The Chicago political machine pulled a “palace coup” of their own for the 1968 presidential election installing Hubert Humphrey, the VP to replace LBJ at the top of the ticket just as the Dem political machine installed VP Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden in 2024 with no primary process. Interestingly, both presidents were unwell and like 1968, the 2024 insiders knew well before the public both the fact that he was unwell and that he would not be the candidate.
According to The Conversation, “The tradition of picking a nominee through primaries and caucuses – and not through what is called the “convention system” – is relatively recent.
In 1968, after President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for reelection, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was able to secure the Democratic nomination despite not entering any primaries or caucuses. Humphrey won because he had the backing of party leaders like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and these party leaders controlled the vast majority of the delegates.
Many Democrats saw this process as fundamentally undemocratic, so the party instituted a series of reforms that opened up the process by requiring delegates to be selected in primaries or caucuses that gave ordinary party members the opportunity to make that choice. The Republican Party quickly followed suit, and since 1972 both parties have nominated candidates in this way.”
Several similarities strike me. The way other candidates challenging Biden were dismissed, smeared, or discounted is not democratic. The Dems complain that Russian president Putin is the only candidate in Russian elections, but didn’t they do the same when they shoved challengers aside and heaped Biden on us after he said he would be one term and done?
I’m a moderate Dem seeking to reform the party away from progressivism and illiberalism and I participate as a twice elected Dem Precinct Committe Officer much to the chagrin of my legislative district partisans who’d love to see me gone. And I’m a bipartisan wing swing voter. I supported Nikki Haley for the R presidential ticket and I supported RFKjr for the D ticket, though they wouldn’t let him on the ballot. Yup, both moderates were shoved aside by their parties.
Now, I’m left in the position of a rock in a hard place – a progressivist candidate on the left and a MAGA candidate on the right. With all the censorship and control which is progressivism exhibited by the Ds during the 2020 election, the covid years and right now, I don’t see a free society and liberal democracy benefiting from a Harris presidency. Price controls scare the bejesus out of me. On the other hand, tariffs proposed by Trump also scare the bejesus out of me. Neither candidate wants to reform social security and Medicare to make them sustainable. Neither wants to attack the deficit which is heading our country to a depression because the payments on all that debt is crippling our economy and limiting how we could more productively manage our economy. Think of it as payments on an out-of-control credit card balance which is basically what it is.
As a footnote I add that in 1968 Humphrey lost the popular vote by .7 percent and the electoral college vote by 110 votes in a landslide victory for Nixon.
There’s a reason why ordinary voters were brought into the nomination process through a primary after the coronation of Humphrey without a primary when LBJ dropped out. That reason is democracy. History does repeat itself, it seems.
If you’re a Seattle voter interested in rebuilding the political center of both parties, please consider joining the Meetups for Moderates group in your legislative district.