Is this how people felt post-JFK?

By post-JFK, I mean, after the first four days, after the funeral, when people knew they had to settle in to Johnson being president and adjust to what was not then called the “new normal”. Did people have this bleak feeling, like a dream had died?

Because that’s how I felt a little while ago. A post in another thread prompted me to check Wikipedia for stats on presidential elections. From that, I got a glimpse of Trump’s ham face leering at me, and I slapped my laptop closed and said, “This is really happening. It feels like a nightmare, but I’m awake.”

I know very few people who were old enough to really get the big picture in 1963. My sisters remember it as “We got out of school early and found out that grown ups can cry.” My uncle said “I wasn’t old enough to vote for him; he was just another grownup.” A family friend voted for Trump, so I can’t ask him. When I asked my mother the above, and went on to ask, “Do you think Nixon would have been elected if JFK had lived?” she said, “Oh, I don’t want to get that deep*.” So I’m asking here, in the hope that some people are qualified to answer. How did people reconcile the knowledge that Kennedy was just plain dead, didn’t matter how, and we were not going to get the Camelot America we’d been promised?

*She did say, “I got the two worst phone calls of my life this year. The first was from the hospital, telling me that my husband had died. The second was from my niece, telling me that Donald Trump was our next president.” Personally, I wish Cousin hadn’t called at 3am. I chose not to; I wanted my mom to have a full night’s sleep before finding out. But it would have been no less real at noon.

It’s a little weird to mourn what everyone seems to accept as a valid democratic exercise.

Trump is a symptom of a corrupt system. Hopefully, in time, enough people will focus on how to improve democratic representation in the USA so working class people (a) don’t re-register having previously given up (b) to vote … Republican © for a candidate who isn’t really a Republican (d) but who is a tv game show host.

It would be great if trump came to represent a genuine revolution in both American democratic representation, as well as one dimensional media.

No, because Johnson was Vice President and continued Kennedy’s policies such as Medicare and civil rights. He may have been crude and gruff, but he was a Washington insider, having been a Senator before, and he knew how to call in favors and cajole people around to his point of view. He was popular enough to win re-election in his own right in 1964, and if not for Vietnam, might have run again in 1968, and become one of the greatest presidents in modern times. People were stunned by JFK’s death, but there was no protesting in the streets when LBJ assumed office. It was a smooth transition to office because that was what was expected to take place under the Constitution.

I can understand people’s misgivings about Trump. I share them. But JFK’s assassination and Trump’s election really aren’t equivalent. LBJ was an experienced politician who knew how to work the system and sincerely was concerned for the country’s well being. Trump is an outsider who has yet to prove himself.

Though I initially supported JFK against Nixon, I wasn’t a huge fan of him during his presidency, so I didn’t react to his assassination the way a lot of people did. I just felt that assassinations, in general, had no place in American politics. What I’m feeling now is closer to what I felt after 9/11: shock, anger, depression. Except that after 9/11, there was a sense that we could at least retaliate (NOT by invading Iraq), rather than just settling into acceptance.

I think it’s how Republicans felt after JFK got elected.

No. In 1963, there was no apprehension at all about the prospects of a President Johnson. The same cabinet remained in place,the same bils were before Congress, it was just a different guy occupying the White House, whom everyone knew pretty well based on his prior political exposure. There was even talk in 1960 about a Johnson nomination for the presidency, so his sentiments were pretty well-known and accepted as competent and unsurprising.

Remember, the Vice-presidency is also an elected office, and the majority elected him.

I did hear someone say that they hadn’t felt this bad since 9-11.

Well, I certainly wasn’t comparing LBJ to Trump! And you’re right: it was not a whole new regime. Anyway, thank you; I feel slightly better.

In my opinion, the effect has been most like the uncertainty after Reagan’s election in 1980, especially since he also unexpectedly got a senate majority.

Reagan was a much bigger disaster.

He was on duty when American streets started to look like the Third World. There are legions of beggars in India; not Chicago.
Believe it or not, there was a time when “Homeless” was viewed as a crisis, to be fixed before nightfall.
It usually was a consequence of an apartment building burning down. The Red Cross would hand out motel vouchers for those who were not immediately taken in by others.

We now, to our ever-lasting shame, view “Homeless” as a long-term consequence of “Poor Choices”, a character flaw.

