As I’ve noted many times, Republicans want every election to look like 1980. A little over a year ago, that was a plausible outcome, given the Afghan withdrawal, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and high levels of inflation, but not today. Biden refuses to play the Jimmy Carter role, and Trump is no Ronald Reagan. Is there a fairly recent analogy that works better?
Yes–1968, because two of the candidates were the first culture warriors of my lifetime. Richard Nixon focused his campaign on “law and order,” by which he meant putting an end to urban riots, and he attacked counterculture figures with gusto. George Wallace, the Ron DeSantis of his day, went even further; he railed about federal bureaucrats and supported angry white protesters and recalcitrant state and local governments in battles over school integration.
Of course, the analogy isn’t perfect. We aren’t at war–culture wars don’t count. Our cities aren’t burning. Biden, unlike LBJ, is running for re-election. And Trump may share Nixon’s contempt for constitutional norms (and also has the support of Roger Stone), but he lacks Nixon’s intelligence and flair for hypocrisy. All of these differences probably dictate a different result in the election.