REMEMBER ELECTION 68:  WHEN LYNDON JOHNSON WAS REPLACED WITH DICK NIXON AND GEORGE WALLACE NAILED IT

(WARNING: YOU MAY FIND SOME OF THIS OFFENSIVE AND OR DISTURBING)

".....We have been here now for twelve and one half hours by my reckoning and we still don't know who the next President of the United States is......"

NBC Anchorman Chet Huntley At 7 AM Eastern Time Wednesday November 6, 1968-LINK

I was watching Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the morning of Wednesday November 6th, 1968 as I awoke around 7am from a short nights sleep for an eight year old, probably not much more than four and a half hours.

We still didn't know who the next President of the United States would be but it was looking dim for Vice President Hubert Humphrey with Huntley wondering if votes were being deliberately held back by some states.   Huntley remarked at one point:

"At the risk of getting some very bad fan mail as you mentioned earlier I sometimes wonder if some of these states don't hold back their votes on purpose..."

Huntley was a native of Montana, a Westerner, a 'warm friendly maverick libertarian who crossed the picket line during a TV strike in 1967 while David Brinkley honored it and Walter Cronkite at CBS walked it.  I guess you could say Chet was a kind of Cliven Bundy IMHO.  In fact, Chet loved raising cattle and did so in northern New Jersey while he anchored news in New York.

Uncle Walter chuckled at the notion of a Huntley political career when Chet retired in July 1970, but his retirement years would be too few in number as he passed away in 1974.  Chet was in own words, liberal on race but he was disenchanted at the end of the 1960's with the increase in the size and expense of the federal government.

While the big ratings news operations of NBC and CBS would not call the election for Nixon until nearly 11 AM, ABC would do it a lot quicker at 815 AM.

Link.....ABC Calls 1968 Election For Richard Nixon Wednesday November 6th, 1968

Illinois would put Nixon over the top in 1968, it helped Kennedy beat him just eight years earlier.

But the rising tide of race riot violence in Chicago would chip away at traditional white support in the city for Democrats.   Mayor Daley and the Democrat machine were allowed to run the city but the statewide and national Democrats for Senate and President were faltering.   Hubert Humphrey's own presidential nomination in the city was tainted by the anti-war protest violence.

Charles Percy, the Republican, won a US Senate race in Illinois in 1966.

The original apostle of "law and order" was the third party candidate George Wallace who was welcomed by big crowds in Chicago just a month before the election.    He ran as high as 21 percent in the national polls and the last month was a time for union bosses and the Democrats to twist his votes back into the fold but Wallace still got 14 percent nationwide and 8 percent in Illinois.

Nixon's win was ever so close as incumbent President Lyndon Johnson frantically tried to deal with Vietnam and get peace talks launched the weekend before the election.   He wanted to help his Vice-President Hubert Humphrey get over the top.   South Vietnam's government balked and Johnson smelled a Nixon conspiracy.

Johnson talked with Nixon by phone the weekend before the election (November 3rd, 1968) with Nixon assuring Johnson he wasn't doing anything to sabotage the notion of peace talks to end the Vietnam War for political gain.-Lyndon Johnson-Dick Nixon Call 11/3/68

Wallace with his running mate retired Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis Le May was willing to pursue peace talks but with massive military action to rapidly end the war as the back up,-WALLACE ON VIETNAM  Nixon ended up doing just that in December of 1972 to extract North Vietnam's agreement to peace.

And Wallace had a legendary punchline when it came to Republicans and Democrats.

"There's not a dime's worth of difference between them"

Whatever else George C. "Segregation Forever" Wallace got wrong, this one he got so right.

The actual difference between D's and R's was evidenced so clearly when a "Johnson" was replaced by a "Dick".

The destructive course of out of control government spending and massive bureaucracy Chet Huntley disdained would not be reversed when a "Dick" replaced a "Johnson".

And its only gotten massively worse since then.