The Ghosts of 1968 Haunt the Election of 2016

[Purveyor]

Watching the mad, mad, mad, mad world that is the 2016 presidential campaign, I was trying to remember a presidential campaign that was as jaw-dropping, at least in my lifetime, and easily settled on 1968.

For those too young to remember, imagine: As fighting in Vietnam rages on and the Tet Offensive makes us all too aware of the futility of our Southeast Asian military fiasco, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy decides to run as an antiwar candidate against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson. Supported by an army of "Clean for Gene" college students knocking on doors and making phone calls, McCarthy does surprisingly well, and then New York Sen. Robert Kennedy gets into the race, too. Johnson makes a surprise announcement that he will not seek a second term in the White House and McCarthy and Kennedy duke it out in the primaries.

To see more stories like this, visit Moyers & Company at Truthout.

In the midst of all this, civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and riots erupt across the cities of the United States. Two months later, Kennedy is murdered in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel just minutes after winning the California primary. In August, eight years after his defeat by John F. Kennedy, the Republicans bring back Richard Nixon as their presidential candidate and the Democrats select Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who has not run in a single primary, as their party's standard bearer. Simultaneously, a police riot against protesters outside the Democratic convention in Chicago leaves an indelible image of chaos, tear gas and blood. Nixon wins the election with a well-executed campaign set to the accompaniment of dog whistle signals against minorities and left-wing dissenters.

Oh, and one other thing -- Alabama Gov. George Wallace, arch segregationist and race baiter, runs as the third-party candidate of the American Independent Party, campaigning as a rebel populist seeking the votes of the angry, white working class. He wins almost 10 million votes and carries five states in the South.

more...

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36040-the-ghosts-of-1968-haunt-the-election-of-2016

[stuffmatters]

1. I remember it vividly, was even (teargassed) in Chicago in '68

Today there's too much superficial punditry trying to equate McCarthy movement with Sanders. Journalists conveniently forget or ignore the truer //s between Bobby Kennedy and Sanders.

The reality of '68 has always been that Bobby Kennedy would have easily won the nomination and the presidency. There would have been no "Chicago '68."

[scscholar]

2. People forget how much worse things were then

Nixon!

[Dr. Xavier]

3. The problem with this comparison is

that it ignores the changes that have occurred in this country since then. I agree that there is an outside chance that Drumpf could win the general but a whole lot of people would have to stay home for that to happen.