Lyndon

 Wednesday night, August 28, 1968, Chicago Illinois.  

Inside the International Amphitheater, the Democratic National Convention was nearing its conclusion.  Fights had broken out on the convention floor between supporters of Vice President Hubert Humphrey and those of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, as well as supporters of civil rights-focused candidates Julian Bond and Channing Phillips.  Security guards shoved CBS reporter Dan Rather to the ground while he was attempting to interview delegates live on the air.  

Outside, in nearby Grant Park, the Battle of Michigan Avenue was raging.  An absolutely astonishing amount of law enforcement gathered to confront a menagerie of loosely aligned protest groups.  In total, 12,000 Chicago cops and 15,000 Army service members and National Guard troops arrived in downtown Chicago to confront protestors with overwhelming force.  The mayhem was captured on film by reporters from nearly every media outlet in the country who were there to record the historically unique convention.  Chicago Mayer Richard Daley had given the police department permission to use any force necessary to put down the protests and disperse the crowds as they attempted to reach the convention site.  Tear gas and batons flew.  Beatings were widespread.  

1968 was a chaotic year in American history.  The Tet Offensive and the height of the Vietnam War.  The assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy.  The passage of the Civil Rights Act.  However, the event that ignited the flames of 1968 was President Lyndon Johnson’s decision, made in early January, to forego his remaining constitutionally allowed term in office.  

LBJ had an incredible resume as the incumbent president, both at the time and even more so in historical hindsight.  His administration followed through on the work of John F. Kennedy’s administration to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights Act in 1965.  He won one of the most lopsided presidential elections in U.S. history in 1964, only losing six states to Barry Goldwater’s garbage campaign (which, despite that massive failure, created the blueprint for modern conservative movements that succeeded in American politics until the rise of Steve Bannon’s Trumpism in 2016).  His administration created the Transportation Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Coast Guard.  He pushed NASA’s Apollo program forward, which resulted in the moon landing shortly after he left office in 1969.  He worked with Congress to create Medicare.  On paper, re-election in 1968 should have been an afterthought.  He would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.  Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam set off a wave of protests and sent his approval ratings down the drain.  Sure, the Civil Rights Act peeled off the southern Democrats from the party and created a solid red voting block that still exists today, but the larger, more immediate problem for his campaign was public sentiment regarding Vietnam across the nation.  

This is how history generally remembers LBJ’s decision to withdraw from re-election, perhaps out of politeness and a distaste for evaluating a president’s personal matters, or maybe because historians like to paint grander pictures of history.  However, LBJ’s primary reason for his decision was based on advice from doctors who told him that he would be lucky to live through another term.  A few months earlier, in 1967, LBJ had surgery to remove kidney stones and his gallbladder.  In 1955, he suffered a heart attack from a lifetime of smoking cigarettes, and his heart problems had resurfaced at the end of his first full term in office.  At only 59 years old (Seriously?  LBJ was only 59 when he left office?  Texas years just hit different, I suppose), LBJ stepped aside from his duty to the nation.  His health declined rapidly over the next four years and he died two days after what would have been the end of his final term, as Richard Nixon was sworn in for his second term after winning a landslide victory even more lopsided than LBJ’s victory in 1964.  The color shift of the presidential election map from nearly all blue to even more nearly all red in just eight short years is astounding and hard to comprehend in 2024 when only a few states are capable of changing color, even when the Republican candidate is an established money launderer for the Russian mob, convicted felon, twice impeached former president, and all-around creep whose previous job was starring on a reality TV show.  

So, here we are, segue achieved, discussing Joe Biden’s ability to win re-election against Donald Trump.  

