Chuck Todd: Why this election has echoes of 1968

Whenever the topic of the most consequential elections comes up for debate, there is one year in the last 100 that is always a contestant for the top spot with little debate: 1968.

From Vietnam to political assassinations to violent clashes in our major cities, it’s hard to imagine a presidential election year as turbulent as 1968. At the heart of the division was race: The 1968 election was the first one in our nation’s history that truly attempted to give every citizen the right to vote. It was the first presidential election of this country as a true multiethnic democracy. Or, more accurately, to paraphrase a famous quote from our founding: It’s a multiethnic republic … if we can keep it.

Since the rise of Donald Trump and his reactionary populist politics, I’ve more than once wondered whether we were now having our own 1968 moment. Having been born four years after that consequential year, I’m not going to pretend I can compare this era with what our politics felt like in the late ’60s. All of my attempts at studying 1968 and comparing it to the present day are flawed by the simple fact that I personally lived in only the one era. And I’m truly mindful of the “recency bias” that many commentators and historians overlook. We all want to believe we are living in consequential times.

So with my human-driven bias caveats out of the way, let’s dig into whether we are truly experiencing a 1968-like moment as we head into 2024. To get us started, let me quote from one of the great observers (and practitioners) of American politics: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Just before the 1968 election, NBC News asked Moynihan, then a Harvard and MIT professor (he was the director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies for the two schools), to write the introductory essay for the internal NBC News election book.

The essay — one of my favorite pieces of NBC News history I stumbled across over the years — is titled “Once Again — The End of the Democratic Coalition?”

Moynihan begins by noting that after the big GOP gains in the 1966 midterms, he believed the “main thing to look for that year was the beginning of the collapse of the Democratic coalition.” He described the coalition of that era this way: The center of the Democratic coalition was the “urban, industrial, largely Catholic working class of the North and middle West.” The left, meanwhile, “was made up of representatives of the intellectual-aristocratical tradition of American liberalism” — a through line from Jefferson to FDR.

And “the right of the coalition consisted of the South, conservative but poor, and sensitized to a general populist opposition to the Northern institutions of wealth and corporate power institutionalized” in the GOP, Moynihan wrote.

(For more on this essay and Moynihan himself, check out my podcast with Moynihan’s daughter following the recent death of the matriarch of the Moynihan clan, Elizabeth.)

To any longtime student of politics, this shattered coalition that Moynihan foreshadowed in 1968 is still affecting our politics today. Starting in 1968 and cemented by the back-to-back elections of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, the GOP has completely absorbed the “right” end of that longtime Democratic coalition. Even Moynihan’s description of the populist anger at the root of the South sounds like he could have written it to describe parts of the Trump coalition.

What’s also fascinating is Moynihan’s diagnosis of how this coalition shattered. “Those principally responsible are the bearers of the intellectual-aristocratical tradition, who perhaps reached the height of their power under Kennedy, and managed to destroy themselves in half a decade. The process was two-fold: they misused violence abroad, and mismanaged it at home.”

Moynihan was quite blunt in his assessment: “The war in Vietnam is American liberalism’s war. It was conceived by and until almost this moment has been managed by the men [JFK] brought to Washington to manage the military and foreign affairs of the nation, or by the academic intellectuals at institutions such as MIT and Harvard. … The simple fact is that the extension of liberal foreign policy principles to a civil war on the mainland of Asia overextended the intellectual and material resources of the nation. Our understanding of modern history was not powerful enough to predict events in Vietnam.”

But Moynihan argued that foreign policy alone wouldn’t have led to the demise of that coalition. He also labeled “the mismanagement of violence at home” as a key issue in 1968, referring to the racially charged violence in many American cities following a spring of political assassinations, including the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.

While Moynihan provided a fairly cogent analysis of what happened to the Democratic coalition that helped elect the party’s presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson (and kept the party in charge of Congress for much of the ’50s and all of the ’60s and the ’70s), his prediction of what would happen to our electoral politics next was a tad off. Noting the rise of George Wallace, Moynihan assumed the South, politically, “seems more virulently determined to go-it-alone than at any time” in the 20th century.  As he noted, “solid, overwhelming majorities are available for the candidates of populist defiance, with conservative Republicans offering a more ‘respectable’ and usually much less racist alternative.’”

Moynihan assumed that the “shattering of the Democratic coalition” would continue to blow up the two-party duopoly. He assumed that the rise of third and fourth parties and independent candidates would only increase after the ’68 election. As he concluded: “The long-heralded realignment of political parties will almost certainly begin to take place. But not in terms of a tidy allocation of conservatives to one camp and liberals to another, but to a congeries [a muddle or jumble] of small to medium size parties, based on loyalties of class, race and region.”

For better or worse, the two-party system has, in fact, continued to hold — barely. In theory, we can once again see all sorts of signs pointing to demand in the political space for new candidates and new philosophies and therefore new parties. And yet, despite what is an obvious vacuum in our current political stalemate, it’s more likely than not that a third party won’t crack even 5% in the 2024 presidential election, let alone threaten to beat either major party’s nominee to second place.

