In 1988, my friends and I, including my girlfriend, went on summer tour with the Grateful Dead. We drove from New Jersey out in Bloomington, Minnesota. From there, we saw shows in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Maine. After the Maine shows on July 2nd and 3rd, our car’s engine ran dry on oil somewhere in Rhode Island and we were stranded in the middle of the night on I-95.
Somehow my girlfriend and I and my best friend and his girlfriend made it to the Providence bus station. From there we traveled to the Port Authority in Manhattan. I don’t know what we did after that. I know I never saw any of the possessions I left in that car again. And I know my girlfriend and I eventually made it up to her family camp on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks.
Their place was (and still is) on the north shore and had no car access, but someone delivered the New York Times every day by boat. And I sat on the dock and read that paper for at least two weeks running, as it detailed how Mike Dukakis was winning and then losing in the polls as he challenged George Herbert Walker Bush for the presidency.
It appeared that the Willie Horton ad had turned Americans against Dukakis overnight. But it began earlier, while my friends and I were dancing up in Maine:
Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1988, [Lee] Atwater attended a motorcyclists’ convention in Luray, Virginia. Two couples talked about the Horton story featured in the July issue of Reader’s Digest. Atwater joined them without mentioning who he was. Later that night, a focus group in Alabama had turned completely against Dukakis when presented the information about Horton’s furlough. Atwater used this occurrence to argue the necessity of pounding Dukakis about the furlough issue.
I remember calculating in my 18 year-old mind how many millions of Americans were represented by the drop in the polls Dukakis experienced. It depressed the hell out of me. I really lost faith in the whole concept of the popular will for a while. I wasn’t at all sure democracy made sense if the people were so impressionable as to be swayed by something as simple as a 30-second attack ad.
I don’t think I really regained my faith until Bill Bradley announced he was running for president in 2000, and the way that whole election cycle turned out wasn’t a confidence builder either.
I mention all of this as a prelude to saying that this makes me feel eighteen again:
“The average favorable rating for Donald Trump hit its highest level since before the 2022 midterm elections, as the former president marches toward a likely November rematch against a less popular Joe Biden,” Bloomberg reports.
“The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows 42% of voters say they have a favorable opinion of Trump, up from an all-time low of 36% in December 2022. He’s now viewed better than Biden, whose poll numbers soared over Trump early in his presidency. Around 40% have a favorable opinion of Biden.”
I haven’t been this down on the popular will since that summer on the dock in the Adirondacks. I wish I go back on tour.
The next best thing is to listen to a snippet of that tour, this taken from the first set in Pittsburgh on June 26, 1988. It includes the best Little Red Rooster I ever saw the Dead play.
Enjoy.
Real Clear Politics? Are you kidding?
So, was the cost $17.75 or $18.75?