Worst in 40 years?

Part of the reason I've been remembering and researching the events of 1968 is because I just have a feeling about this year's race that brings up the uncomfortable events of that year.

Fred Grimm, who I linked earlier today, makes the 1968 connection in his column today, Dems' future gets dimmer and dimmer:

...political rage makes up most of what I remember about the 1968 Democratic primary. I eventually voted, without enthusiasm, for Hubert Humphrey in the general election, but many of my friends, who had been so enthused about Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy, couldn't bring themselves to vote for ``The Hump.''

Richard Cohen, who I first met in that year, may be having these feelings, it seems, and says this race disgusts him: A Campaign to Hate.

I see little to be happy about, little that pleases my jaundiced eye. Yes, voter participation is way up and in the end, the Democrats will choose a woman or an African American and, to invoke that tiresome phrase, history will be made. But this messy nominating process has eroded the standing of both candidates. It has highlighted the reality that racism still runs deep and that misogyny, although more imagined than real, is not yet a wholly spent force. This is an ugly porridge that has been placed before us...

And, even more surprising, this, on The New Nixon blog, from John Taylor: Chick Flick Politiks and the Clinton Sellout.

It’s ...a minor postscript on a classic political sellout. The liberal establishment’s ruthless betrayal of the Clintons is the story of the year. President Clinton was the most successful Democratic politician since FDR, while Hillary Clinton had distinguished herself among colleagues and journlists alike for her service in the Senate and had been cheerfully embraced as the frontrunner. I opposed Clinton’s impeachment and admired his Nixonian flair for governing from the center as well as his openness to RN’s counsel about foreign policy and his and Mrs. Clinton’s graciousness toward the Nixon family when the President died in 1994.