Nixon went on to win the 1968 general election and the Vietnam War dragged on to an ignominious U.S. Sadly, nothing conclusive happened as a result of his campaign. Millions of us around the world were then working to end the war in Vietnam. Of course, the McCarthy campaign’s slogan was wrong on two counts. The war’s opponents watched in frustration as the two major parties closed ranks, cementing their post-World-War-II bipartisan agreement to use military power to enforce U.S. In the end, the nomination went to Johnson’s vice president and war supporter Hubert Humphrey, who would face Republican hawk Richard Nixon that November. In what was generally recognized as a police riot, the Chicago PD beat protesters and journalists bloody on national TV, as participants chanted, “The whole world is watching.” And indeed, it was. Outside the Democratic Party convention in Chicago that August, tens of thousands of angry, mostly young Americans demonstrated their frustration with the war and the party’s refusal to take a stand against it. That left the war’s opponents without a viable candidate for the nomination. With his good looks and family name, Bobby Kennedy appeared to have a real chance for the nomination when, on June 5, 1968, during a campaign event in Los Angeles, he, like his brother, was assassinated. Soon, Johnson would withdraw from the campaign, announcing in a televised national address that he wouldn’t run for another term. Kennedy, had bequeathed to Johnson when he was assassinated. Kennedy entered the race, too, running against the very war his brother, President John F. After McCarthy had a strong second-place showing in Maine, New York Senator Robert F. Running against the Vietnam War, McCarthy was challenging then-President Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic primaries. (Remember, this was the age before there was a computer in every pocket, let alone social media and micro-targeting.) My memory of my duties is now vague, but they mainly involved alphabetizing and filing index cards containing information about the senator’s supporters. I volunteered in McCarthy’s campaign office that year. As that campaign slogan suggested, his strong second-place showing in the Maine primary was proof that opposition to the Vietnam War had finally become a viable platform for a Democratic candidate for president. “He” was Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. Its caption read, “He stood up alone and something happened.” All you could see were the man and the stones. In its upper left-hand corner was a black-and-white photo of a white man in a grey suit. įor decades, I kept a poster on my wall that I’d saved from the year I turned 16. In true Cassandra-style, no one who mattered paid the slightest attention to Barbara Lee when she warned against passing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
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