August 28, 2008

DENVER — U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan remembers 28 years ago when he and several fellow 20-something friends drove to New York to catch some of the doings surrounding the 1980 Democratic presidential convention.

"We went as party crashers," the congressman recalled with a chuckle, igniting laughter from his audience of Missouri delegates at Wednesday's convention breakfast.

He didn't talk about his memories of the parties, but Carnahan did recall his most vivid recollection of that convention — Sen. Ted Kennedy's "The dream shall never die" speech, after his failure to oust then-President Jimmy Carter as the Democratic nominee.

The speech lives on as a classic, but so do wounds that never healed, Carnahan said.

"We've seen the price we've paid for that division," Carnahan said, tying the 1980 conflict to Ronald Reagan's victory that fall. Over the next 28 years, Republicans have held the White House for all but 8 of them.

Carnahan recounted the election loss of his father, the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, in his first bid for that office in 1984. After losing to Ken Rothman in the Democratic primary, Mel Carnahan called Rothman the next morning to ask what he could do to help his general election fight against Republican John Ashcroft. (Ashcroft won, of course, and the Carnahan-Ashcroft feud continued for 16 years.)

The younger Carnahan's point was that unity matters. Bitter rivalries must take a back seat to the larger quest of defeating Republicans.

His sister, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, lauded the decision by the Barack Obama campaign to place dozens of offices in Missouri, most of them in rural areas.

"Our job is to go back home and speak the truth" about Obama, Carnahan said.

Their mother, former Sen. Jean Carnahan, said if Obama would stand up for the issues — health care, education, energy independence and ethics — that Democrats and most Americans care about.

But winning requires unity, she said.

In other words, no replay of 1980.