Radicals snubbed Humphrey in '68?

[Bush loves Jiang]

I thought he was a hardcore liberal.

[displacedtexan]

1. We thought he was weak and 'unelectable,'

We voted for him, though.

[Faygo Kid]

2. Humphrey was a fine, compassionate man.

And yes, he was a hardcore liberal in every positive sense of the word. But he was tainted by his vp position under Johnson, and the rage that existed in 1968 (check the history). It wasn't just radicals. You need to expand on your point. It is unclear. Bet this gets locked.

[NoPasaran]

3. He was LBJ's VP

And was viewed as part of the "Establishment". "Radicals" supported McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy that year. It was really a very sad time.

[Kukla]

4. Not just radicals

It was the folks who were against the war. Humphrey supported LBJ's position thinking that the anti-war folks couldn't go anywhere else. He miscalculated and lost the election over a single issue.

[Dark Star]

5. By 1968, he was so

out of it that it was pathetic.

That's why Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy HAD to run. I wasn't old enough to vote, but certainly radicals snubbed Humphrey! He was not really against the war in Vietnam and it was 19 f***ing 68!!!

2 things: what if Bobby had not been murdered by Sirhan Sirhan and had won?

and

it still is a lesson that the following Nixon years were still much worse than they would have been with Humphrey.

My message: everyone, please suck it up and vote ABB in November

[mouse7]

6. Another GOP "October Surprise" in '68 revealed recently

Evidentally, Nixon and Kissinger were manipulating the Johnson Peace Talks in Vietnam though a woman named Chennault. Nixon evidentally had the peace talks pretty much crap out days before the 68 election, tanking Humphrey's poll numbers.

[Emillereid]

7. He had been a good liberal - but

as Johnson's VP he was contaminated with the stink of the Vietnam War. I remember at the time people refusing to hold their nose to vote for him (I wasn't old enuff) and that at the time I thought it was not a good time to insist on purity. Humphrey by all standards was way better than Nixon -- and with his own candidacy had distanced himself from Johnson's war. In fact, until Kissinger screwed it up, there was a strong possibility that a peace accord was going to be finished in time for the '68 election. Humphrey was gaining in the polls and I think had he had a week or so more, he would have won -- and boy would history have been different. For one -- he wanted medical care for all. But many liberals and radicals of the day wanted to punish the democratic party and wouldn't vote.

[Faygo Kid]

8. You're right - another week and he would have won

I remember, just before the election, Nixon-Agnew ran some horrendous half hour ad. Just awful. Then, Ed Muskie (Humphrey's VP candidate) did a fireside chat, just after the GOP ad. He was just great. What a different world we would have had with honorable people like Humphrey and Muskie in charge, or a visionary like Bobby Kennedy. This post reminds me - ABB. Please, dear God, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good yet again. Wish some of these sanctimonious DUers who won't vote for anybody but their Chosen One would learn the lessons of history.

[bigtree]

11. I couldn't agree more

America without a president Nixon? I'm a lifelong Democrat. I cried in after school care when the radio announced Johnson wouldn't run and got my knuckles cracked with a ruler. I thought Nixon would win for sure. Nonetheless, I wore a Humphrey button that was bigger than my face throughout the campaign. I lived in NW D.C. and the mood after all of the asassinations was pretty tense in my neighborhood. Lots of smoldering buildings. Republicans were the enemy. I blamed Nixon's victory on Johnson's surrender. I never blamed Humphrey. I was just a kid, but the defeat had a great impact. Things got worse in our nice quiet neighborhood, with folks openly carrying stolen televisions down the street every day, and broken glass everywhere. I would give anything for Humphrey to have won. Even now, although I know the history of Johnson's escalation of that bloody war.

[Kukla]

14. The lessons of history

I believe many have learned them all too well. Bolting the party over an issue you have is empowering. The war issue alone brought down Humphrey. Those who oppose the action in Iraq have learned that lesson and realize that should the anti-war Democrats choose to bolt, it could spell defeat for the Democratic nominee.

