Latter-day Saint historian Matthew Bowman examines the presidential campaigns of 1968 and 2024 and the similarities and differences they show for Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden.
A tale of two presidents and the waning power of political parties.The president was unpopular. He was enmeshed in a divisive foreign conflict he insisted on supporting despite ever-louder murmuring in the media. Prominent critics from within his own party were calling on him to step down. Inflation was rising.
Johnson seemed convinced that he would win reelection anyway. Few Democrats were willing to challenge him. Johnson did not bother entering the first primary, held in New Hampshire in mid-March 1968. But when a largely unknown senator from Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy, mounted a fiery challenge based entirely on opposition to the Vietnam War, Johnson’s supporters hastily organized anThat shocker was followed by another. Right after the primary, Robert F.
That was not the case in 1968 or for any presidential election to that point. Delegates to conventions were normally picked by state parties. They were officeholders and party officials, and they voted as they wished. In this June 5, 1968, photograph, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., speaks to campaign workers as his wife Ethel, left, and California campaign manager and speaker of the California Assembly, Jesse Unruh, look on, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After making a short speech, Kennedy was shot in an adjacent room and died the next day.after winning the California primary. But McCarthy had still won more primaries than anyone, including the slain senator.
Soon after Humphrey’s defeat, Democrats began campaigning to reform the nominating process. They insisted it must become more democratic; that the party and candidates needed to be responsible to the people. Attendees at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug. 28, 1968. The violent clashes in Chicago between demonstrators and the police during the convention produced one of the most polarizing showdowns of the 1960s.
Unfortunately, the flip side of this seeming win for democracy is that the growing weight of primaries has crushed the guardrails parties built. As primaries were strengthened, so were politicians who could win them. And the ability of party leadership to block nominees they feared or enforce their will has faded.
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