Is 2024 a rerun of 1968? Protests helped Richard Nixon win on ‘law and order’ | Opinion

I am old enough to remember 1968.

And how that year of protests did not end well for Democrats.

True, America in 1968 was more turbulent than in 2024. Assassinations roiled the world, including those of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Students marched against a Vietnam War that was killing 50 Americans every day, and for long-overdue civil rights, equality and justice.

On the other hand, the leading presidential candidate was not on criminal trial. Students then mostly were not fighting or threatening each other.

In 1968, it all boiled over at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

This Democratic National Convention is in Chicago.

I’ll save you looking it up: Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon campaigned to restore “law and order,” and won 32 states.

He easily defeated Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, although the popular vote was close.

“I see these protests as much the same” as in the 1960s, University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus wrote by email.

Protesters demand Democrats take a side, he wrote.

Meanwhile, Republicans “drive a wedge” in the Democratic Party by claiming lawlessness and warning against violent extremists.

Two local political scientists old enough to remember 1968 — Cal Jillson of Southern Methodist University and Jim Riddlesperger of TCU — both pointed to one obvious difference with 2024.

Campus protests have spread fast “but those campuses will begin emptying out in about 10 days,” Jillson wrote.

If the protests slow down, they’ll be forgotten, Riddlesperger wrote.

Also, both President Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump take Israel’s side. The split is less partisan, and mainly between moderate and progressive Democrats.

In the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll of 1,286 voters taken April 12-22, only 14% of voters said the U.S. should focus on saving Palestinian civilians.

A plurality of Texans, 35%, said the U.S. should balance supporting Israel with preventing civilian casualties.

TCU political scientist Manochehr Dorraj started at the school in 1990. He teaches Middle East politics.

The parallel to 1968 is “on target with two major caveats,” he wrote by email.

First, a quick ceasefire would mean the war fades as an issue. If there isn’t a quick ceasefire, Dorraj wrote, young people and American Muslims might stay home “thinking that this year they have no candidate worth voting for.”

The other question, Dorraj wrote, is how damaged Trump might be.

But the 2020 election was about Trump.

In recent weeks, the 2024 election has become more about Biden.

The protests are “manna from heaven for Republicans,” wrote Mark P. Jones, the Rice University professor who has become a fair referee of Texas politics.

The unrest drowns out coverage of Trump’s trial and abortion restrictions, he wrote.

It also reinforces Republicans’ message that Democrats are “the party of chaos, crime and disorder,” Jones wrote. And the protests fall flat with working-class Democrats who see chaos and antisemitism among “privileged students at largely elite universities.”

Like the other professors, Jones looked to the calendar.

“The silver lining for Democrats is that the election is still six months away,” he wrote.

But if the trouble continues, Republicans will have a slogan:

Make America ‘68 Again.