Is this 2024 election really that different from ones in the past?
Democrats whisper their deepest concerns about the ability of their sitting president to be reelected. Republicans are equally worried about the electability of a flawed candidate who lost his last campaign for the presidency. A third-party populist candidate with name recognition has emerged and is gaining support.
This is not just a description about the political realities of 2024. This was also the mood of the nation at the start of 1968. The race that eventually pitted Hubert Humphrey versus Richard Nixon versus George Wallace bears an uncanny resemblance to this year’s presidential sweepstakes. As with nearly every presidential election since 1964, the ‘68 campaign was hailed as the “most important election” of our time.
At the beginning of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was the heir apparent to his party’s nomination. Democratic party leadership feared Johnson’s handling of the war in Vietnam would prevent him from holding the White House. Republicans fretted that with Richard Nixon they would be nominating someone who would turn out to be a multi-cycle loser.
And then there was former Democrat George Wallace. The former Alabama governor hoped to gather enough electoral support to throw the 1968 presidential election into the House of Representatives. Once in the House, Wallace expected to ride a coalition of southern democrats and conservative republicans to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Divisiveness was not invented by today’s politicians. George Wallace explored the ugly side of populism by declaring to the residents of Alabama (and the nation, for that matter), “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Like in 1968, the only candidate with nomination security this year is the third-party candidate.
Is any of this starting to sound a tad familiar?
As ‘68 started, most political prognosticators felt the Democrats would stick with their president. They also believed the Republicans would distance themselves from someone who had last scored a win in the 1950s. One national publication boldly predicted Republican Nelson Rockefeller would defeat Lyndon Johnson in November—a near comical prediction in retrospect, considering neither ended up on the final ballot.
Seismic changes occurred in politics and culture between January and November of 1968. Johnson out. Nixon in. Vietnam. Tet. Kennedy. King. Chicago. Civil unrest. None of this was foreseeable at the start of the year.
Today, Russian aggression is taking place in Ukraine. Civil unrest has moved from the inner-city to the suburbs. Who knows what the party conventions will bring? Voters are whipping themselves into an electoral frenzy with each successive story. Believe the 24-news cycle and political polarization is at an all-time high. It sells ads.
It is a fiction that the vitriol and divisiveness of politics is somehow unique to this election cycle. Politics was just as much of a blood sport then as it is now. Perhaps, it was more so in ‘68. Any senior citizen who once stood outside the Democratic National Convention chanting “the whole world’s watching” has the scars to prove it.
A majority of Americans believe there is still a Cold War being fought, but the enemy is not the Communists. No, most Americans view the left and the right as rival combatants in an ideological Cold War that can only be won or lost. There is no compromise. No middle ground.
So the world watches as America chooses between one candidate that can’t remember and the other that can’t forget.
The concept that this is the “most important election ever” is a lie to stir up emotions. It is a lie to sell advertising. It is a lie to garner clicks on social media. It is a lie to scare voters to the polls. It is a lie that wants Americans on both sides of the aisle to envision tanks roaming the streets of Washington, D.C. But, most of all, it is a lie the electorate must not believe.
America survived 1968. America will survive 2024.
Rick Robinson’s latest book, 1968 – A Primer for Understanding Baby Boomers, is available on Amazon and at local bookstores.