[no name no slogan]

18. A lot of that had to do with the Chicago convention

Humphrey was Johnson's pointman at the convention. Daley, a Humphrey man, was in charge of Chicago's cops, who beat and gassed the bloody hell out of the activisits who were protesting at the convention.

I had a professor in college who was a McCarthy delegate that year, and he said it was like a warzoneo outside the hall. Teargas had permeated the lobbies of the delegate hotels, and Daley's goons were walking the convention floor, looking to beat up anybody who looked "freaky". Rep. Abe Ribikoff (a rabbi and holocaust survivor) denounced Daley's "gestapo tactics" from the podium-- which led to Daley's infamous "get off the stage you fcuking jew bastard!" remark that was broadcast on the major networks.

IMHO, if Daley's thugs had not been so terrible in Chicago, a lot of the 'activist' vote may very well have held its nose and voted for Humphrey. After all, the voting age was still 21 then, and most of the older elements of the activist set knew there was a difference between Humphrey and Nixon.

[Birthmark]

9. Wasn't there a guy named Wallace...

...that ran in '68? Seems to me that he got a few votes that might otherwise have gone to Humphrey.

[no name no slogan]

13. Wallace was an American Independent in '68

George Wallace was the ex-Democratic Governor of Alabama that kept the Army from desegregating Alabama's schools. He was a pro-segregationist and racist who appealed to a small portion of the southern and racist vote.

If anything, Wallace probably peeled more votes off of Nixon than Humphrey, as Humphrey was well-known for his anti-segregationist views. It was HHH's speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention that helped make civil rights a plank in the Democratic Party's platform.

Humphrey was an early white champion of civil rights, and he was quite well known for that.

[Dark Star]

17. Absolutely!

My goodness, Wallace was a racist who stood in school doorways as governor to block the National Guard from bringing African-American young people inside.

His votes would definitely have been Nixon's!

[no name no slogan]

20. It's funny, though, because he ran in 1972 as a Democrat

in the primaries, and got shot in Maryland in May. After he recovered, he mellowed out quite a bit, and even apologized for his past to Alabama. By the time he died in the 1990s, he had a lot of black activists giving him eulogies (positive ones, at that).

It was an amazing transformation.

[Birthmark]

21. Yes. But he had been a Democrat prior to that.

The South was still the "Solid South" back then. It is also where Wallace got the majority of his votes. These people had pretty much voted Democratic until that point. They were unhappy with desegregation. Whether they would have been unhappy enough to vote for Nixon (since I believe Nixon was against desegregation; but I'm operating from a very fallible memory.) It is speculative to assume that they would have voted for Nixon.

10. liberal

Many "radicals" completely reject the "liberal" ideology. It all depends on how you define the terms, but generally I have a problem with "liberals" too. Ted Kennedy may say some good stuff, but underneath it all he is establishment scum. FDR, JFK, LBJ, as far as I'm concerned they all suck. Perhaps not as bad as Nixon and GWB, but I'm not really interested in the lesser of two evils debate. I think a good example of the differences between "liberals" and "conservatives" can be seen by looking at the Vietnam War. Four different presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon, no matter what party they were in they did the exact same things. Or look at the history of East Timor and the differences between the presidents from Ford to Clinton (there isn't one). Hell the debate over Iraq is also a good example, the "liberals" and the "conservatives" aren't debating whether war was justified they're debating whether we went about it the right way. The difference between the Clinton "multipolar" world and Bush's hegemonic USA is not over goals but how to reach them. In other words they agree on strategy and disagree on tactics. What this country needs is a reevaluation of those goals. Is US empire right or justified in any context. This is a debate that will never be approached in public life. The issue is imperialism in all its forms, whether it be globalization or colonization, and how it creates the dangers that we face today as well as its domestic economic and cultural affects. Liberals and conservatives are two sides of the same coin, "radicals" recognize this. After all the term radical is about roots. While dems and repubs are busy debating the superficial, "radicals" are looking at the roots of problems the underlying factors. And the roots are systemic. In other words the liberal vs. conservative debate is a false dichotomy, as is the radical vs. liberal. As are all questions aired in the media and in the public sphere of this country. I guess you gotta look at things dialectically.

