Reply #149: You really can't say we lost in '68 because Johnson was challenged

[Art_from_Ark]

The reason why he was challenged was because the Vietnam War was becoming so damned unpopular. In the primaries, Eugene McCarthy was attracting a lot of support from people who opposed the war. Then Walter Cronkite, the influential anchorman of the CBS Evening News (said to be "the most trusted man in America") came out against the war in his February 27, 1968 broadcast. Johnson, disillusioned at having "lost Cronkite", announced his withdrawal from the primaries shortly after that. In the same month (March 1968), Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy, and was building momentum, which culminated with his June 5, 1968 victory in the California primary. There is every reason to believe that Robert Kennedy would have won the nomination, and in all likelihood would have defeated Richard Nixon in the general election.

But Kennedy was killed on the night of his California victory, and the the nomination was given to Hubert Humphrey, a man who didn't even run in the primaries, while Richard Daley's thugs were beating up on protestors outside the convention hall. Humphrey was the vice president at the time, and was thus viewed as the "establishment candidate". He also did not have anywhere near the appeal that Robert Kennedy had. To complicate matters, George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, was running on the "American Independent Party" ticket as a Dixiecrat. Wallace siphoned off a lot of Southern votes that otherwise would have gone for Kennedy, and Humphrey ended up losing 5 Southern states outright to Wallace, and lost a few more states to Nixon because of Wallace. Nixon ended up squeaking by to win the election.