The 2008 DNC Will Rival 1968 Without a Doubt

1968 Democratic Convention. If you don't know anything about it, shame on you, you're not an American! Either that, or you went to public school in America.

Let me sum it up: Police. Riots. Anti-War Protests. People going to jail for peaceful protests. And, a party on the brink of divide over who to nominate for the 1968 election. Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election, Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, and Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey were divided over Vietnam War policy. The party nearly split in 1968, and because of the police violence, the whole world was watching.

PBS put together a great piece on it.

Ronald Browstien of the Los Angeles Times said in his column yesterday that the demographics are being split down every imaginable plane. Both Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) are polarizing figures, yet they are leading the Democratic race. Why? Because they are so dynamic? The problem that the DNC faces in this election is not beating the Republicans, it is restraining itself from suicide.

Early polls reveal that both of these candidates are atypical. The first woman and the first black candidate with real potential to recieve the Democratic bid for President.. ooooh, let me pop my bottle of Kristal.

Truth is that these candidates have the potential to divide the party altogether. Expected allegences fall apart when put to the test. The only one that stands is that women support Clinton more often then men do. But, when it comes to the down to the moment of decision, I wish I could be a fly on the wall. Neither one of these candidates can win. Neither. So, the DNC must choose a less popular candidate with less financial backing in order to meet the middle-of-the-road political climate.

Brownstien agrees with me: Politically, 1968 was nothing compared to what we have to look forward to in 2008, and he gives some of the lead-in polls and statistics to back it up.

I noted recently that the competition between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the two top contenders, is following an upstairs-downstairs pattern familiar from most Democratic primary races since 1968. Obama, like past Democratic hopefuls such as Eugene McCarthy and Bill Bradley who stressed reform and railed against politics-as-usual, is running best with college-educated voters; Clinton, like predecessors such as Walter Mondale and Al Gore who emphasized bread-and-butter concerns, polls best among voters without college degrees.

In a contest that features the first woman and African-American candidates with a real chance of winning the nomination, race and gender are also shaping the initial patterns of support. In most surveys, Clinton polls better with women than men; for Obama the reverse is generally true. Among African-Americans, the two run closely, with most polls giving an edge to Clinton. Read More!

The Democratic Party is in crisis here. Neither of these candidates have enough of a support base to keep them afloat in the 2008 race. So, the party will either be torn apart trying to decide between the two of them, or it will die the same death as the donut I left on top of my refrigorator for a week and a day: long, stale and moldy.