Remembering LBJ and his war.
During our conversation with former Chicago congress woman Marie Newman on this week’s Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers I was taken back to the 1964 presidential campaign between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater.
Johnson was the incumbent, although he was the unelected president. He got the position when JFK was assassinated.
Some pro-Biden Democrats keep talking about how the current occupant has been the most progressive president in our history when it comes to domestic policies.
I find that to be a bit of hyperbole.
In my experience what Biden represents is what main stream Democrats have always represented: social programs at home and military aggression abroad.
Guns and butter.
For LBJ it was the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam.
For Biden it is Gaza, Ukraine and a renewed Cold War.
In 1964 Democrats raised the slogan, “All the way with LBJ!”
In 1964 many Democrats who supported Johnson for his War on Poverty and were horrified at the prospect of Barry Goldwater as president (Goldwater called for dropping an atomic bomb on North Vietnam), also had misgivings about Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the raised the alternative slogan: “Part of the way with LBJ.”
Others took to the streets chanting, “Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?”
Johnson beat Goldwater easily in the 1964 election.
But the war came back to haunt the Democrats four years later when it caused LBJ to drop out of the race against Richard Nixon and handed his hand-picked successor, Hubert Humphrey, a humiliating defeat.
Although there are other factors in the current division within the Democratic Party as to whether Joe Biden should stay or go, the old issue of guns and butter is certainly one of them.
The Democrats can certainly find someone who is younger, more articulate and who has a better memory.
But with at least two wars and a record defense budget, will another candidate who advocates the Biden war policy be enough to defeat Trump?