In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination and ran an in depth second within the New Hampshire main. The close to upset by McCarthy, a Minnesota progressive, helped persuade Johnson that he shouldn’t run for re-election, opening the way in which for Robert F. Kennedy. Historical past might need been very completely different if tragedy hadn’t intervened that June on the Ambassador Lodge in Los Angeles.
Might the same situation (minus any violence) unfold once more, with President Biden within the position of L.B.J., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. within the position of McCarthy, and a extra credible Democrat than Kennedy within the position of his dad, in the end successful the nomination?
There are good causes to doubt it. There are additionally good causes to want for it — which is why I discover myself within the bizarre place of cheering a candidate whose politics I detest and whose grip on actuality I query.
Among the many causes for doubt: Kennedy is a crank. His long-held anti-vaccine views sit poorly with most Democrats. He has mentioned the C.I.A. killed his uncle and presumably his father, that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election, and that Covid vaccines are a Invoice Gates and Anthony Fauci self-enrichment scheme. He repeats Kremlin propaganda factors, just like the notion that the warfare in Ukraine is definitely “a U.S. warfare in opposition to Russia.” He has good issues to say about Tucker Carlson.
Additional purpose: We aren’t dwelling in 1968, and even 1967. 1000’s of draftees aren’t being killed in a faraway warfare. Liberals have come to love Biden extra throughout his presidency, whereas they got here to love Johnson loads much less. McCarthy was a critical man who had held a excessive workplace for practically 20 years when he challenged Johnson. Kennedy’s a princeling activist with a troubled previous who has by no means held elected workplace.
Additionally, the prospect of Donald Trump again within the White Home focuses the thoughts in a means not even the prospect of a Nixon presidency did. Many Democrats might have quietly wished Biden to step apart as a substitute of run. Now that he’s operating, the secure name appears to be to rally behind him, lest a challenger assist sink his possibilities. That’s what one other Kennedy, Teddy, helped do to a different Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, in 1980.
However what if it isn’t the secure name? What if the 15 p.c to twenty p.c of the Democratic voters who assist Kennedy, based on latest polls, are sending some messages different voters want to listen to — and never as a result of they’re drawn to conspiratorial nonsense?
The obvious message is one which too many Democrats need to want away: Biden is a weak candidate in opposition to nearly any Republican, together with Trump, and he’s in all probability even weaker with Kamala Harris as his operating mate.
Sixty-six p.c of registered voters assume Biden is simply too previous to be president and 59 p.c have doubts about his psychological health, based on a Harvard CAPS-Harris ballot performed final week. Sixty-three p.c assume the financial system is on the “incorrect observe.” Thirty-three p.c of voters cite inflation as their chief concern; solely 19 p.c cite weapons and 11 p.c ladies’s rights. If an election had been held now, Harris discovered, Trump would get 45 p.c of the vote to Biden’s 39 p.c (with 15 p.c undecided). Trump’s federal indictment appears to have barely made a dent.
These numbers are horrible — and that’s regardless of declining inflation and rock-bottom unemployment. What occurs to Biden’s candidacy if the financial system takes a flip for the more serious within the subsequent 12 months, or a international adversary springs its personal model of the Tet offensive on the administration?
There’s a second, extra {powerful} message implicit in Kennedy’s candidacy: a profound undercurrent of discontent with a celebration that’s shedding contact with its once-powerful, even dominant, populist roots. That is the get together whose base has considerably shifted from the excessive school- to the college-educated; from manufacturing unit flooring and repair jobs to breakout rooms on Zoom; from champions of free speech to promoters of speech codes and set off warnings; from questioning authority (together with scientific authority) to providing — and demanding — unblinking constancy to it.
The spirit of insurrection in America right this moment now rests primarily on the Republican facet. It might be the last word purpose for Trump’s enduring, even outlaw, attraction.
Which is why Kennedy’s candidacy is resonating extra broadly than practically anybody anticipated. As with Trump in 2015, the media is treating his message “actually, however not critically,” to borrow the political reporter Salena Zito’s vital perception. His supporters could also be doing simply the other: taking him critically for being the voice of revolt, no matter how they really feel about his particular views.
Will this be sufficient to disclaim Biden the nomination? In all probability not. Then once more, not many political observers in 1967 noticed what was coming. There’s an unfulfilled starvation for a liberal chief who can seize Kennedy’s spirit with out his folly.
