This story may sound familiar to anyone who lived through the last presidential election. A Democratic president knee-capped by his unpopularity within his own party.
It originated with a war in a faraway place that many Americans may not otherwise know of: a more liberal vice president who obviously had the presidency within their own sights, yet remained bound to their older counterpart.
Standing opposite them, a Republican nominee who defied the laws of political gravity and despite a bruising electoral loss just a few years earlier, had returned on a politics of vengeance with the GOP united firmly behind him.
Ultimately, everyone knows how this saga ended, with the president finally announcing he would not be seeking reelection, and the vice president taking the mantle of Democratic nominee, ending in an election where the Republican won a tight popular victory and a large electoral sweep.
However, if you have read this and are thinking of the 2024 election between former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump, you wouldn’t be seeing the full picture. Instead, I would ask you to think about the 1968 election, between former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and former President Richard M. Nixon.
There have been many comparisons between Former Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden: both men took the presidency in unexpected ways, spearheaded far more liberal policies than their previous records would suggest and both were ultimately made one-term presidents due to their unpopularity both with their party and the public.
Yet, in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago, listening to Harris on her book tour, I began to think further about the similarities between her and Johnson’s deputy, Humphrey. There has been plenty of speculation that Harris will run again in 2028, unsatisfied with her truncated campaign of only 107 days and she hinted toward it at this event. When asked if she would run again, the former vice president gave a laugh, a comical shrug and responded, “maybe.”
Harris and Humphrey represent, thus far, similar characters in history. Both are liberal senators who made a national impact early in their careers, who were forced by the failures of their presidents to bear the mantle of liberalism in deeply difficult elections.
Yet, they each had separate experiences in their campaigns to become the Democratic nominee. While Harris had the party unified around her in a matter of days, Humphrey had to fight off challenges from New York Senator Robert Kennedy (whose son would go on to become a rival of Harris’) and Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. While Harris led the 2024 convention into Chicago with the party behind her, Humphrey’s 1968 convention in Chicago is known as one of the worst calamities of modern politics. Yet, the similarities outshine these differences.
Both Harris and Humphrey were practitioners of Humphrey’s term “the politics of joy.” Despite the negative tones of their respective opponents, Trump and Nixon, and the vehement rage of their running mates, J.D. Vance and Spiro Agnew, Harris and Humphrey both fought for the brighter politics they became associated with over their careers.
For Humphrey, the politics of joy meant a happier and united approach, as opposed to the deep divisions of the time. Harris’ approach was similar in this regard to the point that her campaign seemed at times to be led more by “vibes” and the wrongness of Trump than a substantive policy. Humphrey was criticized similarly, and the politics of joy were seen as out of touch with the riots and unrest of the 60s, much as they were with the fear and economic anxiety of 2024.
Both vice presidents additionally struggled due to their presidents. While Johnson and Biden had both removed themselves from the presidential election, neither could stand to watch their legacies be anything but defended with the utmost seriousness by their would-be successors. Johnson bullied and harassed Humphrey into standing by him on Vietnam, threatening to destroy him if he turned away from him.
Ultimately, Humphrey was too late, and his modest public break with Johnson seemed not to matter in the end. Harris fell into a similar situation. While she begged Biden in private to show more humanity in his statements about the Palestinian people, she could not bring herself publicly to break with him, and Biden himself was not above Johnsonian tactics either.
Whether it was calling to tell Harris that he had heard she was “bad mouthing” him just before her incredibly important debate with Trump or pushing her that there could “be no daylight” between them, the 46th president still was not ready to give up entirely.
Biden may have been more subtle than Johnson, but it was unmistakable the octogenarian president intended to make Harris run with him, whether his name was on the ballot or not. Neither Harris nor Humphrey could ultimately make the best of their bad situations, nor escape the leering shadows of their unpopular presidents. In both 1968 and 2024, Americans saw the “happy warriors” of the Democratic Party slapped away against quite possibly the two most vengeful candidates the GOP had ever nominated.
What I find truly fascinating though, is that Harris’ likely decision to run again in 2028 will also mirror the first “happy warrior.” Humphrey was quick to throw himself into the campaign for president in 1972, his third (much like 2028 would be for Harris) attempt to gain the presidency. Yet, for all of the power that a former vice president and nominee may have in their party, the Democrats of the 70s had moved on from the man who lost the White House four years earlier, and he ultimately lost the nomination after appearing drained, with no trace of his well-known optimism.
Harris may yet see her fate be the same as Humphrey’s. Already, the Democratic Party is looking for its next fresh faces, and Harris’ may be too tainted by association with a president who retains much of the party’s scorn. If she is to have any chance in 2028, Harris must not subscribe solely to the politics of joy she overemployed in 2024, nor can she adopt the politics of vengeance, demanding that she “deserves” the presidency.
Instead, the politics of joy must be measured with a popular and substantive message to make America a better, happier place, not just window dressing with a smile and catchy songs.
If Harris continues on as Humphrey did, she will lose and join him in history as an almost-was. Harris seems to be sleepwalking in that direction. Even now, she is hesitant to verbally criticize Biden’s conduct; she seems happier declaring “I told you so” than preparing to fight for a presidency in 2028 that she has not earned. Unless Harris can put together policies that are both joyful and substantive, well-thought through and meet the moment, she will join Humphrey in assuming that the nomination was there for them as the previous standard bearer and be left behind by a party moving into the future.
If she can learn her mistakes, Harris may truly be able to deliver a politics of joy for the American people and cement herself as the happy warrior of our age.
