It's bullshit to blame the "Dump Johnson" movement for Nixon's election

[Ken Burch]

The meme that those who opposed the Vietnam War and supported the McCarthy and RFK candidacies are to blame for the election of Nixon has been spreading on this board for some time now.

It simply doesn't reflect reality.

The "Dump Johnson" people didn't elect Nixon.

Lyndon Johnson and the regular Dems who did his dirty work in Chicago did that.

Once the Tet Offensive had occurred, LBJ's personal popularity(which was already low)had totally collapsed and could never possibly have recovered in '68.

If Johnson had been loyal to his own party and got out of the way after his bad showing in New Hampshire and overwhelming defeat in Wisconsin, the party would have united at that point and elected a Democratic president in the fall-a Democrat committed to getting us out of Vietnam A.S.A.P, which was the only kind of Dem that had any chance of being elected in '68.

But LBJ wouldn't let that happen.

He used the anti-democratic nomination rules of 1968 to force the party to nominate Hubert Humphrey as an all-out hawk. This was not only unfair to the anti-war majority of Democratic voters that emerged in the minority of states that were allowed to have primaries in '68, it was also personally unfair to Hubert Humphrey, who has now been shown(in several biographies and television specials on that year)to have been opposed to the war from an early stage. Humphrey recognized that the party had a stop-the-war majority but LBJ wouldn't let him unite that majority by passing a compromise peace plank. Instead, Johnson forced Humphrey to make his delegates vote for a "war forever-the primaries don't matter" plank, and forced him(with his personal control over at least half of the delegates pledged to Humphrey)to campaign as an all out hawk and to take a tone of arrogant dismissiveness towards the antiwar wing of the party.

When Humphrey finally made a partial break with Johnson, a month after the convention, he wiped out a 13-point deficit in the polls in the last month of the campaign. Had Humphrey been allowed to do that even a week earlier, maybe even a day, he'd have defeated Nixon. But Johnson threatened to keep big donors from funding the Humphrey campaign.

Then, in the fall, when he had proof that the Nixon campaign had intervened in the Paris Peace Talks, Johnson refused to go public with the proof, even though he knew that doing so would guarantee Humphrey's election.

So face facts, folks...

It was Johnson who elected Nixon-NOT the "Dump Johnson" movement.

The incumbent was the problem, not those who backed the primary challenge.

[xchrom]

1. LBJ had a LOT ego. Nt

[blueclown]

2. I just will never get the smearing of perhaps the best Dem president we've had since FDR and Truman.

None of this type of derision has ever been directed at President Kennedy's, whose record on civil rights and poverty were simply "kick the can down the road". Or at Jimmy Carter, whose 4 years in office were marked by very few legitimate liberal accomplishments, only more rhetoric. Instead, it's always directed at LBJ, perhaps the most progressive and liberal president we've had since the 30s and 40s.

[Ken Burch]

3. I respect LBJ on his domestic record

Nothing I've said in the OP was even a comment on that. If Johnson had focused exclusively on the War on Poverty, he WOULD have been re-nominated and re-elected.

His main political mistake was in insisting that not only could government alleviate poverty(which it could and can), but that it could wipe it out almost instantly. Johnson COULD have sold the electorate on a commitment to a long-term program, but, unfortunately, didn't quite have the nerve(like most Dems of his generation, he was still afraid of the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and that limited what he felt he could say and made him feel obligated to always be more hawkish and inflexible on foreign policy than anyone else).

I agree with you about JFK's limitations-the only Kennedy I really admired was Bobby, who, in my view, would have had the strength and the knowledge of where the bodies were buried in the power structure to actually get full long-term changes of the sort we needed through the political system. It was that potential, in my view, that explains why he was murdered(Sirhan may have wanted to kill him, but clearly didn't act alone and wasn't in the right position in the Ambassador Hotel pantry to have fired the fatal shot).

My point was that he couldn't have been re-elected in '68. He was at 29% popular support at the time of the Democratic convention(and there's no reason to think his support would have been any higher had he still been an active candidate at that time).

The war and his insistence on keeping it going doomed him to defeat, even if he'd been renominated by acclimation.

