The 1964 presidential election remains the high-water mark for Democrats since FDR's death. It is the only post-FDR election in which the Dem nominee obtained > 51% of the popular vote (Carter got a shade under 51% in 1976). While Obama clearly will not get 61% of the popular vote or 486 EVs, obvious parallels between the 2 elections are starting to emerge.
The most obvious parallel between the 2, obviously, is that the GOP nominated a blunt AZ senator w/ a reputation for being a little trigger-happy. McCain, in fact, was elected to Goldwater's seat when Goldwater retired. Other parallels, however, are now starting to emerge.
Sarah Palin's Clearwater speech yesterday raised another parallel. As was described by Rick Perlstein, the Goldwaterites hated the press then:
The logy Mark Hopkins elevators gave the insurgents, flooding into town for what Goldwater biographer Robert Alan Goldberg called the "Woodstock of the right," at least two chances a day to bait Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, anchors of NBC's nightly newscast—and crypto-liberals, according to their harassers. "You know, these nighttime news shows sound to me like they're being broadcast from Moscow," one conservative observed to another on the way down, loud enough for the two newsmen to hear. Brinkley forbade his son, Alan, to show his NBC insignia, except to security.
The volume of right-wing rage at the media was novel at this Republican convention.
Perlstein's 1964 account largely mirrors Dana Milbank's WaPo account of the Palinites at the Clearwater rally:
Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
There was a racial tinge to the '64 Goldwater campaign. While he had voted for prior civil rights bills, Goldwater voted against the 1964 Public Accomodations Act. Strom Thurmond changed his party affiliation that year and spearheaded the SC Goldwater campaign. Except for his home state of AZ, Goldwater carried no state outside the Deep South.
While overt racist appeals are no longer acceptable in polite political discourse, there appear to be undercurrents at work w/ the GOP ticket. The Lee County, FL Sheriff's repeated references to Barack Hussain Obama at a rally is illustrative of that approach. We've all seen or heard of the scurrilous e-mail attacks that are circulating about both Sen. and Michelle Obama. Palin's "he's not like us" attack line on Obama has racial undercurrents to it.
While the distribution of McCain states is still much broader than the distribution of Goldwater states, a certain resemblance is starting to appear. Nate Silver now gives McCain a mere 192.6 EVs, and the Goldwater states (SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, and AZ) and states bordering on those states provide a majority of McCain's projected tally. Taking the Electoral-vote.com map highlights this distribution even more. If one gives Obama NC (as Silver does), McCain is down to 174 EVs in that projection, and 113 of them (65%) come from Goldwater states and their immediate neighbors. In fact, had LBJ not been from TX, there's a good chance Goldwater would've carried it, thereby considerably narrowing the gap between Goldwater's accumulated EVs and McCain's projected EVs.
While a lot can happen in the next 4 weeks, this obvious historical pattern is starting to become more relevant w/ each passing day. The anger, the narrowness, and the geographic distribution of the Goldwater vote is staring to mirror the anger, the narrowness, and the geographic distribution of the McCain vote. While Obama's campaign will not reprise the legendary "Daisy" ad from 1964, the end result of this campaign may have some obvious parallels to the end result of that campaign.
The GOP cannot win by appealing to the base this year anymore than it could win by appealing to the base 44 years ago. The Palin nomination and the basic approach of Team McCain, at this point, emphasizes courting the base over all other considerations. Team Obama should be thanking them profusely for doing so.