History does not repeat itself.

The 1968 Democratic National Convention's mangled lesson

LBJ announcing he will not run for another term on March 31, 1968. (Courtesy: LBJ Presidential Library & Museum)

On the hook in my kitchen for reusable grocery bags hangs one I received at a history conference last fall. Across its unbleached linen face the silkscreen letters read:

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” –History 

It’s a cute quip, but I was surprised to see it printed by a group of professional historians and scholars. One thing I have learned in my years covering history for The Washington Post is that most historians do not think history repeats itself. 

(They won’t often say so — they want you to love history as much as they do, so they’ll take any access point, really — but they invariably push back against the comparison of two grains plucked from the sands of time. Under their microscopes those grains are as similar as an emerald and a pearl.)

I’d already been ruminating about history not repeating itself last month when I was interrupted by President Biden’s terrible debate performance. Even before it had ended, there were calls for Biden to step aside for a new candidate, or at least to have a conversation about Biden stepping aside for a new candidate — calls that have only grown stronger in the days since.

On social media, the keep-Biden camp is shouting a barrage of reasons why that conversation shouldn’t even be happening: It was one stupid debate.¹ He won the primaries.² Trump sounded crazy.³ Biden has been a good president, we owe him our loyalty.⁴

And then there’s the specter of “history repeats itself”: The last time Democrats didn’t go with their incumbent at the convention, in 1968, they lost the election! And that convention was in Chicago, just like it is this year!⁵ Don’t let history repeat itself! Or, as one viral post put it: “The Dems did do the ‘change the candidate at the convention’ in 1968. Nixon won in a landslide.”

Democrats did not “change the candidate at the convention” in 1968, but even with that obvious error aside, the two scenarios — what actually happened in 1968, and what most supporters of a new candidate are proposing now — are so fundamentally different that comparison or prediction is absurd.

In 1968, two high-profile candidates challenged incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson for the nomination — Minn. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, nine months before the convention, and N.Y. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, five months before the convention.

In the 2024 cycle, Biden’s primary challenger was … Dean Phillips, an unknown House member from a state you probably can’t recall (I sure can’t).

In 1968, LBJ announced he would not seek reelection on March 31, nearly five months before the convention, after embarrassing losses in the first few primaries. He did not name a preferred successor, as an endorsement from him would haven been a total liability.

In 2024, Biden won every primary contest. Were he to step aside, he could confidently endorse a preferred successor.

In 1968, one of the candidates was assassinated, leaving his nearly 400 delegates up for grabs. Heading into the convention, vice president Hubert Humphrey had 258 pledged delegates, McCarthy 340, and LBJ 12.⁶ Under more opaque party rules that no longer apply, nearly a thousand delegates were uncommitted, and another 600 went to “favorite sons,” an antiquated system by which governors controlled their states’ delegates.

In 2024, “uncommitted” has 36 pledged delegates to Phillips’ four. Biden has 3,896. Only 1,976 are needed for the nomination. If Biden named a successor for his delegates and only 52 percent respected his wishes, that successor would still win on the first ballot. (Under modern rules, super-delegates do not vote in the first round.)

There is no reason to believe a late, coordinated exit by Biden would automatically resemble Johnson’s early, disorganized exit and the chaos that ensued.

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If the 2024 convention did end up as contentious as 1968’s, we have no historical markers for how that might interact with the current Republican candidate’s advanced age, felony conviction and stated plans for a frightening power grab.⁷

And as long as we’re playing it’s-just-like-1968, one can easily pluck out other similarities to bolster the argument for a new candidate: In 1968, the convention went with what looked like the “safe” choice, therefore we shouldn’t do that in 2024! In 1968, the convention ignored young people angry about a war, therefore we should listen to young people angry about a war in 2024! LBJ was dying within a few years of leaving office and would have had to step down anyway, therefore we shouldn’t reelect a president who will be 86 by 2028!

Let’s meet “history repeats itself” with another cliche: “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Forgetting isn’t just amnesia; forgetting is also misunderstanding. Oversimplifying. Seeing what you want to see. Drawing the wrong conclusions.

Maybe history repeats itself, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it only repeats when we don’t learn its lessons. In a country so determined to never look back — an American trait that has remained remarkably consistent through the ages — we should be mindful of our propensity for drawing the wrong conclusions from history. Again.

1. It’s a year of undecided voters complaining about his age, to which an energetic debate was supposed to have been a response.

2. He can release his pledged delegates.

3. This is not new information.

4. Biden has been a good president, who is an elected representative, not our dad.

5. And an RFK was a potential spoiler in both, zomg!

6. Yes, I am ignoring the “suspected” delegate count here, since it was provisional and inconclusive.

7. We do know that in the vast majority of swing state polls — which are snapshots in time, not predictors — Biden loses, even with the GOP candidates’ unprecedented weaknesses.