. After that Clinton the moderate White Southern Democrat was our lover and our leader - in fact Tsongas was deployed to make sure Brown did not win in New York - the pesky left wing of the party being what it is.
1988- final delegate count - Michael Dukakis 2687 - Jesse Jackson 1218 - back then we fell in love with Jesse and fell in line with Dukakis.

1984- Loved Gary Hart - Fell in line with Walter Mondale.

1980 - Fell back in love with a Kennedy and fell in line behind President Carter.

1976- Had a late blooming love affair with Jerry Brown that did not pan out. ABC - anybody but Carter - became a movement on the Left to stop Carter. But it was too late.

1972 - interesting year - The one the Left loved got the nod. Much of the party was so angry about it that delegates openly worked for Nixon. Some Dems angry that McGovern got the nod instead of Muskie voted for Mao Tse Tung for vice president at the convention.

1968 We fell in love with Eugene McCarthy, then Robert Kennedy, and fell in line Hubert Humphrey. Of course Kennedy's murder made a difference but the night he was shot the delegate count was :
Hubert Humphrey 561
Robert Kennedy 393
Eugene McCarthy 258.