It would appear that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal is worried enough that Donald Trump might pull off an election win in November, that they’re offering Joe Biden helpful advice on how to avoid a disaster—especially in light of the current campus protests and the desertions that the Democratic Party has suffered, which don’t make winning look like a sure thing.
In the May 1 editorial entitled “Biden Needs To Learn from the Democrats’ Disaster of 1968,” the Journal points to the 1968 disruption of the Democratic Convention in Chicago—where this year’s convention will also be held—by anti-war protesters, and the disaster that befell then-candidate Hubert Humphrey. “It is suddenly all too imaginable that the Democrats will reenact that drama, with President Biden as Humphrey,” the editors fret.
As Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President, Humphrey “was helpless to bring the Vietnam War to an end, while President Biden has ways to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza or at least reduce the violence.” But, if he fails, “Democrats will have good reason to worry about 1968 redux and to ask themselves what they can do to mitigate the worst.” Biden’s “painfully familiar dilemma” is that he is another moderate liberal “in an age of extremism,” who is “leaking support from both flanks of his party.” Like Humphrey, he faces an unpopular war, yet, like Humphrey, he is “reluctant to make a sharp break both as a matter of personal conviction and as a political calculation, since,” as the Journal claims, “so many Americans who are not young and not liberal actually support the war.”
What to do? His path is “very narrow and treacherous,” the Journal warns, but at all costs, he must avoid the calamity of ‘68. Maybe he won’t be able to get the kids on his side, but “he needs to make peace—in Israel, at home—so that the rest of the country can hear his message.” But here’s the problem. Even if the Gaza war has subsided by summer, young progressives who are already mobilized on issues of race and crime and campus speech “are likely to be out on the streets” and Biden will be their target—not Trump. Trump will use the moment to prove that Democrats’ rule has led to anarchy.
Face facts, say the editors. Biden has made “extraordinary gains” since 2020 among college grads, “but there aren’t nearly enough of them to make him President in 2024.” Somehow he has to stop the losses he is suffering among working-class voters, including Blacks and Hispanics who aren’t too keen about the progressive agenda. “That means ignoring advisers who tell him to tack left.”
The Journal, of course, fails to recognize that the current process of campus protests is a nonlinear one, so it helpfully suggests various “nice” things that Biden might do, should the convention get out of hand. Treat protesters “with respect” but don’t let them take “center stage,” and maybe give them a little platform time, in the afternoon, when they can criticize foreign policy.
