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Been thinking a lot about 1972 lately (sorry, insomnia produces extra-nerdy thoughts). Richard Nixon, having gained office with a less than a 1% popular vote margin and riding a national backlash by white Americans against the civil rights movement, is seeking re-election...
He was concerned enough about his chances, having failed to end the Vietnam war as promised and running against an anti-war WWII veteran that his campaign tried to cheat, which would later produce Watergate and make him resign rather than face the humiliation of Senate removal.
What Nixon clearly didn't know, of course, was that a majority of voters had no intention of electing McGovern. Nixon would bring the historic humiliation of impeachment upon himself for nothing: He won 49 states and even grew his share of the black vote from 10% in '68 to 18%.
Black leaders that year had convened a huge convention in Gary, Indiana to consider responses to Nixon's "southern strategy" & form a black agenda. A teenaged @thereval was there as well as @RevJJackson, Julian Bond, Barbara Jordan, Amiri Baraka and more. https://beltmag.com/1972-national-black-political-convention-gary/
Among the things that got rejected?? The presidential bid of my mom's favorite politician ever: Shirley Chisholm. (The preference was to perhaps run one of the first black U.S. mayors instead or form a new party but nothing ultimately came of that either). https://www.history.com/news/shirley-chisholm-presidential-campaign-george-wallace
One thing that 1972 produced (besides more Nixon) was a great retrenchment of the American voter. Even with the 26th Amendment expanding the electorate to include 18-year-olds, voter turnout among all demographic groups declined in 1972.
The decline was particularly acute among black voters who in much of the South had only just gained meaningful access to the ballot. Southern states were quick to find new ways to push black voters back despite the law & Democrats weren't exactly inspiring https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/upshot/black-turnout-in-1964-and-beyond.html
This part about the voter high-point of 1964: "Black voters wouldnât go to the polls at such levels again until President Obamaâs first election in 2008, when 60.8 percent of them voted. In 2012, 62 percent turned out for Mr. Obamaâs re-election."
IOW, representation matters. Inspiration, particularly when people are being asked to take tremendous physical risks to vote, matters. I wonder what might have happened if those folks in Gary had embraced Shirley's run and pushed their party to take her seriously...
...or if at the convention, where she finished fourth (behind Hubert Humphrey & George Wallace) & having outlasted well-known men like Edmund Muskie & Eugene McCarthy, Dems had put her on the ticket as McGovern's running mate. Highly unlikely but an interesting alternate history!
BTW here is where I got that pic, and yes I'm watching Mrs. America and enjoying the great @UzoAduba as Shirley Chisholm! But I digress ... https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a32096380/shirley-chisholm-mrs-america-presidential-campaign-legacy-facts/
With all that I read this piece with sleepless alarm, knowing the electorate faces "viral retrenchment" due to the pandemic, likely intense suppression of black, brown, AAPI & indigenous voters and a Democratic Party that's acting like it's all in the bag. https://diversity.utexas.edu/2019/11/07/1972-and-2020-defeat-of-black-power-author-shares-striking-comparisons-between-two-presidential-elections-2/
