"Only people like us," I began, "students, politicos, suburban liberals who aren't caught up in busing, abortion, Israel and imagined economic catastrophe, have the mental energy to worry about your South American friends. Most people have all they can do to think about next week's paycheck. They don't want to hear from Brazil," I said. "And the Brazilians don't vote in America."

I assured her that Birch Bayh cared for the Brazilians. It's just that he had to keep it a secret. "For a politician to espouse their cause would actually hurt them," I concluded. "It would lose votes."

Somehow, the answer did not satisfy. And well it should not have. For the Wellesley College woman had struck upon a telling, perhaps the telling point of 1976. The liberals could not afford to be so liberal this year. No candidate could afford to talk about the forgotten masses in Brazil. The voters wouldn't stand for it.

In 1972, at least some were able to see beyond the immediate, and George McGovern ran on a commitment to stop an American outrage taking place against yellow and brown-skinned nonvoters 6000 miles away. But that effort failed 49-1, and four years of inflation, unemployment, Watergate and otherwise uninspired leadership have made us a less generous nation. It was not the fault of the candidates if even the people of that one lonely state had turned inward and seemed to be voting solely for themselves. Whether it was the anti-busing Wallaceites who carried Boston, the pro-Israel Jacksonites who delivered Brookline, or the union mobilizers for Jackson in Fitchburg, there appeared to be an ugly, unifying theme throughout: "Me, Me, Me."

No Democrat in his or her right political mind could afford to speak out continually for the truly forgotten people. Nelson Rockefeller was vilified for not paying taxes like the rest of us, but not even Fred Harris talked about conditions at Attica. Only Birch Bayh and Sargent Shriver talked straightforwardly and consistently about helping black people, and between them they garnered 12.9 per cent of the vote.

So it was the advocates of lunchpail politics, no more busin' and Georgian efficiency who had a picnic. And in the Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary of 1976, the disadvantaged had somehow slipped past the minds of the electorate.

Although I promised myself at the start of this piece that I would not eulogize my candidate, let me just say that on the night that Birch Bayh lost, he showed himself to be the classiest candidate in the field. His cool public concession in which he urged his supporters to pursue those goals upon which he had based his candidacy won him many votes after the fact. And privately, in the upstairs suite at the Copley Plaza Hotel, surrounded by staff-people, volunteers, and the usual campaign flotsam, he exhibited unusual strength. Moving from worker to worker, especially seeking out those who were weeping, he smiled, hugged and asked them to smile back. An 11:00 p.m. bulletin showed him at 4 per cent, with Ellen McCormack hot on his tail.

"She's giving us a fight," grinned the man who had been picketed by right-to-lifers for the past five months. Not a visible trace of bitterness.

Throughout the ordeal he expressed to Jack Walsh and others a deep concern for his workers, especially those who, like his son, had taken time off from school. For an extremely ambitious man who had never yet known defeat, it was not a bad performance.

For most of us in the campaign there had always been the knowledge that Birch Bayh was, politically speaking, the best all around liberal Democratic candidate since Bobby Kennedy. For myself, and perhaps for others, there had been a naive and ongoing belief in his invincibility, in the inevitability of eventual victory. Massachusetts would keep him alive, and New York would put him over the top.

So sure was his victory in my mind that I had set up a new scale for measuring political performance; not victory per se, but whether, once victory was achieved, the politician would be able to maintain his humility and compassion, or whether he would succumb to the sycophants and executive trappings--whether he would succumb to the arrogance of power that has destroyed some of our best intentioned presidents. During the campaign, I sometimes wondered if President Bayh would have the strength to remember where he came from, but after viewing Bayh the loser, I know that he could have done it.

I was in the counting room at 8:20 p.m., on a phone to the Copley Plaza, when the first precinct out of 2000 came in. It was all over. Bayh was running neck and neck with Ellen McCormack and Milton Shapp in a torrid battle for the cellar. Udall was far ahead, and well on his way to earning the progressive mantle.

Yet Udall's 18 per cent "was hardly a crashing mandate," in the words of one major liberal Democratic activist, particularly in view of the poor competition he received from his single-digit liberal rivals. His next primaries are not until April 6, and while he may win in Wisconsin, he has a long way to go in New York. Henry Jackson is superbly organized there.

March 2 was not just a loss, out a massive, mindblowing defeat for Birch Bayh, for Massachusetts liberals, for the voters who did not know better, for the nonvoters who forsook their chance, and for the poor people of Brazil. Especially for the poor people of Brazil and for all of their American counterparts in Massachusetts and across the nation.

Robert Gordon '76 coordinated the field staff for Bayh's Massachusetts primary campaign.