When the homeless show a bit of resilience and scrape together a “Tent City”, we send in cops to not-too-gently inform the wretches that the “Good People” of the town do not wants their eyes assaulted by the sight of them.

I live a mile or two from a hard-to-develop bit of land, left in its natural, scrub-brush and small tree condition.
It was donated to the Boy Scouts, who made a campground out of it. This meant water, showers, and drinking water supplies.
Remember when laundromats all had wash tubs*? When was the last time you saw such a tub?

Yeah - the homeless were using “things not intended for their use”. The campground was sold, the tubs removed.

    • this had nothing to do with making the customer’s lives easier - the tubs provided a place for dyeing - which ruins a washer. Plus, you don’t want ALL the crud that comes in going to the washers - if you can get people to leave the washers alone, the cost of a tub was minimal.
      But - those tubs meant THOSE people were getting FREE sponge baths AND washing their clothes.
      But: we’re surprised that “I’ve got mine - fuck you, Jack” Trump is elected?

This is a much better analogy. I was in High School when this happened and not at all politically aware yet but I remember my younger teachers, who were college students during the Vietnam protests being devastated.

Wow. That certainly wasn’t a rant that had nothing to do with the question. Not at all. No sirree, Bub.

This is another example of just how out of touch some people can be. Reagan won 44 states in 1980 and 49 in 1984. It was an overwhelming defeat both times.

It is fine to have a different opinion about his presidency but he was going against incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. Carter is generally viewed as a good person today but he was a horrible and ineffective President. The late 1970’s were my childhood and even I know that isn’t an era that anyone would ever want to repeat. The Reagan administration may have had some issues but it represented a better time for the vast majority of people and may have stopped another global war.

I am not a Trump supporter but the people that are in denial about the result need to rethink all they believe because there are some incorrect fundamental assumptions in there someone. Arguing against the outcome is really just protesting against our entire constitutional republican system and I can’t get on board with that.

“Area Liberal No Longer Recognizes Fanciful, Wildly Inaccurate Mental Picture Of Country He Lives In”.

I’m talking about the mood of Liberal people and nothing else. You read way too much into my comment.

I would not go this far, but this article does an OK job with my feelings.

An American Tragedy

I am not a Trump supporter but that type of hand-wringing rhetoric is what has fueled this dumpster fire. I have no idea what type of President Donald Trump will be because no one knows. Even much of the Republican party hates him because he isn’t one of them.

However, it is ridiculous to prematurely protest his legitimate election before he has actually done anything. He was elected POTUS. Granted, that is a powerful position but it isn’t king or emperor. He can’t pass any law on his own. The checks and balances system in the U.S. government is a powerful thing.

I would suggest that leftist types go back and actually read the U.S. Constitution rather than protesting in the streets. That would be much more useful and educational. There were firewalls set up for dictatorial type behavior that were firmly established a very long time ago and there was a very good reason for it.

I am not sure Trump himself truly understands it but he will find himself very surprised when he tries to you “Your’re fired!” to a Congressional member or a Supreme Court Justice. It doesn’t work that way.

To me, it’s more like how I felt after Robert F. Kennedy was murdered. He had a darn good chance to be the next president…and then it was taken away in a totally unexpected way.

(ETA: And we got a total fucking buffoon as President, so the parallels are fairly strong.)

I have relatives who never voted again after that. They gave up hope in the American system. (Not I! I still have faith in the system, and will never miss an election!)

The difference is that with an assassination, it’s one madman who kills the dreams of his country. An aberration; a fluke. But this time it’s almost half the voting population who have unleashed a madman and his cohorts onto the world. Not one crazy bastard, but half of all the people you’ve ever known.

I felt like the liberals do now back when hussein obama got elected although I didn’t cry and whine as much.

The article doesn’t say anything about protesting his election. It said we should combat authoritarianism, call out lies etc, which of course we can all agree.

Not everything has checks and balances e.g. the nuclear codes.
And pretty much everything that passes his mouth now (or twitter finger) will be taken the world over as being representative of US opinions and positions

Yeah, this. Right now I can’t bring myself to respect anyone who voted trump; even if you don’t subscribe to his hateful rhetoric, just a few minutes of objective research would be sufficient to understand why much of what he said about the state of the country is untrue and his plans would not work.

To me, I’d say it’s like this: it’s like hearing half of the country have demolished their own houses because there’s a popular superstition going around that doing that will bring prosperity in the future. It’s close to that level of WTF for me.