in Elections, History, Politics 242 Words

Ghosts of ’68 in Election 2016

We have to admit that the election of 2016 is anything but normal….it has gotten damn right wacky.  So wacky that I am tuning most of it out.  There is only so much manure can be spread before my eyes glaze over and I turn to more interesting events and situations.

I have been looking for some historical perspective much to the chagrin of my readers….in the past their have been outsider candidates, convention fights and the atypical candidate…….and then I found a good piece in Consortium News….sure saved me a lot of headache trying to write something…..

The year was 1968 and it is a good one too……

Longtime observers of American politics have noted striking parallels between the unpredictable wartime election of 1968 and the bizarre presidential contest of 2016, another time of war and distress, as Michael Winship recalls.

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.

Source: Ghosts of ’68 in Election 2016 – Consortiumnews

Ya see….there can always be a historical perspective…..DAMN!  I love this stuff.

8 thoughts on “Ghosts of ’68 in Election 2016”

  2. 1968 was a super-sketchy year all around. But at least the candidates were less hated…even Wallace’s popularity numbers in 68 could probably beat Hillary & Trump’s today. And that’s saying something

    You got to love it when a guy who didn’t even run anywhere that year (Humphrey), wins the nomination.

    Sedate Me 2016! He didn’t run, but he’ll take the job.

    Speaking of history…check out this long forgotten zaniness from US elections past.
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/stop-donald-trump-trick-whigs-1836-213890

    Reply

      1. Yeah, that “3 candidate move” was a very interesting manoeuvre. It’s amazing how much more limited our thinking is these days. Even though all the sames rules still apply, we would never think of doing something like that today, no matter how desperate we were or how effective it might turn out to be.

        Although, if Siri told people to do it….they’d do it without questioning.

  3. Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News and commented:
    “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.”

    I was attending American University – School of International Service at this time and worked part time at the Smithsonian. The morning after the assassination – school closed, students left and I went to work driving the wrong way down Rock Creek Parkway. When I got there, I could see machine guns on top of the Justice Department. When I lived in LA, I worked as a caterer and worked the kitchen the RFK was shot in. I watched them drive him to Arlington past the Natural History Building where I Worked

    “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.”

    I grew up in John Birch Society country in LA and a friend of my mother once declined to go with Dick Nixon to her high school prom.

    In the 1968 election, I voted for the Peace and Freedom Party – it was a mistake I will not repeat.

    Reply

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