1968 Presidential Election and Riots?
The riots in Chicago didn't really affected the outcome. The incumbent President, Lyndon Johnson, did not run for reelection because of his unpopularity due to his policies in carrying out the Vietnam War. When Johnson ran in the New Hampshire primary, Eugene McCarthy, a Minnesota Senator, ran a close second. That's when Johnson decided not to run. Even though he won, he thought an incumbent should have done better. Robert Kennedy then entered the race. In late April another candidate emerged, Johnson's vice-president, Hubert Humphrey. Then in June, Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California primary. Humphrey became the Democratic nominee. Since he had been Johnson's vice-president, he was too closely tied to the Johnson administration, the unpopular Johnson, and his Vietnam policies. Humphrey fell short and Richard Nixon became president.
Have any presidential candidates ever won their parties nomination without leading in delegates?
In the end, they have to have more delegates, but it used to happen quite regularly that going into the convention people really didn't know who the candidate would be. They'd have to vote dozens of times. Sometimes more than 50 times before a winner emerged. Sometimes it would be someone who wasn't even running before the convention. In 1968, a lot of people thought that if Ted Kennedy had thrown his hat in the ring at the convention he would have gotten the Democratic nomination, even though he had not run in any of the primaries and had not been a candidate.
Has a losing vice presidential candidate ever run for and won the presidency in a subsequent election?
Other than FDR, no. BUT...being the losing candidate for VP doesn't not necessarily mean political oblivion. Frank Knox, the defeated running mate of Alf Landon in 1936, later became Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Navy during World War II. Earl Warren, the defeated running mate of Thomas Dewey in 1948, later served on the US Supreme Court as Chief Justice. Edmund Muskie, the defeated running mate of Hubert Humphrey in 1968, later became Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State. Robert Dole, the defeated running mate of Gerald Ford in 1976, later became the Senate Majority Leader and the unsuccessful Republican candidate for President in 1996.
Has a presidential candidate who didn’t run in the primaries ever won election to the White House?
Every President elected prior to the beginning of the 20th century was elected without participating in the primaries because the first primary wasn't created until after the 1900 election. And they were of relatively low importance prior to World War II, since most delegates to the party conventions were chosen by other means until fairly late in US history. Prior to the 20th century, many Presidential nominees were chosen by party bosses meeting in the proverbial "smoke-filled room" when the conventions became deadlocked, and the power of those bosses was still quite potent until well after World War II. Prior to the 1950s, there were generally fewer than ten state primaries in any given season, and most of them were not binding on delegates.Until the 1970s, it was theoretically still possible to win the Presidency without entering a single primary, although the last President to be elected without winning at least one primary election was Republican Warren Harding in 1920. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination despite not competing in any primary. He lost the general election to Richard Nixon, but the election was very close. Since 1968, both parties have changed their rules to make the primaries the main means of choosing delegates.
History questions about 1968 (election candidates, Tet Offensive, etc.)?
1. Who won the Presidential election of 1968? 2. Who was the Republican candidate for president in the 1968 election? 3. Who was chosen to replace Robert McNamara as secretary of defense? 4. Which 1968 presidential candidate had the support of Lyndon B. Johnson? 5. Who was nominated for president at the 1968 Democratic National Convention? 6. Who gained popularity in the weeks following Tet and received 42 percent of the vote in 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary? 7. Whose slim margin of victory in the 1968 N.H. Democratic primary was viewed as defeat? 8. Who ran in the 1968 presidential election as a 3rd party candidate on a platform supporting states' rights and segregation? 9. Which 1968 Democratic presidential candidate voluntarily dropped out of the race before the national convention took place? 10. Who decided to join the Democratic race for the presidency after seeing the surprising results of the 1968 New Hampshire primary? 11. Extended Response: Identify two effects of the Tet offensive, and explain how the effects resulted from the offensive. ** If anyone knows the answers to these questions, I'd really appreciate the help! **
Has an incumbent president ever lost in a primary election?
Strictly speaking, the answer is: No, there has never been an incumbent president running for re-election who has lost to a primary challenger – although Ford came very close to losing to Reagan in 1976, and Kennedy gave Carter a bruising fight in 1980. Johnson kind of side-stepped the issue in 1968 by withdrawing after (winning) the first primary, but it’s plausible that he could have lost.The political primary system that the US now takes for granted didn’t really exist until the 1970s. Prior to then, few states had binding primary elections, and the parties’ nominees were decided by a mix of popularly elected, unbound, and party-appointed delegates at the nominating convention. It wasn’t at all uncommon for these conventions to take several days to settle on their presidential candidate through rounds of balloting.Under that environment, there have been five sitting presidents to lose the support of their parties:John Tyler, who was thrown out of the Whig party in 1841 for heavily conflicting with the Whigs in Congress (although he won nomination from the party he created after being expelled from the Whigs - funny, that - but then dropped out of the election);Millard Fillmore, who would neither commit to a second term nor firmly back a contender, and so lost on the 53rd ballot of the 1852 Whig convention;Franklin Pierce, who arrived at the 1856 Democratic convention expecting renomination, having failed to appreciate at all the disastrousness of his presidency, but was bounced;Andrew Johnson, following his impeachment by the Republicans in Congress, found that he had effectively zero support among Democrats too in 1868; andChester Arthur, in ill health and politically wounded after going after the Republicans’ patronage system, only kept up a token effort going into the 1884 Republican convention (and lost).
