I voted for Dick Gregory for President in 1968. Guys like me helped to put Richard Nixon in the White House and prolonged the Vietnam War for years, with thousands more deaths of Americans and Vietnamese.
Let me explain. I watched the tv coverage of the Democratic Presidential Convention in Chicago in the Summer of ’68. I saw protestors beaten and gassed, heard that a majority of Americans approved of the beatings and arrests, saw Mayor Daley scream “You fucking kike” at Sen. Abraham Ribicoff when he criticized the Chicago police, saw Hubert Humphrey unable to articulate an alternate policy on Vietnam until about three weeks before the election, and then only in a very tepid speech. Humphrey simply was not enough of a leftist for me.
I let my anger get in the way of my good sense. I voted my feelings rather than my rational thought. Dick Gregory was running as a Peace and Freedom Party candidate. In Pennsylvania he was not on the ballot, but you could write him in. I did, and thus joined a group of impractical and downright stupid people whose votes were instrumental in Nixon’s victory.
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