A different sort of 1968?
“And now on to Chicago” were among the last words of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in his quest for the Democratic Party’s nomination. It was almost summer when he was murdered, June 5, 1968, and he had won the California Democratic primary with 46% of the vote. Kennedy was speaking at the Ambassador Hotel along the Miracle Mile after his fourth primary win (Eugene McCarthy had won five), and the Democratic presidential nomination was not a settled matter.
The Democratic Party nominating convention in Chicago was not until late August. Though boosters like historian Arthur Schlesinger thought Kennedy could have won the nomination, it is far from clear that he could have done so. However, there is a good case to be made that he better represented the mood and attitude of many in the Democratic Party in the summer of 1968 than did Vice President and eventual candidate Hubert Humphrey. Thus goes one argument for choosing a party’s nominee close to the general election.
In 1968 the final selection of a Presidential candidate to succeed Lyndon Johnson was nearly in September, and the general election was barely 60 days later. The nominating process changed after that election. But now the process is so different that Eugene McCarthy might never have even made it to his second place finish in the New Hampshire primary to pave the way for Kennedy’s entering the race:
Florida moved its primary to Jan. 29, entering the time period the party had reserved for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Michigan also seems about to violate the rules by moving to Jan. 15. As a result, New Hampshire is likely to move its primary from Jan. 22 to Jan. 8. Iowa will hold its caucuses before that. Each party will decide nearly half of its delegates by Feb. 5.
Maybe the coronation of candidates almost a year before they run for an office whose duration is four years is a good thing. Maybe it is not. It is inarguable, however, that it is a different thing than the choice of a candidate within shouting distance of the general election.
Currently one party appears prepared to select a candidate whose negatives are around 50%, and the other party is in a state of uncertainty with both announced and unannounced front-runners. The results of this new nominating arrangement are unclear. However, it is a fair bet that the loser of the next election will, in significant measure, attribute the loss to being hung out to dry by the media for a full nine months before a single presidential vote was cast.
Interestingly, if today’s nominating procedures were used in 1968, it appears unlikely that Kennedy would have been in the race as a Democrat, since the Party would have settled on a candidate the winter before the general election. However, the question arises: if Humphrey had been selected as the Democratic candidate by February or March of 1968, would there have been a third party initiative on the left to rival the Wallace campaign on the right (George Wallace got 13.5% of the vote in the November election)?
It is unclear that an early nomination settles anything at all, particularly in a time of turmoil like America’s today, reminiscent in some ways of 1968. The nine or ten month window that apparently now exists between effective nomination and election would appear to provide a market opportunity for mischief makers, third parties initiatives, and self funded candidates, should the early party nominees prove to be out of step with the temperaments of the country and their party’s base. Will the country be content to listen to the two party choices drone on with their focus-grouped talking points for almost a year? Or will something new and different happen?