Go down the ballot and you’ll find even less evidence of a rise of third-party politics. Again, if you poll the public, the demand for new and different has never been higher, and yet no serious candidates have stepped up to run serious campaigns for Congress that are designed to win, not just to get invitations to candidate forums.

While I do believe both political parties are too big to represent the two coalitions they are trying to represent, there’s simply no one willing to build a third party that doesn’t revolve around an individual. Perhaps that will change if treating the voters with the disdain both parties are treating them with right now (by nominating presidential candidates whom majorities don’t want to vote for) will trigger new interest. But don’t hold your breath.

Here’s what I do believe can be stated unequivocally: If Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, it means we know in advance what we didn’t know in either 2000 or 2016, that this will be among the most consequential elections in our nation’s history.  The fundamental remaking of the GOP in Trump’s image will be “total and complete,” to borrow a phrase Trump likes to use in endorsements, if he wins a second presidential term.

The current debate about the direction of the GOP doesn’t look like much of a contest at the moment, because Trump appears to be in commanding position for the nomination. But the fact of the matter is that elected Republicans and those in the leadership of the party are very divided over Trump and Trumpism. Trump’s wing dominates the party at the moment, but its dominance isn’t absolute. That’s why Nikki Haley appears to have a chance.

A second Trump term, though, would make his wing’s ascension absolute. And that fundamental reshaping of the Republican Party would have major effects on our politics and the future coalitions candidates would need to win.

Trump’s ascension has already chased away some members at the center of the old GOP’s intellectual wing: Bushes, Cheneys, Romneys and McCains. What I’m wondering is: What happens after a second Trump presidential term? Do folks like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana still believe there would be room for them in a party that would be completely molded into Trump’s vision?

Of course, a second Trump victory would also mean he overperformed with some ethnic groups he underperformed with in the past, specifically Latinos and African Americans. A successful Trump campaign most likely means he built a multiethnic populist coalition, united more in their anger at elites than for a specific governing philosophy.

As for President Joe Biden, it appears any coalition he puts together will be more of a reaction to Trump than the beginning of something to build on. If anything, Biden continues to feel like a Democrat from another era — one whom Moynihan would find as a kindred spirit, actually.

Biden wants his presidency to be a product of that old Democratic coalition Moynihan described as having shattered in the ’60s. He sees himself as a member of the “center” of that coalition, the “largely Catholic working class.” Biden also sees himself as a skeptic of the liberal elites, though he secretly wants their respect and affection. And then there’s his relationship with the South, where he’s at once at home with African Americans but is also willing to be one of the eulogists at the funeral of Strom Thurmond, the senator and segregationist.

So, back to the question of whether 2024 is going to rival 1968. Sadly, all the ingredients are here for a tumultuous political year like no other: wars overseas, distrust at home, politicians willing to exploit all of it for their own gain.

But while social media can make us feel as if our country is being ripped apart at the seams, the country is a lot more stable today than it was in 1968.

The real fear I have about 2024 is that it will resolve nothing.

The worst part of a contentious presidential election would be if the losing half of the public doesn’t accept defeat. That’s what happened with Trump and his ardent supporters in 2020, and it’s why things feel so out of sorts to many of us today. If both Biden and Trump are on the ballot 11 months from now, then the likelihood anything gets “resolved” in terms of our country’s dysfunction is quite low.

Perhaps that’s the outcome that ends up breaking up the two-party duopoly. Happy Thanksgiving!

Speaking of violence and politics ...

Anyone in need of more evidence that our society is triggered for violence quicker today than at any other time in our history, check out the world of sports and politics on Tuesday, Nov. 14.

It began in Congress, with Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., claiming former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., intentionally elbowed him as they passed by each other in a tight hallway. Around the same time, in a Senate committee room, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma threatened a witness and challenged him to a physical altercation in front of the rostrum.

That night, two fights broke out on two NBA courts: Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors put Rudy Gobert of the Minnesota Timberwolves in a chokehold, while a shoving match broke out between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies.

Why lump those together? Because the one thing NBA players and politicians have in common is that they collectively care way too much about what is said about them on social media.

Of course, on-court melees in the NBA can be chalked up to the “heat of the moment” mindset, but there’s really nothing forgivable about the actions of the elected officials.

Mullin, in particular, really deserves singling out for his unique brand of pugilistic politics. It’s not the first time this elected U.S. senator has threatened a committee witness with violence. What’s truly amazing about this incident is the lack of outrage about it. In fact, Mullin has kept the story alive by fundraising off it!

So many people are simply brushing this off with thoughts along the lines of “that’s politics in 2023” or “Mullin is an odd duck, a tad too obsessed with how he looks in a mirror.” But as we try to build a better politics and a better government, we should all ask ourselves how someone of this character ended up in the U.S. Senate. It’s a lower point than many in that chamber want to admit.