RE: I am old enough to remember the 1968 riots. They did not work out well for the democrats in the election that year.
The most disastrous PR disaster was the Kent State University shootings of 13 unarmed University students in Kent, Ohio, by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. The killings took place during a rally against the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into neutral Cambodia by United States military forces as well as the National Guard.
Everyone said that this would be the end of Richard Nixon’s re-election and the eminently amiable Hubert H. Humphrey would win in a landslide and use this as an issue.
RESULT: Nixon won in a huge landslide 2 years later. The Democrats didn’t know what hit them.
True, except Nixon beat McGovern in 1972. He beat Humphrey in 1968.