College of Political Knowledge
2024 Election Series
For all you out there that have no idea what an "LBJ Moment" might be....let me help you out.
1968 LBJ was expected to run for re-election and he decide to opt out of the process....
By late March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson's presidency lay in tatters. Anger over the war in Vietnam and Johnson's growing credibility gap had created a full-scale insurgency at home, within the Democratic Party. On 12 March, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy won more than 40% of the vote against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.
Days later, Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson's greatest political nemesis, announced his intention to also challenge the president. I had been expecting it," Johnson later matter-of-factly wrote in his memoirs about Kennedy's entry into the race.
On the campaign trail, Kennedy seemed to be blaming every national infirmity on the president. At the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, he even went to far as to accuse Johnson of "calling upon the darker impulses of the American spirit."
With Democratic voters in Wisconsin prepared to head to the polls on 3 April all signs pointed to Johnson suffering a catastrophic primary defeat to McCarthy's energized and confident foot soldiers. Nationally, Johnson's approval rating sank to 36 percent, and support for his handling of Vietnam plummeted to 26 percent. Missouri senator Stuart Symington told a closed-door meeting of his Senate colleagues, "Lyndon Johnson could not be elected dogcatcher in Missouri today."
Beyond his immediate political challenges, a larger emotional toll was being taken on the president. He regularly shuffled from his personal quarters to the Situation Room in the basement of the White House in his bathrobe and slippers. In a meeting with his old friend Senator Richard Russell, he began crying uncontrollably. He felt "chased on all sides" by the growing dissent and anger over the war, the "inflationary economy," and the "rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors, and hysterical reporters." Not since Lincoln had an American president faced as much domestic dissent as that which confronted Johnson in the spring of 1968.
(blog.oup.com)
I bring this situation up because there is the Iowa Caucuses today and Trump is expected to rout all comers. Plus Biden's poll numbers are not what anyone would call good.....so will Biden do as another Dem prez did...cut and run?
One independent candidate thinks it is a possibility.
Cornel West is sure he'll be on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election as an independent candidate. But the Harvard prof isn't sure that President Biden will be one of his opponents. "I think he's going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back," West tells Politico, referring to Lyndon B. Johnson's surprise withdrawal from the race in 1968. Instead, West won't be surprised if the Democratic nominee ends up being California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, both of whom he considers to be on the "B team," he says in the interview. "I'm just saying that I'm open to those possibilities, given the fluidity of the situation," he says of Biden. "He's running out of gas."
Polls, lots of polls, tells us that Biden is losing his grip on popularity and the possibility that he will help Trump win another term as mini-dictator.
Plus the voters are losing all confidence in the Dems across the board....another indication the Biden may be fighting an uphill battle.
Will he pull an LBJ?
My thought is he will not....there is something about the gig that keeps these slugs coming and coming....it is like a crack addiction....always wanting more and never enough.
What say you?
I Read, I Write, You Know
"lego ergo scribo"
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