This Election Is 1968 All Over Again, And That's Not A Good Thing
Interesting parallels between the runup to the 1968 elections and what's happening today . . .
WASHINGTON -- It was the spring of a presidential election year, but there was no sense of hope and renewal in the land.
Instead, the United States was in the grip of tribalism and seething fear. Voters were energized by anger and resentment. The media ran red with violent language; surging crowds, cops and protesters filled city streets.
The main candidates were: a shopworn Democratic front-runner who embodied the party establishment; a white-haired, professorial anti-war protest candidate beloved by college students; a disruptive, race-baiting outsider with a knack for drawing press attention and an unctuous, beady-eyed Republican lawyer practicing dirty tricks.
At its nominating convention in a Midwestern city that summer, one of the two political parties was torn apart, both inside the hall and out, as protestors clashed with police, who, it was later determined, were the instigators of the riots.
The general election hinged on which party could woo the most votes of a white working class that had been energized in the first place by the outsider candidate, who had railed against a powerful “Them” against “Us.”
That was 1968, not 2016.
Mark Twain allegedly said that “history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme.” If that is so, then this year has been that ancient -- but still very relevant one -- in a similar form.
Continue here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b0b25c91824dce
Re: This Election Is 1968 All Over Again, And That's Not A Good Thing
There are also interesting parallels with the 1912 POTUS election:
----------------------------------
The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. The election was a rare four-way contest. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party"). It nominated Roosevelt and ran candidates for other offices in major states. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was finally nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention, thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate who still had a large and loyal following in 1912. Eugene V. Debs, running for a fourth time, was the nominee of the Socialist Party of America.
Wilson won the election, gaining a large majority in the Electoral College and winning 42% of the popular vote, while Roosevelt won 27%, Taft 23% and Debs 6%. Wilson became the only elected president from the Democratic Party between 1892 and 1932, and the second of only two Democrats to be elected president between 1860 and 1932. This was the last election in which a candidate who was not a Republican or Democrat came second in either the popular vote or the Electoral College, and the first election in which all 48 states of the contiguous United States participated.
Read more here.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...lson-H%26E.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...evelt-Pach.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...it%2C_1908.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...VictorDebs.png
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Karl Frederick:
