{"id":404,"date":"2015-08-21T18:06:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T18:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/ushistory2os2xmaster\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=404"},"modified":"2022-09-28T20:03:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T20:03:02","slug":"the-election-of-1968","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/chapter\/the-election-of-1968\/","title":{"raw":"The Election of 1968","rendered":"The Election of 1968"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Identify the coalition of groups responsible for Richard Nixon\u2019s election in 1968<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe the splintering of the Democratic Party in 1968<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp324976144\">The presidential election of 1968 revealed a rupture of the New Deal coalition that had come together under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. The Democrats were divided by internal dissension over the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. The cultural distance between the party's traditional blue-collar, unionized base and its growing faction of left-leaning, college-educated social activists seemed insurmountable. Meanwhile, the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, won voters in the South, Southwest, and northern suburbs by appealing to their anxieties about civil rights, women\u2019s rights, antiwar protests, and the counterculture. Nixon spent his first term in office pushing measures that slowed the progress of civil rights and sought to restore economic stability. His greatest triumphs were in foreign policy. Ironically, for a man who began his public life as a staunch anti-communist, he achieved real breakthroughs in diplomatic relations with both the Soviet Union and China.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>The \"New Nixon\"<\/h2>\r\n<section id=\"fs-idp219129808\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp107110128\">The Republicans held their 1968 national convention from August 5\u20138 in Miami, Florida. Richard Nixon quickly emerged as the frontrunner for the nomination, ahead of Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. This success was not accidental: since\u00a0he lost his bid for the governorship of California\u00a0in\u00a01968, Nixon had been collecting political credits by branding himself as a candidate who could appeal to mainstream voters and by tirelessly working for other Republican candidates. In 1964, for example, he vigorously supported Barry Goldwater\u2019s presidential bid and thus built good relationships with the new conservative movement in the Republican Party.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp38860608\">Although Goldwater lost the 1964 election, his vigorous rejection of New Deal state and social legislation, along with his support of states\u2019 rights and opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, proved popular in the Deep South, which had resisted federal efforts at racial integration. Taking a lesson from Goldwater\u2019s experience, Nixon also employed a <strong>southern strategy<\/strong> in 1968. Denouncing segregation and the denial of the vote to African Americans, he nevertheless maintained that southern states be allowed to pursue racial equality at their own pace and criticized legally enforced integration. Nixon thus garnered the support of South Carolina\u2019s senior senator and avid segregationist Strom Thurmond, which helped him win the Republican nomination on the first ballot.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The Silent Majority<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp429192368\">The Republican nominee\u2019s campaign was defined by shrewd maintenance of his public appearances and a pledge to restore peace and prosperity to what he called \u201cthe silent center; the millions of people in the middle of the political spectrum.\u201d This campaign for the \u201c<strong>silent majority<\/strong>\u201d was carefully calibrated to attract suburban Americans by linking liberals with violence and protest and rioting. Many embraced Nixon\u2019s message; a September 1968 poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed public order had \u201cbroken down.\u201d Many of these disaffected voters were\u00a0northern, blue-collar workers\u00a0who believed\u00a0that their voices were seldom heard\u00a0amidst the disruptive\u00a0social changes roiling the country.<\/p>\r\nTo many in this \"silent majority,\" the counterculture seemed like a home-grown threat to their way of life.\u00a0Anti-war protests challenged their sense of patriotism and civic duty, whereas the recreational use of new drugs threatened their cherished principles of self-discipline, and urban riots invoked the specter of a racial reckoning. Government action on behalf of the marginalized raised the question of whether the White middle class would lose its privileged place in American politics.\r\n\r\nAs Lyndon Johnson's approach to the war in Vietnam grew more unpopular,\u00a0Nixon promised a secret plan to end the war honorably and bring home the troops. He also promised to reform the Supreme Court, which he contended had gone too far in \u201ccoddling criminals\u201d\u00a0in an era where violent crime was on the rise.\u00a0Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court had used the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment\u00a0to protect the rights of the accused, such as requiring that someone's constitutional rights be read to them when placed under arrest.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp111119168\">Nixon had found the political capital that would ensure his victory in the suburbs, which\u00a0by now could produce\u00a0more votes than either urban or rural areas. He championed \u201cmiddle America,\u201d which was fed up with social convulsions, and called upon the country to come together. His running mate, Maryland governor\u00a0Spiro T. Agnew,\u00a0blasted the Democratic ticket as\u00a0\"soft on crime,\" and even summoned Baltimore's Black leaders to a meeting, only to publicly hold them responsible for recent urban unrest in the city.\u00a0Nixon and Agnew\u2019s message thus appealed to northern middle-class and blue-collar White Americans as well as southern White Americans who had fled to the suburbs in the wake of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in <em data-effect=\"italics\">Brown v. Board of Education <\/em>that mandated integrated schools.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_30_02_Bowling\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"585\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203401\/CNX_History_30_02_Bowling.jpg\" alt=\"Photograph (a) shows Richard Nixon elevated in the middle of a large crowd, with his arms outstretched in a \u201cV\u201d; he also forms \u201cV\u201d shapes with the second and third fingers of each hand. Photograph (b) shows Nixon bowling in the White House bowling alley.\" width=\"585\" height=\"281\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. On the 1968 campaign trail, Richard Nixon flashes his famous \u201cV for Victory\u201d gesture (a). Nixon\u2019s strategy was to appeal to working- and middle-class suburbanites. This image of him in the White House bowling alley seems calculated to appeal to his core constituency (b).[\/caption]<\/figure>\r\n<\/section>\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Link to Learning<\/h3>\r\nWatch <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ectDJDcMuy8&amp;t=19s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this segment from CBS's Sunday Morning<\/a> to learn more about Nixon's rise to the presidency.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<section id=\"fs-idp153874816\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">A Violent Primary Season<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp205215664\">By contrast, in early 1968,\u00a0Lyndon Johnson's support had withered in the four years since his landslide victory.\u00a0When Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, announced that he would challenge Johnson in the primaries in an explicitly antiwar campaign, Johnson was overwhelmingly favored by Democratic voters. But then the Tet Offensive in Vietnam exploded on American television screens on January 31, playing out on the nightly news for weeks. On February 27, Walter Cronkite, a highly respected television journalist, offered his\u00a0assessment\u00a0that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable.\u00a0Throughout the early primary state of New Hampshire, hundreds of young antiwar activists volunteered to go \"Clean for Gene,\" cut their hair, and campaign on behalf of the antiwar senator.\u00a0Johnson still won the primary, but only narrowly\u2014an embarrassing result for an incumbent president.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Divided Democrats<\/h3>\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"260\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203403\/CNX_History_30_02_RKennedy.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows Robert Kennedy speaking to a large crowd through a megaphone.\" width=\"260\" height=\"400\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 2<\/strong>. In his brother\u2019s (John F. Kennedy\u2019s) administration, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy had served as attorney general and had spoken out about racial equality.[\/caption]\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp240300640\">McCarthy\u2019s popularity encouraged Robert (Bobby, to friends and admirers) Kennedy to also enter the race. Realizing that his war policies could unleash a divisive fight within his own party for the nomination, Johnson announced\u00a0that he would not stand for re-election as president.\u00a0Nevertheless, his party cleaved apart.\u00a0One faction consisted of the traditional party leaders who appealed to unionized, blue-collar constituents and \"White ethnics\" (Americans with recent European immigrant backgrounds). This group fell in behind Johnson\u2019s vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, who became the favorite for the nomination once Johnson withdrew.<\/p>\r\nThe second group consisted of those\u00a0idealistic young activists who had slogged through the snows of New Hampshire to give McCarthy a boost and saw themselves as the future of the Democratic Party. The third group, composed of Catholics, African Americans, and other minorities, and some of the young, antiwar element, galvanized around Robert Kennedy.\r\n\r\nFinally, there were the southern Democrats, the <strong>Dixiecrats<\/strong>, who opposed the advances made by the civil rights movement. Some found themselves attracted to the Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Many others, however, supported the third-party candidacy of segregationist George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama.\r\n<h3>Democratic Primaries<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp263929888\">Kennedy and McCarthy fiercely contested the fifteen\u00a0remaining Democratic\u00a0primaries of the 1968 season.\u00a0After a series of McCarthy victories,\u00a0Kennedy\u2019s only hope was that a strong enough showing in the California primary on June 4 might swing uncommitted delegates his way. He did manage to beat McCarthy, winning 46 percent of the vote to McCarthy\u2019s 42 percent, but\u00a0tragedy struck on the eve of victory.\u00a0As he attempted to exit the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his victory speech, Kennedy was shot; he died twenty-six hours later. His killer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant, had allegedly targeted him for advocating military support for Israel in its conflict with neighboring Arab states.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The Chicago Seven<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm38144144\">Going into the nominating convention in Chicago in 1968, the tension between the Democrats' factions came to a head.\u00a0Some party factions hoped to make their voices heard; others wished to disrupt the convention altogether. Among them were antiwar protestors, hippies, and <strong>Yippies<\/strong>\u2014members of the leftist, anarchistic Youth International Party organized by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman\u2014who called for the establishment of a new nation consisting of cooperative institutions to replace those currently in existence. To demonstrate their contempt for \u201cthe establishment\u201d and the proceedings inside the hall, the Yippies nominated a pig named Pigasus for president.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-idp153874816\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp241737776\">A chaotic scene developed inside the convention hall and outside at Grant Park, where the protesters camped. Chicago\u2019s mayor, Richard J. Daley, was anxious to demonstrate that he could maintain law and order, especially because several days of destructive rioting had followed the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. earlier that year. He thus let loose a force of twelve thousand police officers, six thousand members of the Illinois National Guard, and six thousand U.S. Army soldiers. Television cameras caught what later became known as a \u201cpolice riot.\u201d Armed officers made their way into crowds of law-abiding protesters, clubbing anyone they encountered and setting off tear gas canisters. The protesters fought back.\u00a0The riot had strong elements of class conflict as well, as blue-collar policemen roughed up college-educated protestors, each group holding the other in contempt.\u00a0Inside the convention hall, a Democratic senator from Connecticut condemned what he called \"gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago\" as Mayor Daley jeered him from the convention floor.<\/p>\r\nIronically, Hubert Humphrey received the nomination and gave an acceptance speech in which he spoke in support of \u201claw and order.\u201d When the convention ended, Rubin, Hoffman, and five other protesters (called the \u201cChicago Seven\u201d) were placed on trial for inciting a riot. A 2020 film,\u00a0<em>The Trial of the Chicago 7,<\/em> was based on the trial. Though Humphrey easily beat out McCarthy and McGovern for the nomination, his campaign never really recovered from the drama at the convention, which set Nixon up for an easy victory in the fall.\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_30_02_Yippies\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"585\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203404\/CNX_History_30_02_Yippies.jpg\" alt=\"Photograph (a) shows Abbie Hoffman and several others protesting at the University of Oklahoma. Photograph (b) shows Jerry Rubin speaking into a microphone.\" width=\"585\" height=\"364\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 3<\/strong>. Despite facing charges following events at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Abbie Hoffman continued to protest the war on campuses across the country, as here (a) at the University of Oklahoma. Jerry Rubin (b) visited the campus of the University of Buffalo in March 1970, just one month after his conviction in the Chicago Seven trial. (credit a: modification of work by Richard O. Barry)[\/caption]<\/figure>\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Link to Learning<\/h3>\r\nListen to Yippie activist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tLh01W4bdL4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jerry Rubin\u2019s 1970 interview<\/a> with Cleveland news journalist Dorothy Fuldheim.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/2009497f-eea1-40b4-b207-272cde5d0718\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-info\">\r\n<h3>Review Question<\/h3>\r\n<section>What caused the rifts in the Democratic Party in the 1968 election?\r\n[reveal-answer q=\"961649\"]Show Answer[\/reveal-answer]\r\n[hidden-answer a=\"961649\"]Many Democrats disliked the fact that Hubert Humphrey had won the Party\u2019s nomination, even though he had done poorly in all the primaries. In November, many who had supported antiwar candidates Eugene McCarthy and the late Robert Kennedy refused to vote. Others voted for segregationist George Wallace. Some working-class Democrats also voted for Richard Nixon.[\/hidden-answer]<\/section><\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<strong>Dixiecrats:\u00a0<\/strong>conservative southern Democrats who opposed integration and the other goals of the African American civil rights movement\r\n\r\n<strong>silent majority:\u00a0<\/strong>a majority whose political will is usually not heard\u2014in this case, northern, White, blue-collar voters\r\n\r\n<strong>southern strategy:\u00a0<\/strong>a political strategy that called for appealing to White southerners by resisting calls for greater advancements in civil rights\r\n\r\n<strong>Yippies:\u00a0<\/strong>the Youth International Party, a political party formed in 1967, which called for the establishment of a New Nation consisting of cooperative institutions that would replace those currently in existence\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Identify the coalition of groups responsible for Richard Nixon\u2019s election in 1968<\/li>\n<li>Describe the splintering of the Democratic Party in 1968<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idp324976144\">The presidential election of 1968 revealed a rupture of the New Deal coalition that had come together under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. The Democrats were divided by internal dissension over the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. The cultural distance between the party&#8217;s traditional blue-collar, unionized base and its growing faction of left-leaning, college-educated social activists seemed insurmountable. Meanwhile, the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, won voters in the South, Southwest, and northern suburbs by appealing to their anxieties about civil rights, women\u2019s rights, antiwar protests, and the counterculture. Nixon spent his first term in office pushing measures that slowed the progress of civil rights and sought to restore economic stability. His greatest triumphs were in foreign policy. Ironically, for a man who began his public life as a staunch anti-communist, he achieved real breakthroughs in diplomatic relations with both the Soviet Union and China.<\/p>\n<h2>The &#8220;New Nixon&#8221;<\/h2>\n<section id=\"fs-idp219129808\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<p id=\"fs-idp107110128\">The Republicans held their 1968 national convention from August 5\u20138 in Miami, Florida. Richard Nixon quickly emerged as the frontrunner for the nomination, ahead of Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. This success was not accidental: since\u00a0he lost his bid for the governorship of California\u00a0in\u00a01968, Nixon had been collecting political credits by branding himself as a candidate who could appeal to mainstream voters and by tirelessly working for other Republican candidates. In 1964, for example, he vigorously supported Barry Goldwater\u2019s presidential bid and thus built good relationships with the new conservative movement in the Republican Party.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp38860608\">Although Goldwater lost the 1964 election, his vigorous rejection of New Deal state and social legislation, along with his support of states\u2019 rights and opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, proved popular in the Deep South, which had resisted federal efforts at racial integration. Taking a lesson from Goldwater\u2019s experience, Nixon also employed a <strong>southern strategy<\/strong> in 1968. Denouncing segregation and the denial of the vote to African Americans, he nevertheless maintained that southern states be allowed to pursue racial equality at their own pace and criticized legally enforced integration. Nixon thus garnered the support of South Carolina\u2019s senior senator and avid segregationist Strom Thurmond, which helped him win the Republican nomination on the first ballot.<\/p>\n<h3>The Silent Majority<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idp429192368\">The Republican nominee\u2019s campaign was defined by shrewd maintenance of his public appearances and a pledge to restore peace and prosperity to what he called \u201cthe silent center; the millions of people in the middle of the political spectrum.\u201d This campaign for the \u201c<strong>silent majority<\/strong>\u201d was carefully calibrated to attract suburban Americans by linking liberals with violence and protest and rioting. Many embraced Nixon\u2019s message; a September 1968 poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed public order had \u201cbroken down.\u201d Many of these disaffected voters were\u00a0northern, blue-collar workers\u00a0who believed\u00a0that their voices were seldom heard\u00a0amidst the disruptive\u00a0social changes roiling the country.<\/p>\n<p>To many in this &#8220;silent majority,&#8221; the counterculture seemed like a home-grown threat to their way of life.\u00a0Anti-war protests challenged their sense of patriotism and civic duty, whereas the recreational use of new drugs threatened their cherished principles of self-discipline, and urban riots invoked the specter of a racial reckoning. Government action on behalf of the marginalized raised the question of whether the White middle class would lose its privileged place in American politics.<\/p>\n<p>As Lyndon Johnson&#8217;s approach to the war in Vietnam grew more unpopular,\u00a0Nixon promised a secret plan to end the war honorably and bring home the troops. He also promised to reform the Supreme Court, which he contended had gone too far in \u201ccoddling criminals\u201d\u00a0in an era where violent crime was on the rise.\u00a0Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court had used the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment\u00a0to protect the rights of the accused, such as requiring that someone&#8217;s constitutional rights be read to them when placed under arrest.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp111119168\">Nixon had found the political capital that would ensure his victory in the suburbs, which\u00a0by now could produce\u00a0more votes than either urban or rural areas. He championed \u201cmiddle America,\u201d which was fed up with social convulsions, and called upon the country to come together. His running mate, Maryland governor\u00a0Spiro T. Agnew,\u00a0blasted the Democratic ticket as\u00a0&#8220;soft on crime,&#8221; and even summoned Baltimore&#8217;s Black leaders to a meeting, only to publicly hold them responsible for recent urban unrest in the city.\u00a0Nixon and Agnew\u2019s message thus appealed to northern middle-class and blue-collar White Americans as well as southern White Americans who had fled to the suburbs in the wake of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in <em data-effect=\"italics\">Brown v. Board of Education <\/em>that mandated integrated schools.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_30_02_Bowling\">\n<div style=\"width: 595px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203401\/CNX_History_30_02_Bowling.jpg\" alt=\"Photograph (a) shows Richard Nixon elevated in the middle of a large crowd, with his arms outstretched in a \u201cV\u201d; he also forms \u201cV\u201d shapes with the second and third fingers of each hand. Photograph (b) shows Nixon bowling in the White House bowling alley.\" width=\"585\" height=\"281\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1<\/strong>. On the 1968 campaign trail, Richard Nixon flashes his famous \u201cV for Victory\u201d gesture (a). Nixon\u2019s strategy was to appeal to working- and middle-class suburbanites. This image of him in the White House bowling alley seems calculated to appeal to his core constituency (b).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Link to Learning<\/h3>\n<p>Watch <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ectDJDcMuy8&amp;t=19s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this segment from CBS&#8217;s Sunday Morning<\/a> to learn more about Nixon&#8217;s rise to the presidency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section id=\"fs-idp153874816\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">A Violent Primary Season<\/h2>\n<p id=\"fs-idp205215664\">By contrast, in early 1968,\u00a0Lyndon Johnson&#8217;s support had withered in the four years since his landslide victory.\u00a0When Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, announced that he would challenge Johnson in the primaries in an explicitly antiwar campaign, Johnson was overwhelmingly favored by Democratic voters. But then the Tet Offensive in Vietnam exploded on American television screens on January 31, playing out on the nightly news for weeks. On February 27, Walter Cronkite, a highly respected television journalist, offered his\u00a0assessment\u00a0that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable.\u00a0Throughout the early primary state of New Hampshire, hundreds of young antiwar activists volunteered to go &#8220;Clean for Gene,&#8221; cut their hair, and campaign on behalf of the antiwar senator.\u00a0Johnson still won the primary, but only narrowly\u2014an embarrassing result for an incumbent president.<\/p>\n<h3>Divided Democrats<\/h3>\n<div style=\"width: 270px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203403\/CNX_History_30_02_RKennedy.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows Robert Kennedy speaking to a large crowd through a megaphone.\" width=\"260\" height=\"400\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 2<\/strong>. In his brother\u2019s (John F. Kennedy\u2019s) administration, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy had served as attorney general and had spoken out about racial equality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idp240300640\">McCarthy\u2019s popularity encouraged Robert (Bobby, to friends and admirers) Kennedy to also enter the race. Realizing that his war policies could unleash a divisive fight within his own party for the nomination, Johnson announced\u00a0that he would not stand for re-election as president.\u00a0Nevertheless, his party cleaved apart.\u00a0One faction consisted of the traditional party leaders who appealed to unionized, blue-collar constituents and &#8220;White ethnics&#8221; (Americans with recent European immigrant backgrounds). This group fell in behind Johnson\u2019s vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, who became the favorite for the nomination once Johnson withdrew.<\/p>\n<p>The second group consisted of those\u00a0idealistic young activists who had slogged through the snows of New Hampshire to give McCarthy a boost and saw themselves as the future of the Democratic Party. The third group, composed of Catholics, African Americans, and other minorities, and some of the young, antiwar element, galvanized around Robert Kennedy.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there were the southern Democrats, the <strong>Dixiecrats<\/strong>, who opposed the advances made by the civil rights movement. Some found themselves attracted to the Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Many others, however, supported the third-party candidacy of segregationist George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama.<\/p>\n<h3>Democratic Primaries<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idp263929888\">Kennedy and McCarthy fiercely contested the fifteen\u00a0remaining Democratic\u00a0primaries of the 1968 season.\u00a0After a series of McCarthy victories,\u00a0Kennedy\u2019s only hope was that a strong enough showing in the California primary on June 4 might swing uncommitted delegates his way. He did manage to beat McCarthy, winning 46 percent of the vote to McCarthy\u2019s 42 percent, but\u00a0tragedy struck on the eve of victory.\u00a0As he attempted to exit the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his victory speech, Kennedy was shot; he died twenty-six hours later. His killer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant, had allegedly targeted him for advocating military support for Israel in its conflict with neighboring Arab states.<\/p>\n<h3>The Chicago Seven<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idm38144144\">Going into the nominating convention in Chicago in 1968, the tension between the Democrats&#8217; factions came to a head.\u00a0Some party factions hoped to make their voices heard; others wished to disrupt the convention altogether. Among them were antiwar protestors, hippies, and <strong>Yippies<\/strong>\u2014members of the leftist, anarchistic Youth International Party organized by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman\u2014who called for the establishment of a new nation consisting of cooperative institutions to replace those currently in existence. To demonstrate their contempt for \u201cthe establishment\u201d and the proceedings inside the hall, the Yippies nominated a pig named Pigasus for president.