[Emillereid]

33. I agree with your analysis --

I was and am a radical at heart. But then as now I also knew that the liberal imperialist was more likely to do some good things to make life a little easier for a lot of folks and I do believe that Humphrey would have ended the war sooner -- he was talking seriously of disengaging. I can't believe for an instant that he would have bombed Cambodia or Laos the way Nixon did. In other words, the democrat usually does things that buffer the fascist tendencies. We used to argue vehemently about this -- whether the liberals masked the truth and obscured the real contradictions (thus delaying the revolution) or provided a buffer that allowed us some civil rights and the ability to be activists.

If the mask comes off in a new Bush term my fear is that they will clamp down so hard that it will be real hard to do anything. I think we saw the new police state in Miami recently. Who knows -- maybe the people of this country will rise up if things get really bad -- yeah, I know, when pigs can fly.

[no name no slogan]

12. Humphrey was a hack

He was Johnson's point man in Chicago. He was the "establishment" candidate of the Mayor Daleys and George Meanys-- the candidate of Daley's cops who were beating and tear-gassing the activists outside the convention hall.

Humphrey looks like a radical today, but he was pretty moderate for the most part. He was a backer of Joe McCarthy's HUAC in the 1950s, and was notorious for his red-baiting in Minnesota in the 30s and 40s.

However, as much as I detested certain things about HHH, he was still a great American and sure did a lot for Minnesota and the country. My grandfather's dad worked with him when Hump was mayor of Minneapolis in the 1940s, and he was a good mayor. As a matter of fact, my grandfather still got Xmas cards from HHH until Humphrey died in 1978.

[dolstein]

29. Thank you for confirming the original post

Sorry, but Hubert Humphrey was no hack -- he was the conscience of the Democratic Party. Organized labor, racial minorities and the poor couldn't have a better friend than Hubert Humphrey. Of course, the radical hippy protesters couldn't give a sh*t about the working class or racial minorities. All they cared about was LBJ's Vietnam policies. So they helped elect Richard Nixon, who dragged out the Vietnam War far longer than Humphrey would have.

Sorry, but I despise these protestors just as much as the segregationists who voted for Wallace in '68. They were the spiritual forerunners of the Nader traitors of 2000.

[lcordero]

15. I don't call them radicals because I feel that their anti-war

demands were completely reasonable.

I feel that if a candidate is going to stab the base in the back then the candidate deserves what they get.

I don't care if I die in war, of hunger, or sickness as a result of my lack of trust. If I get stabbed in the back I will remember it for life:mad:

[IndianaGreen]

16. Humphrey (1967): "(Vietnam) is our nation's greatest adventure!"

Humphrey was the prowar candidate while Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy were the antiwar candidates.

Vietnam was a Democratic war!

By mid-1969, Vietnam had become a Republican war!

[Dark Star]

19. Maybe you recall Humphrey getting

on the plane to leave Chicago. A reporter asked him what he thought of Chicago and Humphrey replied what a great town it is. Now, that is quintessential out-of-touch; the reporter was referring to the beatings in the streets!

[no name no slogan]

22. OMFG...

Did Humph REALLY say that? I knew he was out of touch by then after living in DC for so long, but that's unbelieveable!!!

Even though I've got a six-degrees-of-separation thingy going on with HHH, that was still one of the most crass things he could have said-- especially considering all the kids who got the crap kicked out of them by Daley's thugs.

[IndianaGreen]

28. Compare Humphrey with Senator Abraham Ribicoff

who glared down at Mayor Daley from the podium of the Convention and lambasted the Chicago police for its Gestapo tactics. TV cameras caught Daley screaming at Ribicoff calling him all sorts of names about Ribicoff's religion (Jewish) and something about Ribicoff being intimate with his own mother. Those scenes captured the hatred that still persist to this date between reformers and the establishment.

