PRAY, Brothers and Sisters! And VOTE!

[Sara S]

From delancyplace.com:

In today's excerpt--Election Day, 1968. The Democrat
Lyndon Johnson had won the presidency in 1964 in a
historic landslide, but only four years later the
Republican Richard Nixon eked out a victory over
Hubert Humphrey. What accounted for the shift? A
lot, most notably civil rights legislation, race riots, and
the specter of busing that had given rise to Southern
demagogues such as George Wallace. Nixon had
won in part by subtly and deftly adopting some of the
Southern message:



"The stroke of midnight: Hubert Humphrey was ahead
by a point in the popular vote, with four of ten returns
counted. In Nixon's familiar old suite at the Waldorf, ...
[Nixon was] scribbling on yellow pads, working the
phones, puzzling out the nation's precincts, the
labyrinth that he knew better than any other man
alive, as the nation's will slowly, agonizingly revealed
itself.



"He knew it by 3:15 a.m.



"The networks weren't sure until well into the 9 a.m.
hour.



"Humphrey didn't concede until eleven thirty. In fact,
the victory wouldn't be certified for weeks. ...



"[Nixon won] with something no other Republican
presidential candidate, with minor exceptions, had
ever had before: electoral votes from the South.
Wallace took Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi,
Louisiana. But Nixon got Arkansas, Tennessee,
Florida, Virginia, North Carolina--and Strom
Thurmond's South Carolina.



"George Wallace sent a congratulatory telegram.
Nixon never acknowledged it. It spoke to the agony of
victory. For it was barely a victory. 301 electoral votes
for Nixon and 191 for Humphrey, 46 for George
Wallace--and, in the popular vote, 43.42 percent,
42.72 percent, and 13.53 percent. Nixon had received
only five or so points more than Barry Goldwater's
humiliating share in 1964. With George Wallace
claiming that symbolically the victory belonged as
much to him
as to Nixon: 'Mr. Nixon said the same thing we said,'
he declared. If he hadn't, was Wallace's point, Nixon
wouldn't have won. And indeed, a few thousand more
votes for Wallace in North Carolina and Tennessee, a
shift of 1 percent of the vote in New Jersey or Ohio
from Nixon to Humphrey, and the election would have
been thrown into the House of Representatives,
because Nixon wouldn't have won an electoral college
majority."



Rick Perlstein, Nixonland, Scribner, Copyright
2008 by Rick Perlstein, pp. 353-354.




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