Would Bobby Kennedy have won the 1968 presidential election had he not been assassinated?
/Very/ hard to say. RFK would have swept the remaining primaries, no questions asked. Keep in mind, However, this was 1968, /not/ post-1972, which was when the Democratic primary process was reformed. McCarthy won most of the later primaries, he still lost the nomination. HHH had the party bosses locked up and the party bosses still secured the nomination back in '68. Theodore White's "Making of the President, 1960" covers Jack's nomination path and explains pretty well why folks like Symington, HHH, and even LBJ, couldn't win the 1960 nomination after 8 years of Eisenhower, with Nixon looming. Yes, RFK was popular; yes, the youth and many of the Camelot crowd would have unified behind him, but LBJ was the power still and LBJ wanted HHH. I really can see little path for RFK to secure the nomination under the rules that existed then, other than the sort of spontaneous movement inspired by a civil rights speech HHH gave (People! Human Beings! /This/ is the issue of the 20th century!) at the 1948 nomination that resulted in a progressive civil rights platform being adopted by the convention after being rejected at the committee level--and a Southern faction bolting from the Dems to support Strom Thurmond.EDIT: Apparently, Richard Daley adored Bobby, according to Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s excellent bio of RFK. I have a slightly easier time seeing Bobby secure the nomination in Chicago if Daley had swung behind him. Interestingly, the Yippies, led by Abbie Hoffman, had canceled their Days of Rage protest in Chicago as Bobby picked up momentum, only to bring it back after he was assassinated. How's that for a could have been? A sedate, purely inside-game nomination with the radical left and the Daley machine all for a single candidate?-----------------RFK = Robert KennedyHHH = Hubert HumphreyLBJ = Lyndon Johnson /grin
Who was the worst candidate in the 1968 election?
George Wallace’s 1968 run for president is historically noteworthy for exactly one reason: he is, as of 2016, the most recent third party candidate to receive any electoral votes. Other than that, I don’t know what possible metric could rank him as better than either Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey.Even the fact that Wallace did win any states should explain why: Wallace ran on an explicitly racist pro-segregation campaign, at a time when that was still viable in some parts of the South, and that was worth a few Southern states.Richard Nixon was a horribly flawed person and politician. The negative effects that the Watergate scandal had on the U.S. are well-understood, of course. And Nixon’s own embrace of the “Southern Strategy” in 1968, using “law and order” and other racial dog-whistles to bring disaffected southern Democrats into the Republican fold without using overt Wallace-style racism, had a cynical impact on the Republican Party and on U.S. politics in general that persists to this day. But most historians will also recognize that Nixon did some positive things too. The Clean Water Act and the EPA, opening relations with China, winding down the Vietnam War - some of his achievements have stood the test of time. Would Wallace have done those things? Someone who campaigned on an explicitly pro-segregation platform?Wallace did ultimately repent of his racist ways late in life. But by that point, he’d already done plenty of damage during his many years as Governor of Alabama and as the face of aggressive segregation and resistance to civil rights. We should be grateful that he never attained any higher offices.
Why did President Johnson decide to not run for president in 1968?
Mostly because of the Gulf of Tonkin affair during the Vietnam war. Johnson claimed that Vietnamese fired at an American ship so he could get approval for escalating the war big time (very similar to G.W. Bush claiming that Iraq had WMD's). The Vietnamese did not fire at the American ship. The truth was found out so Johnson did not run for re-election to avoid further embarrassment. The Democrat nominee (Hubert Humphrey) still lost to Richard Nixon. Johnson was every bit the liar that the Bush's and Clinton's are.
Has anyone from a President's own party ever run against a sitting President in his second term election?
Certainly. 1968: Sen. Eugene McCarthy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy opposed President Lyndon Johnson's re-nomination. Shortly after the New Hampshire Primary, Johnson quit the race. Several months later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and the party turned to Vice President Humphrey who was defeated by Richard Nixon in the general election. 1976: Former Governor Ronald Reagan opposed Gerald Ford's efforts to win nomination for a full term. (Recall he had taken office as a result of Nixon's resignation.) Although it was a close contest, Ford prevailed and went on to lose in the general election to former Governor Jimmy Carter. 1980: Senator Edward Kennedy opposed Jimmy Carter's re-nomination. Carter won re-nomination but was defeated in the general election by former Governor Ronald Reagan. 1992: Former Nixon adviser and television commentator Patrick Buchanan opposed President George HW Bush's re-nomination. Bush won re-nomination but was defeated in the general election by former Governor Bill Clinton. Note that each time an incumbent President faced a serious primary challenge, it left his party so divided that he (or in the case of 1968, his Vice President) lost in the general election.