We Forgot 1968

There was a pre-post mortem of the Harris campaign at Real Clear Politics yesterday that made all the usual references to 1972 and 1988:

This sort of thing has been seen before and with serious consequences. Here is the history:

Like Harris, McGovern had an embarrassing vice presidential pick in Thomas Eagleton (he was eventually forced to ask Eagleton to withdraw after pledging to back him “1,000 percent”) and then got attacked over and over on his far-left record while his reckless changes on policy positions made him subject to devastating Nixon attack ad depicting the South Dakota senator as a political weathervane. So too, Dukakis had his share of recurring problems and self-inflicted wounds. . . that included the infamous and rather comic moment when in answer to criticisms of his national security bona fides he appeared riding around in a tank with an ill-fitting tank commander’s helmet.

I've been mentioning McGovern and Dukakis all along here as well, but it dawned on me just this morning that neither I nor anyone else has drawn any parallel with 1968. Lyndon Johnson was the last incumbent before Joe Biden to withdraw from a race for renomination and reelection, which he did in March of that year. While the timing of events and their juxtaposition differ this year, one important similarity is that Biden, at least by this phase of the campaign if not earlier, has lost the support of the intellectual left, as had Johnson much earlier in the cycle.

In Johnson's case, that's made clear by rhe famous cartoon linked at the top of this post:

The Vietnam war is extremely controversial and was so from the very beginning. While American interest and involvement in Vietnam preceded President Johnson, the war became his greatest failure. In 1966, Johnson underwent surgery to remove his gall bladder, and in a display of characteristic crassness, he lifted his shirt and exposed a foot-long scar to the press just days after the operation. This cartoon combines both of the President’s predicaments by making the scar resemble the country of Vietnam.

Johnson's loss of intellectual support was also evident in the success of the play MacBird!, written by a a member of the anti-war movement at UC Berkeley:

MacBird! is a 1966 satire by Barbara Garson. It was self-published ('Grassy Knoll Press') as a pamphlet, and the full text appeared in the December, 1966 issue of Ramparts magazine. It was staged in February, 1967.

The play superimposes the John F. Kennedy assassination onto the plot of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The play burlesques Shakespeare's Macbeth, with lines drawn from other plays such as Hamlet, and Richard III, with Texas and Boston accents. The plot follows MacBird from the 1960 Democratic National Convention, when he becomes John Ken O'Dunc's Vice President ("Hail, Vice-President thou art!"), to Ken O'Dunc's assassination, at the urging of Lady MacBird. Robert Ken O'Dunc then defeats MacBird at the 1968 convention.

In the play, Kennedy becomes "John Ken O'Dunc", Lyndon Johnson becomes "MacBird", Lady Bird Johnson becomes "Lady MacBird", etc. As Macbeth assassinates Duncan, so MacBird assassinates Ken O'Dunc. As Macbeth is defeated by Macduff, so MacBird is defeated by Robert Ken O'Dunc (Robert F. Kennedy).

By this point, Saturday Night Live has dropped any pretense of generosity toward either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, especially in its October 13 show:

The NBC sketch comedy show's [October 13] cold open depicted Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) declining another presidential debate with Harris (Maya Rudolph), but agreeing to compete with her on the game show "Family Feud."

. . . During the game, the contestants were asked to name something they keep in their glove compartment. After ringing in, Rudolph's Harris gave a long-winded response about her family history before finally answering, "A glock, Steve. A big old glock." Samberg's Emhoff, so impressed by Harris' answer, gave the exact same response − which turned out to be on the board again (another gun).

Biden, meanwhile, was depicted by Carvey as being confused about where he was, mistakenly calling Harvey "Regis" (aka Philbin, who died in 2020) and asking to buy a vowel. "I'm not the old one now, Trump is," he said. "The only difference, I know when to walk away: about six months too late!"

The piece at Real Clear Politics that doesn't mention 1968 concludees,

In hindsight, that Harris’s campaign would devolve into chaos and disorder may always have been a matter of when, not if. Her short-lived 2020 run was slammed by insiders as having “no discipline, no plan, no strategy.” Harris’s vice presidential tenure has been similarly chaotic, with an astonishing 92 percent staff turnover rate and myriad reports that Harris mistreats those under her. And no one should forget that as early as one of her first real interviews, a comment she made pandering to gun owners – her “I own a Glock” claim – led to comparisons to Dukakis’s “look at me I can drive a tank” moment.

But I think, it's just as big a factor that the avant-garde left has begun to drop any charade of support for either Biden or Harris.