Abraham Ribicoff, U.S. senator of Connecticut

"With George McGovern as president of the United States, we wouldn't have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago!" (Chicago, August 28, 1968)

http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/ra_archive/speech_475.ram

On August 26, 1968, as the Democratic National Convention got underway in Chicago, thousands of antiwar demonstrators took to Chicago's streets to protest the Vietnam War and its support by the top Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. During the four-day convention, the most violent in U.S. history, Chicago police and National Guardsmen clashed with protesters outside the International Amphitheater, and hundreds of people, including innocent bystanders, were beaten by the police. The violence even spilled into the convention hall, as guards roughed up delegates and members of the press, including CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, who was punched in the face. On August 28, Senator Abraham Ribicoff went up to the podium to nominate antiwar candidate George McGovern but instead took his time to denounce Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and his questionable handling of the convention protests. Daley and his supporters were seated just a few feet away with the Illinois delegation, and they booed and shouted obscenities at Ribicoff. "How hard it is to accept the truth," Ribicoff scolded back, "when we know the problems facing our nation." The next day, Humphrey secured the nomination and the convention ended. In the convention's aftermath, a federal commission investigating the convention described one of the confrontations as a "police riot" and blamed Mayor Daley for inciting his police to violence. Nevertheless, eight political radicals--the so-called "Chicago Eight"--were arrested on charges of conspiring to incite the violence, and in 1969 their trial began in Chicago, sparking new waves of protests in the city. Abraham Ribicoff served in the U.S. Senate until his retirement in 1982.

http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_475.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. It is SOOO ironic

when young DLCers go on and on about "We ran a liberal (HHH) in 1968 and he lost."

If they had been there (I was 18), they would have known that Humphrey was the most conservative candidate in the race other than Wallace. He WAS the stodgy establishment candidate, not the wild radical candidate.

The kind of historical revisionism that casts him as some sort of off-the-charts liberal makes me crazy.

[Faygo Kid]

24. Wait a minute. I was 17. Humphrey more conservative than Nixon?

I don't think so. Humphrey had a long and honorable record as a civil rights activist. He was tied to the War. He did not renounce it. He should have. His establishment posture was one of FDR and the New Deal. Much better than the "New Nixon." He was a liberal in the classic sense of the term. Not off-the-charts, but certainly less conservative than Nixon. Sorry to make you crazy, my fellow Boomer.

[Kukla]

25. I think Lydia was talking within the Democratic field of candidates

Speaking just about the Democratic candidates, Humphrey was most certainly the most conservative candidate.

[dolstein]

30. The real irony is that the very people who now wish for a return

to the Great Society are the ones who destroyed it by dragging down Hubert Humphrey.

[Exgeneral]

26. No question, he was viewed as unelectable

The alternative at the time , Nixon, we felt like we knew him,the devil you know sort of quantity, and EVERYBODY was pissed at LBJ and took it out on the Hump.

The War quagmire at the time affected us in such a way we knew that Humphrey would just be more of the same.

After all, although VP at the time he served his party for some twenty years in the senate as a Northern liberal. War hero, and took money from some very disagreeable corporations who profited from the war.

Hmmm, this all sounds familiar........

[teach1st]

27. An adolescent view

1968 was an quite a year: The Pueblo incident, the Tet offensive, Martin Luther King shot, major riots throughout the United States, sparked by Dr. King's murder; the Columbia University action, Bloody Monday in France, Bobby Kennedy shot, and on and on and on.

