Six Degrees of Peter Feld

Forty years ago today, November 5, 1968, I was a 10-year-old boy watching my first election returns, desperately rooting for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat, who narrowly trailed former Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s victory, which wasn’t announced until the next day, has cast a shadow over my entire life and career in politics.

It came at the end of an election that makes even this incredible year seem tame. That year, 1968, saw President Lyndon B. Johnson abort his reelection bid after nearly losing the New Hampshire primary, the assassinations of one leading presidential candidate and one legendary civil rights leader, extensive rioting (much of it by police) at the Democratic convention in Chicago, the nomination of a Democratic candidate who hadn’t run in a single primary, and a major third-party candidate who symbolized racial intolerance. I followed it all, and spent hours leafleting my Riverdale apartment complex for my hero, the “peace candidate,” Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.

Four years later, in 1972, the Vietnam War was still raging. Nixon had widened it, and had killed more American kids and Vietnamese peasants than even LBJ. I spent every afternoon volunteering for another peace candidate, George McGovern. My guy was down in the polls — 30 points at one point — but I thought, if I just hand out enough leaflets…. The night before the election, I sat in bed with a pad of paper, adding up the most likely states to give McGovern the minimum 270 electoral votes he would need to upset President Nixon.

The next day, McGovern lost 49 states.

I had to laugh when Ben Affleck appeared on Saturday Night Live last weekend and listed his trail of losing candidates. I had almost the same list, though mine started earlier. 1968? McCarthy and Humphrey. McGovern in ‘72, Mo Udall in ‘76, Ted Kennedy in ‘80 (never supported the dreadful Carter), Mondale in ‘84. Thinking politics could be my career, I spent 18 months working for Michael Dukakis’s 1988 campaign, and in 1992 served as director of research for Paul Tsongas against Bill Clinton in the primaries. Disgusted with Clinton’s moves to the center, I threw my vote to Bob Dole in ‘96 and loved McCain in the 2000 primaries, but came back to the Democratic party for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. A four-decade-long parade of losers.

So last night, I watched one more set of election returns. Instead of my 1968 bedroom and an old black-and-white TV, I was at the CNN Grill, watching the colorful coverage on large, glitzy projection screens, being served cocktails and canapes, and sending messages that helped announce the results to people over the world from a magic typewriter that that would have made that 10-year-old boy gasp with delight.

And just as in ‘68, I had supported a different candidate for the Democratic nomination. Years of political disappointment had made me immune to the message Obama preached during the primaries. Change? I asked. Now? Inspiration? Forget that. We’re screwed. The environment is toast. The Supreme Court, ditto. The Middle East is an irredeemable mess. Likewise the economy. We don’t need inspiration, I thought — we need competence. Someone seasoned and practical to grimly go to work and clean up whatever George Bush hasn’t ruined for all eternity.

And so I didn’t much like Obama’s huge rallies during the primaries, his rhetoric, the “fierce urgency of now,” the “change we can believe in.” I held out for Hillary until the last possible minute (keeping my losing streak intact) and when she lost like all the others, I shrugged. Just one more election where we won’t get the one we really needed. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

But this fall, something changed. When the economy hit the skids, and things looked really dicey, Obama showed a coolness, a competence, and a focus — a grown-up-ness — in the middle of chaos that has been missing from presidential politics my entire lifetime. Forget “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” We’ve been here all along, and it’s done us zero good. He was the one we’d been waiting for. I saw him transition from the flowery rhetoric that had left me cold, to a calm reassurance that held out hope - hope! - that we aren’t doomed to slide into an economic abyss.

So last night, I hung out at the CNN Grill with friends and random Internet microcelebrities, wrote my blog posts for Gawker, drank the drinks, ate the food, and waited for the big speeches. McCain came through, and finally reminded me why I had once liked him. Then Obama. His best speech ever, because of the moment as well as the words.

And then I left the Time-Warner Center with a friend and walked down Broadway. I heard horns blaring and people screaming. Crowds packed the triangular medians of Times Square, climbing on fences and lampposts. Strangers embraced. People stuck their heads into cabs and hugged the drivers. People danced, sang, and chanted “Yes We Can” into the night. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t stop smiling, though I was almost in tears.

For the first time in 40 long years of politics, I had hope. And I realized: We finally got the one we needed.