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Top Dem Strategist: Dems at risk of allowing riots and violence to define their party as they did in '68
[Fox] Doug Schoen: George Floyd unrest — only this can save Dems from defeat in 2020.As violent protests sweep the nation and fury fills city streets in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the 2020 presidential election is shaping up to be eerily similar to the 1968 campaign. In 1968, the country was grieving from the assassinations of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was on the path to claiming the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. The period preceding the 1968 election was a time of great civil unrest. There were riots across the country following Dr. King’s assassination, and the August 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago became a venue for protests against the Vietnam War — led by left-wing activist groups like Students for a Democratic Society — and culminated in a televised riot where police clashed with protesters. As a result of that year’s civil unrest, which was also accompanied by inner Democratic Party division between the moderates and far left, Democrats embraced a more liberal foreign policy perspective while focusing mainly on social and racial justice issues, largely at the expense of economic issues. Taken together, the party’s leftward movement and the accompanying civil unrest, which was associated with the far left, helped Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” prevail in the 1968 election and in 1972, when he won by a 49-state landslide. Nixon’s approach appealed to the silent majority with a promise to restore “law and order,” while the Democratic Party was viewed as too far left. Posted by: Lex 2020-06-05 |
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