I was fourteen in 1968, mostly interested in surfing and girls, and just beginning to become aware of and attracted to the hippie meme. Still, like many fourteen-year olds, I had very little political awareness. I was aware that the Vietnam war was dragging on and that many of the people I thought were cool spoke out or sung out against the war. The deaths of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy affected me, but I only became politicized (literally overnight) while watching Mayor Daley's police beat the crap out of the demonstators at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Live coverage switched among the bloody kids in Lincoln Park, to the fat men inside the convention and there was such a disconnect. I remember Mayor Daley, inside the convention, trying to drown out some protest about the events happening outside. I said to my father, a very liberal Democrat who must have been as outraged as I: "That's what they do in Russia!" I couldn't believe that kind of stuff would occur in the United States - this was not the U.S. I had learned about in school. I couldn't believe the lies of those in responsible for law enforcement there, by the Humphrey supporters inside the convention. The words I heard were so overtly false, so blatent, that I decided right then and there that what I had learned so far in school was a bunch of crap. After almost forty years, I still clearly remember the rapid disconnect and logical conclusion: I had been lied to.

To my adolescent mind, Humphrey, son of Johnson, was the personification of all the ugly stuff that went down in Chicago. It wasn't easy for me at the time to tell him and Mayor Daley apart. Eugene McCarthy, on the other hand, whose own campaign staff were clubbed bloody by the cops on television, gallently represented the truth and the side I wanted to be on. I think that for many young people of that time, it wasn't so much about being radical, although many of us became radical eventually, but rather it was that we couldn't stomach the wrinkled and death-ridden political ugliness - from Republicans and Democrats alike - that we saw as we became politicized and aware of how the world worked.


"The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Mayor Daley, attempting to explain the behavior of his police, Chicago, August 28, 1968.

[David Zephyr]

31. The Parallel is Striking for Today.

He once was a liberal. By 1968, he was more pro-war than LBJ.

By the way, he lost to the pro-war Republican.

[dolstein]

32. He was STILL a liberal in 1968

What on earth gives doves a monopoly over liberalism? FDR was a liberal. So was Truman. So was JFK. So was LBJ. And so was Hubert Humphrey. Once upon a time, there were liberals who believed so strongly in freedom and democracy that they are willing to confront communism, facism and tyranny with force. Indeed, this principle was a hallmark of American liberalism during the 20th century, at least until doves like George McGovern gave liberalism a bad name.

[Timahoe]

34. Nixon did not run as a pro-war candidate in 1968

in fact, he went around saying he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. He never said what the plan was because it was super secret. It was bullshit, but people bought it.

If you buy Oliver Stone's theory from his film "Nixon", it was Nixon's bumbling efforts to end the Vietnam War which led the powers that be to set Nixon up with Watergate and then expose him.

[fabius]

35. The "radicals" wanted McCarthy...or RFK

Which of course couldn't happen. Humphrey was a liberal by today's standards, but 1968 was a traumatic year. I still remember the riots at the Democratic convention (on TV) and I was just a kid (14).

Beginning of the end for the Great Society consensus.

[Adjoran]

36. The truth about Humphrey

There have been some misstatements.

Humphrey DID speak out against the war. He was in an untenable position as sitting VP, because his duty in his job was to support the President who gave him the job. It held him back as a candidate. In retrospect, maybe he should have resigned to run, but that was before the amendment allowing a VP to be appointed if the office were vacated.

Humphrey did finally speak out against the war, beginning with a speech in, if I remember right, Salt Lake City about a month before the election. For the antiwar radicals, it was too little, too late, and it probably drove more southern Democrats to Wallace.

Daley was never a "Humphrey man." Even LBJ didn't dare tell Daley anything. His machine was the last of the big city power bases, and he didn't govern, he ruled.

Humphrey wasn't really a "Johnson man" either. He was a Kennedy man, and was chosen by LBJ for that reason, to extend an olive branch to the liberal wing of the party. Veeps in those days just hung around the Senate and waited to see if the big guy died. They had no power or influence beyond breaking ties in the Senate.

Humphrey had an impeccable civil rights record. It was his pro-civil rights speech, as Mayor of Minneapolis, to the 1948 Democratic Convention that prompted the Dixiecrat walkout and Strom Thurmond's third party candidacy that year.

The point of the thread is clear, and I agree with it insofar as ABB, but we shouldn't tolerate the mischaracterizing of the record of one of the 20th Century's great Democrats.