Election reflection by Dukakis
As the last days before the presidential election tick down, a man who has seen the sausage-making process from the inside said that there’s much at stake, and “every day is important here.” In a wide-ranging talk at Harvard on Thursday, Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic candidate for president, discussed attempts to suppress “likely Democratic” voters by making it difficult for them to register, the Electoral College (“It should have been abolished 150 years ago; it’s a profoundly undemocratic body”), and even rail transport, which brought out the fan in the longtime T rider. But he kept circling back to health care and the economy, subjects likely to weigh heavily with voters on Tuesday. Dukakis said that Democratic President Barack Obama “has done something no other president managed to do, and that is give us something close to universal health care. Nixon tried it, Clinton tried it, Obama did it.” However, Dukakis added,...