Shades of 1968?

Joe Biden is no Lyndon Johnson, but his presidency may face a similar fate.

In the kind of poll result one often sees when there’s no incumbent running for president, a survey of New Hampshire Democrats finds Pete Buttigieg leading the way with the support of 17 percent of likely voters in that state’s primary. The incumbent president follows with 16 percent (and thus is statistically tied with his Secretary of Transportation). After that come Elizabeth Warren and Gavin Newsom at 10 percent.

It’s true that New Hampshire hasn’t been a good state for Joe Biden. He finished fifth in the 2020 New Hampshire primary with only 8.4 percent of the vote. Buttigieg was second to Bernie Sanders with 24.3 percent. Biden didn’t break away from the pack until states with large numbers of black voters held their primaries.

Still, it’s jarring to see an incumbent president garner only 16 percent support in primary polling in any state. It’s also worth noting that Biden’s support among black voters has softened considerably since 2020.

The New Hampshire poll increases my conviction that the 1968 campaign offers the closest analogy to the situation Democrats find themselves in now. Stated differently, it increases my conviction that, unless the national outlook changes significantly, Biden will either have to decline to seek a second term or face probable defeat in his effort to be re-nominated.

In early 1968, support for the president, Lyndon Johnson, was eroding fast. However, the obvious challenger among Democrats, Johnson’s great enemy Robert Kennedy, was unwilling to take the president on.

But politics abhors weakness. Thus, Eugene McCarthy, a Senator of no great distinction, sought to take advantage of LBJ’s weakness by entering the New Hampshire primary.

McCarthy didn’t win in New Hampshire, but he did well enough to convince Johnson to bow out. Kennedy then jumped in, as, later on, did Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Kennedy’s race ended with his assassination just after he won the California primary. Humphrey went on to secure the nomination.

They don’t make Democrats like they used to, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Biden is no Johnson, Buttigieg no RFK, and Kamala Harris no Humphrey.

But the Democrats have plenty of Gene McCarthy’s. Newsom is one. Sherrod Brown is another. And it requires only one opportunist to challenge Biden, expose the extent of his weakness (assuming things don’t get better in America), and crack the race for the nomination wide open.

This assumes that Biden doesn’t bow out of the 2024 race before the primary season gets underway. I think he probably will unless his poll numbers improve substantially.

Would that clear the way for Harris, or would it simply accelerate a 1968-style scramble among her and a field of hopefuls?

The argument that Harris would cruise to the nomination relies on the assumption that, because she’s a black female, no other Democrat would gain traction or even be likely to run. It’s a plausible theory, but not one to which I subscribe.

Many Democrats would prefer to nominate a black female. But winning in 2024 is an imperative, not a preference, for Democrats. In a scenario where Biden bows out due to bad poll numbers, it’s unlikely that Democrats would view Harris as a strong standard bearer in the general election. How could they?

Nor is Harris the Democrats’ only perspective identity politics warrior. If Stacey Abrams wins in Georgia this year, she would fit the bill (and be regarded by many Dems as more “authentic” than Harris, not a high bar). And, of course, the Democrats could “settle” for nominating a black male (maybe Cory Booker) or a white female (maybe Amy Klobuchar or conceivably Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton).

Who knows? The Dems might even eschew identity politics, as they did in 2020 when they nominated Biden.

In sum, as things stand now the Democrats are likely to have a wild and contentious scramble for the 2024 presidential nomination. So are the Republicans, but that’s a subject for another time.