[MADem]

7. Easy target--that's why.

Never mind that pretty much everyone of his age and stage in life had the same attitude he did about American power projection. Who wanted to be the first one to lose an American war? He was a Greatest Generation guy, and one thing you have to acknowledge about those GG's, they believed in the invincibility of the American military.

I'm sure if LBJ had a crystal ball, he would have sent someone over to quietly chat with Uncle Ho, told the guy to put on a suit and tie, call himself a Democratic Socialist instead of one of those GD commies, and Ho'd get more US aid than he'd have known what to do with. Ho would have taken the deal, too. Ho liked the US in his youthful days.

Pity that didn't happen. Declare victory and be done with it.

People who try to interpret the actions and behaviors of leaders without putting them in the context of their times risk faulty analysis.

LBJ did more to advance social justice in the USA than most. I still enjoy listening to his tapes, they're very revealing. He was a pragmatist who knew that he was on the right path with the Great Society, and he also knew it would be a long road before the path became a smooth one.

[Taverner]

13. I think LBJ will always be a mixed bag President

Yes, the great society stuff was, well, great. The last truly liberal legislation. And it wasn't just lip service, but a revamping of the New Deal that very closely echoes FDRs Second Bill of Rights.

Civil Rights legislation - necessary and (IMO) too little too late. But still needed and LBJ and the Party took a hit from that that we're still recovering from.

Then there was Vietnam - and we know what happened there.

But no, I consider LBJ one of our greatest Presidents. Problem was, he was human.

[BackToThe60s]

4. Glavnyi vrag

Haven't you read the Daily Mail or Sun recently? :rofl:

[Ken Burch]

5. NO

(btw, I don't know enough Russian to get the reference...what does "Glavni vrag" mean?)

[unblock]

8. google says it's russian for "main enemy"

[iamtechus]

6. No amount of good works at home could outweigh the crimes against humanity

committed by Johnson with the Viet Nam war. Had not Humphrey lacked the courage to publically oppose the war, he would have had the support of anti-war liberals which would have overcome Nixon.

I and many others of like mind sat out the election for this reason.

[Raven]

9. I worked for Humphrey in the DC headquarters and I can

tell you absolutely that Johnson kept major funding from the Humphrey campaign. For example, on the night before the election and on election day we could not make long distance pnone calls to gotv. Humphrey would have won that election if Johnson had cooperated.

[Recursion]

10. Oh yeah, I'm sure a ton of pissed off white voters would have switched from Nixon to Humphrey

:eyes:

Nixon won an electoral vote landslide while fighting off a strong third-party attack from his right.

This notion that there is a progressive "silent majority" is dangerous and leads us to losses like that (cf 1984, 1988).

[Ken Burch]

12. It wasn't an electoral landslide(you miight be thinking of 1972)

here were the electoral vote results from 1968:

Nixon 301
Humphrey 191
Wallace 46.

If California and Wisconsin( heavily peace Democrat states)had switched from Nixon to Humphrey(Nixon won each of them by less than 7%, taking Wisconsin and California each by less than 4%), the race would have been thrown into the House of Representatives.

[Ken Burch]

14. If Humphrey had been able to break from Johnson on the war earlier

the ugly scenes of him being confronted with justifiably enraged protesters would never have occurred. And the sense of betrayal and agony that made it impossible for large numbers of young idealists to vote for the Humphrey/Muskie ticket would not have occurred.

Voting for Humphrey on LBJ's terms was simply too much to ask of anyone who had worked for Eugene McCarthy or wept when Bobby's funeral train rolled by. A lot of them did anyway(the doves did far better by Humphrey than the regulars and the hawks did by McGovern four years later, even thought those regulars and hawks had no legitimate grievances about the nomination process and even though McGovern did reflect majority Democratic opinion on the war and social justice issues)but LBJ, in my view, deliberately made it impossible for Humphrey to get the votes he needed to win.

So it's time to admit it...it was Johnson's fault, not the fault of the anti-Johnson Dems.

And it's far more dangerous to believe(as you apparently do)that there's a natural and permanent center-right majority in the country as a whole. To believe that is to doom the party to run defeatist campaigns over and over again and to adopt policies in office that make our victories meaningless. The voters aren't asking our party to repent for opposing Nixon and Reagan.