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idp153874816\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<p id=\"fs-idp241737776\">A chaotic scene developed inside the convention hall and outside at Grant Park, where the protesters camped. Chicago\u2019s mayor, Richard J. Daley, was anxious to demonstrate that he could maintain law and order, especially because several days of destructive rioting had followed the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. earlier that year. He thus let loose a force of twelve thousand police officers, six thousand members of the Illinois National Guard, and six thousand U.S. Army soldiers. Television cameras caught what later became known as a \u201cpolice riot.\u201d Armed officers made their way into crowds of law-abiding protesters, clubbing anyone they encountered and setting off tear gas canisters. The protesters fought back.\u00a0The riot had strong elements of class conflict as well, as blue-collar policemen roughed up college-educated protestors, each group holding the other in contempt.\u00a0Inside the convention hall, a Democratic senator from Connecticut condemned what he called &#8220;gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago&#8221; as Mayor Daley jeered him from the convention floor.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Hubert Humphrey received the nomination and gave an acceptance speech in which he spoke in support of \u201claw and order.\u201d When the convention ended, Rubin, Hoffman, and five other protesters (called the \u201cChicago Seven\u201d) were placed on trial for inciting a riot. A 2020 film,\u00a0<em>The Trial of the Chicago 7,<\/em> was based on the trial. Though Humphrey easily beat out McCarthy and McGovern for the nomination, his campaign never really recovered from the drama at the convention, which set Nixon up for an easy victory in the fall.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_30_02_Yippies\">\n<div style=\"width: 595px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203404\/CNX_History_30_02_Yippies.jpg\" alt=\"Photograph (a) shows Abbie Hoffman and several others protesting at the University of Oklahoma. Photograph (b) shows Jerry Rubin speaking into a microphone.\" width=\"585\" height=\"364\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 3<\/strong>. Despite facing charges following events at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Abbie Hoffman continued to protest the war on campuses across the country, as here (a) at the University of Oklahoma. Jerry Rubin (b) visited the campus of the University of Buffalo in March 1970, just one month after his conviction in the Chicago Seven trial. (credit a: modification of work by Richard O. Barry)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Link to Learning<\/h3>\n<p>Listen to Yippie activist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tLh01W4bdL4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jerry Rubin\u2019s 1970 interview<\/a> with Cleveland news journalist Dorothy Fuldheim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_2009497f-eea1-40b4-b207-272cde5d0718\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/2009497f-eea1-40b4-b207-272cde5d0718?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_2009497f-eea1-40b4-b207-272cde5d0718\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-info\">\n<h3>Review Question<\/h3>\n<section>What caused the rifts in the Democratic Party in the 1968 election?<\/p>\n<div class=\"qa-wrapper\" style=\"display: block\"><span class=\"show-answer collapsed\" style=\"cursor: pointer\" data-target=\"q961649\">Show Answer<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"q961649\" class=\"hidden-answer\" style=\"display: none\">Many Democrats disliked the fact that Hubert Humphrey had won the Party\u2019s nomination, even though he had done poorly in all the primaries. In November, many who had supported antiwar candidates Eugene McCarthy and the late Robert Kennedy refused to vote. Others voted for segregationist George Wallace. Some working-class Democrats also voted for Richard Nixon.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Dixiecrats:\u00a0<\/strong>conservative southern Democrats who opposed integration and the other goals of the African American civil rights movement<\/p>\n<p><strong>silent majority:\u00a0<\/strong>a majority whose political will is usually not heard\u2014in this case, northern, White, blue-collar voters<\/p>\n<p><strong>southern strategy:\u00a0<\/strong>a political strategy that called for appealing to White southerners by resisting calls for greater advancements in civil rights<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yippies:\u00a0<\/strong>the Youth International Party, a political party formed in 1967, which called for the establishment of a New Nation consisting of cooperative institutions that would replace those currently in existence<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-404\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>US History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\">http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction<\/li><li>The Rise and Fall of Richard Nixon. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: The American Yawp. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/28-the-unraveling\/#IV_TheCrisis_of_1968\">https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/28-the-unraveling\/#IV_TheCrisis_of_1968<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section>","protected":false},"author":19,"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US History\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The Rise and Fall of Richard Nixon\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"The American 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