This Is Not 1968

Reasons for hope in 2024

I was born in 1968, a seriously fucked-up year. And now, with President Biden saying he will not stand for reelection in the fall, some are saying that history is repeating itself like when President Johnson did the same thing and then his replacement lost. I’m here to tell you that it’s absolutely fucking not the same situation now as it was then.

On January 30, 1968, the Tết Offensive began, a massive surprise attack of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army against U.S. troops. The sudden ferocity of the offensive by an enemy that Americans were told was nearly defeated shocked the nation and had CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite saying that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. Only a couple of months later, on April 4, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, resulting in tremendous, and completely justified, unrest across the nation. And then two months after that, on June 5, a leading candidate for the Democratic Party nomination, Robert Kennedy, was also assassinated.

President Johnson was the incumbent, but due to the war and tens of thousands of American deaths, he was in for a fight against other Democratic contenders. After he narrowly won the New Hampshire primary he said fuck it, I’m outta here, and made a televised announcement on March 31, saying, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”  

And now we have some CNN dipshit saying oh shit this is 1968 all over again! The war in Gaza is the same as Vietnam, and there is an RFK running for president! Democrats are doomed I tells ya! Fuckin’ doomed!

Jesus Power Bottoming Christ when did CNN go so far off the rails? I’ll tell you when. They lost all credibility (as did many other major media) when they started losing money because President Biden has been BORING. Trump sold papers and drove clicks and got views because he is made of pure chaos. Biden quietly and competently got shit done (and he’s not finished). The latter saw the media suffer financially, and they have not even tried to hide their bias in the hopes of another Trump presidency because even though Apricot Pol Pot is an enemy of free speech, it would give a boost to their ratings. Fucking vultures.

First, the war in Gaza is not Vietnam. And have you noticed that immediately after the first presidential debate that all those Biden haters suddenly stopped giving a shit about what’s happening in the Middle East? A lot of those people are the same assholes who believed the pathological liar Tara Reade bullshit narrative back in 2020. They pushed the “Genocide Joe” story the last several months, and within minutes of the debate that got shelved for what was seen as a more effective “Dementia Joe.”

What is happening in Gaza is a tragedy, but it’s undeniable that a lot of people only used it as political fodder to attack President Biden. After the debate they cared about the fate of Palestinians about as much as they did people in Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. That is to say, hardly at all, despite those nations experiencing conflicts with far higher civilian death tolls. And don’t even get me started on the stupid RFK Jr. shit.

To be clear, I don’t think Biden has dementia, but I’m also not a psychiatrist who has evaluated his mental capabilities. What is certain is that the relentless attacks from within his own party wasn’t something he could overcome, and with the fate of American democracy, and possibly much of the world, at stake, Biden decided to not run for re-election. He’s a true patriot who is doing what is best for the country.

I’m pissed at the way Biden has been treated. He is an outstanding president, pulling America back from the brink after one of the most terrible presidencies in the nation’s history. It damn near qualified as an interregnum, the nation was so leaderless from 2017 to 2021.

Back to 1968. The Vietnam War tore the country asunder, perhaps even more so than we are witnessing today. Another big spoiler for the Democrats resulted from their passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. That led Alabama’s Democratic former governor, George “segregation forever” Wallace, to mount a third-party campaign in the 1968 presidential election, pulling votes away from the Democratic Party in the general election in November. Wallace got 13.5% of the popular vote and 46 electoral votes. Hubert Humphrey, who had been Johnson’s vice president, got 42.7% of the vote to Nixon’s 43.4%. And even then, Nixon had to do something unbelievable dastardly to win. More on that in a moment.

Humphrey’s nomination was not a happy occurrence for many. He edged out anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy for the nomination; people were pissed and let it be known, leading to a “police riot.” Add to this that Humphrey just wasn’t that inspiring for a lot of people.

Back to Nixon’s election fuckery. LBJ was desperately trying to end the Vietnam War prior to leaving office, and Nixon, with the help of Henry Kissinger, sabotaged the peace talks, conspiring with South Vietnam to drag their feet, saying he (Nixon) could get them a better deal after he was president. We all know how that “better deal” worked out. Peace would quite likely have put Humphrey over the top for a win in 1968, but Nixon sacrificed countless lives to become president. Not saying that Combover Caligula wouldn’t do the same thing, but he doesn’t have the same opportunity that Nixon did.

Things are way different in 2024.

First, it is looking like Kamala Harris is going to be the nominee. The support for her candidacy has been immediate and massive, and donations are pouring in. The Democratic Party has shown a terrible lack of unity of late, but with Biden stepping down we’ve seen a pleasantly surprising sea change of support for Harris.

But we couldn’t even elect a white woman in 2016, you say. How can we possibly expect to elect a Black woman now? Because the situation is totally different, that’s how.

First off, Hillary Clinton was the unfair victim of a thirty-year smear campaign. She was unjustly hated by many long before she ran for president. But wait, there’s more. And the “more” is what we’ve all personally witnessed Eric’s dad do since 2016. In 2016 there were voters who imagined he might “drain the swamp,” or some bullshit. The reality was quite different. Since then, …

We saw him be the worst president in American history.

We saw him praise dictators and be Putin’s puppet.

We saw him utterly botch the response to Covid, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

We saw him deny the results of the 2020 election.

We saw him incite an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

We saw him stack the Supreme Court with Christofascist cronies, leading to the overturning of Roe.

We saw him commit countless felonies, including treason, and get found guilty on thirty-four counts SO FAR.

We saw him say he wants to be a dictator, and use his stacked court to make his Project 2025 nightmare spell the end of American democracy.

We saw him become even dumber and more deranged. He constantly attacked Biden for his age, but now Tangerine Palpatine is the oldest presidential candidate in American history; the strategy is backfiring as we are witnessing Voldemoron’s decay in real time. The GOP has quickly become so desperate that they’re spewing the same kind of birther bullshit with Harris that they did with Obama.

And now, we’ve seen him select JD “women need to stay with their abusive husbands / we need a national abortion ban” Vance as his running mate to help transform America into a theocracy.

Yes, we will certainly see a lot of sexism and racism from the GOP leading up to this election, but I don’t think it will make much difference. The asswipes swayed by that type of thing already have their dream candidate in the Danger Yam.

Kamala Harris can win in November, if you’re ready to fight for her.

And then Vincent Van Go Fuck Yourself can go fuck himself, because I’m pretty sure Melania stopped doing that a long time ago.

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And don’t forget to buy my sweary history book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.