At the beginning of the election season, President Lyndon Johnson was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and as a sitting president, he should have won his party's nomination without any trouble. But growing opposition to the war in Vietnam, unrest on college campuses, and urban rioting, made him vulnerable. In November 1967, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination, and that ending the Vietnam War was his central issue. McCarthy mobilized hundreds of student volunteers, who went "clean for Gene," cutting their hair and going door-to-door for him in New Hampshire, home of the nation's first p

Next came the Democratic Convention in Chicago on August 1968. Unger said "the barbed wire-laced jeeps in Grant Park evoked images of Russian tanks in the streets of Prague". After the Tet offensive many Americans began to shift their opinions of the war in Vietnam and began to doubt the ability of American institutions to tolerate opposition. Several thousand students and anti-war activists descended on the Democratic Convention in Chicago to pressure delegates into repudiating Johnson's Vietnam policy. This anti-war protests turned into violence where heads were cracked, tear gas was used, police lines pushed through the demonstrators and television cameras captured the whole thing. As Unger put it "Chicago changed minds, Chicago changed politics, Chicago changed the Left, Chicago changed the media, Chicago changed those who were here and those who watched from far away, Chicago changed Chicago". These events that took place in Chicago changed our political and cultural institutions and has carved the way for politics or today. In the end, Humphrey received the nomination but the Chicago Convention had doomed the Democratic Party because it showed America that if they couldn't handle a local opposition how could they handle a world opposition.

The Republican nominating contest was orderly compared to the Democratic one. Richard M. Nixon staved off potential strong opponents such as Michigan Governor George Romney, and swept the Republican primaries, easily winning the nomination at the Republican Convention. Nixon ran as the champion of the "silent majority," those who rejected the radicalism and cultural liberalism of the time. He chose the conservative governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, as his running mate partly to appeal to Southern conservatives. It was necessary for Nixon to have Southern support because Alabama Governor George Wallace entered the election as a third party candidate for the American Independent Party, running on a platform of extreme social conservatism. Nixon led in the polls during most of the general election, but shortly before Election Day President Johnson suspended air attacks on North Vietnam, helping Humphrey close some ground. On Election Day the popular vote was close: Nixon had 31.8 percent, Humphrey had 31.3 percent, and Wallace won 13.5 percent. But Nixon's Electoral College margin was substantial, 301 to 191 t

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Approximate Word count = 1602
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)