Translation: reminding the left when they were wrong, dead wrong.
Long before Watergate or Vietnam, the left hated and despised Richard Nixon. Why? He defeated a five term Democrat to win his first office. He defeated one of their darlings, Helen Douglas, to win his Senate seat. Then, as a young congressman he exposed Alger Hiss and proved Whittaker Chambers right. They never forgave him. They thought they had got him in a scandal, but the Checkers speech drove a spike into that.
So, "reopening wounds" in the context of Nixon means reminding the left that they were wrong about the communist threat, wrong about Soviet espionage in America, wrong about Hiss, wrong about everything. And they can't stand it.
“Translation: reminding the left when they were wrong, dead wrong.”
They didn´t fare so well in the ´60’s either. JFK sent troops to Viet Nam and initiate the fighting, then, after his assassination, LBJ ramped up the numbers big time using as a reason the trumped up Tonkin Gulk Incident.
Those 58,000 plus deaths in Viet Nam are primarily in the lap of the Dimocrat Party as is the case with most all the wars from 1880 to 1990. Mugabe was courtesy of Carter, Ayatollah Khomeinei, thanks again Jammah and finally the KorComs nuke program - Jammah, you just never take a breath, do you?