1968 is typically described as a "realignment election", with the triumph of Richard Nixon, the collapse of the new deal coalition, that shaky bond between northern liberals and Southern populists that made the Democratic Party effective, and the Republican "Southern Strategy", which successfully turned the South from a region only contested by the Democrats and various segregationist 3rd parties, to a swing area, and then the most solidly Republican part of the country.
Although many of the gains of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson remained, liberalism in America after 1968 has been mostly on the defensive, shorn of the populist elements that could have made a truly transformative agenda politically practicable. Moreover, following Nixon's disgrace in Watergate, the Republican Party abandoned statist conservatism, instead embracing Goldwater's libertarian economics combined with unflinching social conservatism, a paradigm that has defined American politics for the last 50 years.
But what if, instead of being besieged for decades, anxious only to retain the achievements of the previous generations, liberalism and progressivism again went on the offensive. What if the reflexive cynicism towards and mistrust of government pervasive in American life post-Nixon never took root? In short, what if Humphrey had won in 1968?
This WI is based on the attached map from the online game "The Campaign Trail", a text-based game where one can alter the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1896, 1968, and 2012 by barnstorming, making speeches, and discussing policies. Unfortunately, the full map, with national popular vote totals and detailed electoral vote information didn't load because of a bug in the 1968 election results generation, which has not been remedied since.
Rest assured, despite the lopsided Humphrey win, that this scenario was played on the game's "normal" difficulty setting, although I did have to run the game several times to get the optimum result. Judging from previous games, Humphrey would've won approximately 50.2% of the popular vote, Wallace 12.7%, and Nixon 37.1%, with Humphrey winning many states by margins of less than 5%.
Iowa is highlighted because it was the last thing I clicked on before realizing that the full results weren't actually going to load.