On June 27, 2024, President Joe Biden participated in a televised debate against noted Ivanka Trump simp Donald Trump.  The 81 year old Biden spoke softly, almost whispering at times and suffered through his lifelong stutter to deliver often incoherent answers to moderated questions.  He appeared pale and clammy, often staring at his debate opponent, widely reported golf cheater Donald Trump, with his mouth slightly agape as if struggling to comprehend what he was seeing.  To anyone who has seen an elder relative or loved one in a hospital bed or hospice facility, Biden’s appearance was shockingly and troublingly familiar.  Personalized novelty magazine cover enthusiast Donald Trump performed his standard act, but was visibly taken aback at times by Biden’s apparent condition.  For everyone concerned about the consequences of a second Trump term, alarms began sounding at maximum volume.  

By all known reported accounts, Biden is not suffering from heart disease like LBJ did.  He does not have any reported condition that would put him in immediate medical danger.  However, to most people, Biden does not pass the eye test.  He appears visibly frail and slow to respond.  Whether or not he actually does pass a physical examination for the rigors of the job of president, he does not appear healthy to most people.  In a campaign for the presidency of the United States of America, appearances matter.  Our elections are not an exercise in logic. 

Let’s speak plainly here.  Americans are dumb.  Dumb as shit.  

Remember those color shifts in electoral maps from earlier?  The outcome of the 2024 election is already set in stone in most states.  California and New York will be won by Biden, Texas and Florida will be won by Trump.  The ultimate result will be decided in much the same way as 2016 and 2020, where a few thousand votes determine the outcome across a few states of mixed constituencies, regardless of the total popular vote.  It’s a broken and malformed system that does not serve the public good and it needs to be changed to meet any sense of fair representation, but for now, it’s the system we have and must be honored as the law of the land.  The only way to protect our American institutions and wider economy from, and I’m not being hyperbolic with any of these descriptors by the way, friend of Jeffrey Epstein and accused rapist Donald Trump is to win those 200,000 voters across Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia that will decide the election.  Those voters are not chronically online news junkies.  They are not people that attend rallies.  They don’t discuss politics at family functions.  They understand the world as it is presented to them in small doses, in socially approved sound bites, and in whatever images filter through their daily lives into their decision to touch a voting booth screen in November every four years.  Whatever the opposite of an early adopter is, that’s who these voters are.  They still use iPhones with rounded bodies because “it does everything it needs to do.”  They have social media accounts with one status update from three years ago with a bunch of random, mismatched emojis.  If you try to persuade them to vote based on detailed explanation of why the CHIPS Act is beneficial to the economy or how inflation was kept under control while maintaining low unemployment, your message will be lost in the sea of brown noise that makes up a world that exists as an amorphous concept somewhere outside of the limits of their concern.  If they see a choice between a candidate that looks like how a nursing home smells, and the guy from The Apprentice, they will make the choice that makes them less likely to be reminded of how sad they were when their grandfather passed away. 

So it seems like replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate is the way to solve that problem of connecting with the very few voters that will decide the election, but our historical example of 1968 doesn’t provide a lot of hope for success in avoiding the catastrophic years ahead in a second Trump term.  After all, Hubert Humphrey lost that election badly to Richard Nixon.  The chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention grew out of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and no, I’m not going to draw any parallels with the fact that his son is running in the 2024 election although that’s super weird and this is all probably a simulation anyway and none of this really matters.  Unlike his son, RFK was wildly popular and headed towards certain nomination until that fateful night at the Ambassador Hotel.  It’s still speculative, certainly, but it’s also easy to argue that RFK would have won the election in November had he survived the California primary.  A popular, exciting, photogenic candidate was dangled in front of voters, and then cruelly taken away.  Voters were left with the much less palatable Humphrey who represented the worst aspects of the Johnson administration.  Out of chaos rose… the opposite of a champion.  Nixon promised an end to the chaos.  It was an obvious choice for those dumb as shit voters.  

This year, the common sentiment passed along water coolers, both virtual and physical, is that voters aren’t happy choosing between a candidate that looks like he could die any time and a candidate that murdered his own best friend Jeffrey Epstein to keep him quiet.  

Give those dumbasses an obvious choice.  Give them President Harris.