Cable TV commentators are constantly speculating not only as to whether Joe Biden will join the hordes of other Democrats running for President – but whether he’s already waited too long to get in. Here’s how much the world has changed:
Flash back to fifty-one years ago – March 16, 1968. That was also a Saturday, and that was the day Bobby Kennedy, aka U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, announced he had decided to run for president. But that was the year of the election itself – not the year before. That was seen as a little late, but not impossibly so.
In fact, the man who eventually got the Democratic nomination, Hubert Humphrey, didn’t officially get into the race until late April, and wasn’t even able to start thinking about it till President Lyndon Johnson suddenly decided not to run at the end of March.
Nobody knows if Kennedy would have been nominated that year if he hadn’t been assassinated as he won the California primary in June. The numbers favored Humphrey, but RFK had momentum.
What we do know is that people who don’t yet know each other will meet, fall in love, and even have a baby before this next election.
The presidential election, by the way, for which some experts say it is too late to start a campaign.
— Jack Lessenberry