[Ken Burch]

11. Thanks for that bit of information.

I'm convinced that, once he was forced out by the voters in the primaries, Johnson made up his mind that no Democrat would replace him as president.

[MessiahRp]

15. And RFK would have beaten Nixon had he not been murdered.

I think it would have been somewhat close but realistically I think everyone that had turned on LBJ did so with a viable candidate when they supported RFK. LBJ did himself in by wanting to escalate the Vietnam war so badly. It seriously takes a lot of the shine off of a Presidency that had a lot of positive social progress accomplishments.

Rp

[Ken Burch]

16. He would have...as would Eugene McCarthy had the party nominated him

in either case, there wouldn't have been the events in the streets of Chicago and there wouldn't have been the toxic injustices inside the convention hall.

Even Humphrey would have won if LBJ had let him be nominated on his ACTUAL position on the war.

The only thing that couldn't have won was a "stay the course" campaign-which is what Johnson forced Humphrey to run until it was too late. The liberal wing of the party bears no responsibility for the Nixon victory at all.

[PufPuf23]

17. 1968 and 2008 were my most active years regarding POTUS elections.

In 1968 I was too young to vote and two years away from draft age.

I went to Wallace and McCarthy rallies and supported McCarthy but later went with RFK (IMHO the best of the Kennedy brothers).

Also went to many anti-war rallies.

My HS had a field trip to a Humphrey rally and the organizers would not let longhairs or apparent activists into the building.

The Chicago police at the Democratic Convention did not help Humphrey nor the party.

[Ken Burch]

18. Interesting.

Why did you go to the Wallace rallies? Were you just trying to see what his campaign was like?

[PufPuf23]

21. Another HS field trip. It was at the Cow Palace in South San Francisco Fall 1968.

I was at a boarding school near SF and my roomate's mother was active in Democratic politics for years and his sister was McCarthy's daughter's roomate at Putney. My roomate turned me on to Philip K Dick and Zappa and we kept in touch until 1995 when I moved far away. He has since passed on young (age 53).

I was already a Democrat because my parent's loved FDR but became politically and culturally aware.

The school was new and very liberal then but has changed in character since the late 1960s. I went there the 2nd and 3rd year of its existence 68-69 and 69-70 school years as a 1/2 scholarship student because I was unusual. Spent 66-67 and 67-68 at a Military Academy in Marin (8th and 9th grade) that was owned by Episcopalian Church; staff was Episcopalian or military of maybe 20% other. Young Episcopalian seminarians were dorm supervisors. This was the time of the Berrigans and Bishop Pike and Haight Ashbury and anti-war and all that good music of 66 to 70 something SF Bay Area.

The Wallace rally was loaded with SF Tact Squad as there were more heckler's than supporters. The Humphrey rally was so weird in the selection of people allowed inside versus those that were outside with PAs. Humphrey did not allow in anti-war, long hairs, and the like. Strange. Wallace was more courageous.

I had some wild (and good times and education there) that I suppose the school would prefer not to recall in 2011.

Went on am optional cultural field trip to North Beach: saw Enrico's, City Light Bookstore, Cafe Trieste, Old Spaghetti Factory, Anton Levey's Satanism Shop (with Anton behind the counter), whatever church that is, Tower Records at Columbus and Bay, and went to the Condor to meet Carol Doda and have a private show.

Saw Hair 1968 at ACT, Jimi Hendrix at Berkeley Community Theatre, went to Fillmore West, went on Outward Bound, had projects weeks where I built two Heathkits one year and did reviews of independent commercial art galleries in SF the other during "project week".
etc etc We had Esalon staff perform weekend long touchy-feely events on campus.

The school and culture has changed. I am not an alumni but still have friends from then and there.

[MisterP]

19. I'm surprised those anti-hippie Establishment Dems are COMPLAINING that Nixon got elected

you'd think they'd adore a "pro-America," anti-American asshat like Dick...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. I've never regretted voting Peace & Freedom in '68.

We didn't bring Johnson down, or bring Nixon in. Johnson and Humphrey managed that with their genocidal war.