If Obama Loses -- "Welcome to the NFL"

Oh my. Where have I heard this before? Newsweek Magazine ran a piece this week called, “What If Obama Loses?” It quotes various individuals in the black community asking, How should we react? How should we feel? The magazine calls the concern “acute”.
It quotes a twenty-one-year old construction worker from California: “I’m going to be mad, real mad, if he doesn’t win. Because for him to come this far and lose will be just shady and a slap in black peoples’ faces. I know there is already talk about protests and stuff if he loses, and I’m down for that.”
Oh boy, does that bring me back – to the days when I was active in the “movement”, forty years ago. There was so much talk among my black acquaintances – You sent all those black kids over to Vietnam and taught them how to shoot and blow things up. Wait ‘til they come back here!
Watch out in the streets when the trained black warriors return! Or, how about the time I stood on my mother-in-law’s porch in a neighborhood that was changing from white to black and the shout came from a passing car, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, white man! Get out of here or we’ll shoot you!” That was in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I got the identical warning from a black kid on the street when I bought a brownstone in a precariously balanced neighborhood near Brooklyn Heights in New York years before. I don’t like having someone try to make me afraid for doing something perfectly licit and conventional.
Years ago, when I was leaving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington and moving to New York, I was offered a job by Chase Manhattan Bank. They flew me to New York and gave me quite a rush.
I looked down at my bearded, tweedy self – and then looked at the slick young man from the Ivies, fresh from a posh assignment in Frankfort – and I asked, “Why do you want to hire me?”
“Simple,” he replied. “In the past four years there have been major [black] riots in Harlem and Newark. We are the world’s financial capital; all of our lines of communication run through those two points.” (This was before satellites.) So open a center in Harlem, pump money in, and turn away the wrath.
Somehow I couldn’t quite hack that. I was tempted. Prestigious firm – nice offer – fantastic on the resume, all of that. Flattered, even. But – they’ve scared you. You haven’t gotten religion or any real concern for opportunities and equality. You’re just reacting to fear. I said “No”.
Hey, guys. Losing elections comes with the territory. (Right now, today, it doesn’t even appear that Obama is likely to lose.) Even having an election stolen is part of the old American political dance. They didn’t say “Vote early, vote often” in Chicago for fun. There’s the wonderful story of the ward boss who called downtown in a panic, “Get here, fast! They’re voting any damned way they please!!”
Dick Nixon probably had the 1960 election stolen out from under him, all fair in square in the American political game. He didn’t riot. He didn’t even ask Republicans to protest. (What he did do, unfortunately, when he faced some of the exact same people in 1972, he sent some unbelievably clumsy burglars into the Watergate to see what they were up to this time. Major mistake. He had the election won no matter what they might have done.)
Al Smith got pounded in 1928 because he was a Catholic in a nation historically hostile to Catholics. They said ridiculous things about him. He was killed at the polls. Nobody rioted or protested. We just waited a few more elections and ran Jack Kennedy. He got the gold ring.
Harry Truman spoiled Tom Dewey’s party unbelievably in 1948. No one rioted.
Don’t try to frighten me. I admire a lot about Obama. Part of me will be pleased if he wins. (Another part will probably vote against him for a couple of issues on which we disagree.) The threat of violence in the streets is not going to make me change my mind and vote Democratic this year.
Newseek ends with a final quote –a black man saying, “…I’m not sure how I’ll handle that if it doesn’t happen [if Obama doesn’t win].” Like a seasoned voter, I hope. Perhaps even like an adult.