A campaign that makes the political turmoil of 1968 look good

[Lodestar]

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “but it does rhyme.”

There is rare agreement, on the left and the right, that the 2016 presidential election season is looking to be a repeat of Democratic Party’s 1968 race.

There was a bitterly fought primary campaign that year, with fierce public debates over the Vietnam War, race relations and law and order. The campaign led to a divisive and volatile Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with clashes between antiwar protesters and club-swinging cops in the streets outside the arena, and protests inside the hall over both the war and the mayhem outside.

The resulting split in Democratic ranks, plus the widespread public belief that the country was coming apart at the seams, led to Republican Richard M. Nixon’s win in November. The GOP went on to win the White House in all but one of the next half-dozen elections.

This time around, however, it is Republicans who seem most vulnerable to splintering after a fevered primary season. The Donald Trump insurgency is defying the best efforts of the GOP establishment to steer primary voters to other candidates. This seems a dire threat to Trump’s adopted party’s prospects — not only in the November election, but also potentially for decades to come.

Trump’s supporters, like many liberal anti-war Democratic primary voters did in 1968, view the race in apocalyptic terms. They will not easily be persuaded to cast their votes strategically for another nominee should a “brokered convention” in July deny the current GOP front-runner the nomination.

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http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/03/08/a-campaign-that-makes-the-political-turmoil-of-1968-look-good/