I also recall that the energized college and high school set thought McGovern would win easily. But our parents were the WWII generation, the Silent Majority and it was a landslide win for Nixon.

But Obama is not McGovern, McGovern was a fool but not as charasmatic as Obama. It was obvious to me in high school that McGovern would lose and the Shrivers lived behind my high school, so they were familiar to us.

Obama is more dangerous, less experienced than McGovern and smarter. He has generated amazing interest and getting 3-1 people out to vote in the primaries.

I think Obama is more like the Kennedy phenomen that happened when I was in elementary school. JFK won then and he was more like what a Republican is today compared to what Democrats have changed to be. This is very scary and I fear what foolish voters will bring to us with an Obama win. I do not see the GOP having the demographics and voter participation to get the requisite number to out vote the Obama voters. I can only hope he craters and so far he has not. Clintons have not been able to touch him. I just hope that more people become scared at the messiah feel and reject Obama.

McGovern’s clarion call was “The bombing will stop on inauguration day.” I went to bed on election night confident that McGovern would be president-elect when I awoke. When I learned that Nixon had been easily re-elected I was in a state of shock and disbelief. How the hell did that happen? Everybody I knew hated Nixon.

By the time Pauline Kael had a similar moment of disbelief in 1984 I had been through the miserable Carter years and had become a solid Reagan conservative. Now I am only shocked that I could have ever been so naive.

Obamamania will only be similar to the McGovern swoon if Obama loses. Then his supporters will be as surprised as I was when McGovern lost. If Obama wins it won’t be reminiscent of 1972, but of 1976.