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Looking for a presidential parallel? Think 1968
http://www.startribune.com/looking-for-a-presidential-parallel-think-1968/367881461/America has a political generation gap again, right on schedule. The baby boomers’ kids — now nearly all of voting age and more numerous than the generation that spawned them — are flexing their political muscle in a way that puzzles many of their elders.
(snip)
To put a Minnesota frame on it, one might say it’s Eugene McCarthy vs. Hubert Humphrey all over again. And for Democrats, that’s not exactly a comforting analogy for those who know how that generational tug of war turned out. The 1968 clash of two of Minnesota’s own helped elect Republican Richard Nixon.
Yet Sanders’ campaign seems to be inviting comparisons to 1968 — or so I thought as I watched Sanders’ video ad with the evocative Simon and Garfunkel 1968 song “America” as its soundtrack. Viewers who did not live through that wrenching year may consider the song patriotic and even upbeat when paired with wholesome images of Iowa farm country and a Sanders campaign rally. Those who hummed that tune when it was new are more likely to hear its melancholy undertone. The full lyrics, which aren’t used on the ad, are the lament of disillusioned youth seeking something lost — innocence, perhaps, after nation-changing bloodshed that year in Memphis, Los Angeles and Vietnam.
The 1968 election has been on my mind for another reason. I recently read Norman Sherman’s new memoir, “From Nowhere to Somewhere: My Political Journey.” Sherman is a native Minnesotan who served Humphrey as press secretary both during his vice presidency and his 1968 presidential campaign.
(snip)
Beginning in 1967, antiwar, pro-McCarthy protesters dogged Humphrey’s every public appearance — a painful ordeal for a practitioner of “the politics of joy” whose private views on Vietnam policy were not as different from those of McCarthy as Lyndon Johnson’s loyal-to-a-fault vice president let on. The mood of the country was ugly and grief-stricken after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Even at elite Stanford University, protesting students threw human excrement at Humphrey.
(snip)
Will parallels to 1968 persist in the Democratic race? They just might. One can imagine Sanders opting for an increasingly divisive campaign in coming weeks, employing rhetoric that makes Clinton increasingly unacceptable to Sanders’ young supporters. One can imagine Clinton winning the Democratic nomination despite Sanders’ negativity — or maybe with the help of the backlash that might follow a barrage against a groundbreaking female candidate. One can imagine an embittered Sanders finding himself unable to endorse Clinton or, if he can, unable to muster the sincerity to swing his supporters to her side.
Eugene McCarthy did not endorse Hubert Humphrey in 1968 until Oct. 13, two weeks after Humphrey belatedly broke with Johnson’s Vietnam policy and announced that if elected, he would stop bombing North Vietnam. On Nov. 5, Nixon’s winning margin in the popular vote was 0.7 percent.
Alternatively: What if Bernie Sanders resists the temptation to drive the generational wedge deeper? What if he begins speaking to a wider demographic spectrum? What if Hillary Clinton makes a visible and persistent effort to respond to the legitimate concerns of her daughter’s generational peers, even if it means breaking with the policies of Barack Obama and her own husband? They just might. They’re both old enough to remember 1968.
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a broken, corrupt system.
In hindsight, FDR might look like a shoo-in for the 1932 presidential election. The campaign unfolded during the darkest days of the Great Depression, and Roosevelt's opponent, Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover, was the man many Americans (perhaps unfairly) held personally responsible for their misery. Five thousand banks had failed, and by the end of the 1932, one third of the nation's workers were unemployed. In the countryside, farm income had declined from $12 billion in 1929 to just $5 billion. Children went hungry in both the coal-mining counties of West Virginia and the big cities of the northeast, yet farmers in the midwest were destroying mountains of surplus crops that they couldn't sell on the market because prices had collapsed. The economy had ground to a halt, and America was suffering.
The Democrats, who had elected only one president since 1896, knew they had a great chance at victory, and thus competition for the party's nomination was fierce. When FDR emerged victorious, he flew by plane to Chicago to accept the nomination in person, the first candidate ever to do so. In the closing words of his acceptance speech, Roosevelt promised "a new deal to the American people," without specifying exactly what that "new deal" would be.
The Democrats, who had elected only one president since 1896, knew they had a great chance at victory, and thus competition for the party's nomination was fierce. When FDR emerged victorious, he flew by plane to Chicago to accept the nomination in person, the first candidate ever to do so. In the closing words of his acceptance speech, Roosevelt promised "a new deal to the American people," without specifying exactly what that "new deal" would be.
This part reminds me of how Hillary is now capitalizing on Bernie's appeal by parroting him in her own rally speeches. Very telling, considering she & Bill are talking about unicorns (which is a term I haven't been seeing since the last Democratic primaries) & about how Bernie is the dreamer:
During the campaign, however, Roosevelt offered few indications of how he would actually govern once elected. While he attacked Hoover over the nation's high deficits and bloated federal bureaucracy, FDR gave few signs that he would preside over one of the largest expansions of the federal government in history. As one economist later observed, "given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines."21 Regardless, FDR won and did so by a landslide, capturing 57% of the popular vote and forty-two of the forty-eight states. His optimism, enthusiasm, and the unappealing alternative of another Hoover administration convinced an embattled nation to put a second Roosevelt into the highest office in the land.
http://www.shmoop.com/franklin-d-roosevelt-fdr/1932-election.html
http://www.shmoop.com/franklin-d-roosevelt-fdr/1932-election.html
I'm sure there is far better information out there, but I wanted something short & to the point for this post.
I regret that not everyone can be as enthusiastic as we are. 
And BTW, the "History always repeats" meme is utter rubbish. History is a chaotic system; any repetition is coincidence.
As the Zen Master said, "We'll see."
(Could not resist. Mike Nichols' last movie, a very good one, and a true story.)
My best to you. When you come up with a cogent argument other than "No we can't" let us know.
I've written enough on the topic.
As both my post above and the Zen Master say, "We'll see."
Have a pleasant day.
