To American and foreign observers alike, this created a disturbing image of disorder and violence in the United States. Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina had not voted Republican in any presidential election since Reconstruction, whilst Georgia had never voted Republican even during Reconstruction thus making Goldwater the first Republican to ever carry Georgia. Unfortunately for him, America's choice, overwhelmingly, was his opponent, incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnsonand the vast expansion of government power and activism that LBJ represented. "silent majority" happy? Goldwater's vote against the legislation helped cause African-Americans to overwhelmingly support Johnson. "Electoral myth and reality: the 1964 election.". Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Definition, Summary & Significance "One by one, President Johnson's advisors lobbied him to send American ground forces and warplanes to Vietnam," writes Elizabeth Becker in America's Vietnam War. How did William McKinley win the election of 1896? Trojans' side of the story. The 1964 election marked the beginning of a major, long-term re-alignment in American politics, as Goldwater's unsuccessful bid significantly influenced the modern conservative movement. There have been many other pivotal presidential elections in our history, some that set an entirely new course for the United States and a few that were crucial to the very survival of the republic. 1309 Words. However, after the incident, all US personnel involved acknowledged they had neither seen nor heard Communist gunfire. [29] That night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, the Maddox intercepted radio messages that gave them "the 'impression' that Communist patrol boats were bracing for [another] assault". Johnson retains the highest percentage of the popular vote, as of the 2020 presidential election. 1964 United States presidential election - Wikipedia Barry Goldwater, a Senator from Arizona, was the champion of the conservatives. John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960. During the 1964 campaign, Goldwater was decidedly critical of Johnsons liberal domestic agenda, railing against welfare programs and defending his own decision to vote against the Civil Rights Act passed by Congress earlier that year. When the votes were cast on November 3, Johnson defeated Goldwater handily, winning by more than 15 million votes and capturing 61 percent of the vote. Goldwater's chief opponent for the Republican nomination was Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York and the long-time leader of the GOP's liberal faction. What was one reason Richard Nixon won the presidential election of 1968? Beginning in the mid-1960s, violence erupted in several cities, as the country suffered through long, hot summers of riots or the threat of riotsin the Watts district of Los Angeles (1965), in Cleveland, Ohio (1966), in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan (1967), in Washington, D.C. (1968), and elsewhere. As each new American escalation met with fresh enemy response and as no end to the combat appeared in sight, the presidents public support declined steeply. In February 1965, after an attack by Viet Cong guerrillas on an U.S. military base in Pleiku, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, a series of massive bombing raids on North Vietnam intended to cut supply lines to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters in the South; he also dispatched 3,500 Marines to protect the border city of Da Nang.
