I remember Hubert

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

PowerLine’s Steven Hayward reads publications like the New York Review of Books so that the rest of us don’t, and after going through that publication’s special election issue, dredged up this gem from one Susan Faludi, “the Joyful Kamala Harris and the Mirthless Donald Trump”:

[Harris’s] high-wattage beams and peals of laughter, her sartorial mash-ups of Chuck Taylors and pearls, and her campaign’s convention theme of “joy” all telegraph a happy-warrior candidacy.

(FWIW):

So what happened to the previous “Happy Warrior” who tried to move up from Vice President to Big Cheese? Nothing good, if you were a Democrat. Here’s a bit of history from Wikipedia, with bolding added to highlight some of the parallels with the current laughing hyena’s candidacy: Entered no primaries; was awarded the nomination by Democrat bosses; picked “a little-known Senator as his running mate; was closely tied to the policies of his then-boss; and ultimately, while coming very close to winning the popular vote, lost by a huge margin in the Electoral College. The farce is strong in this one.

“Humphrey entered the race too late to participate in the Democratic primaries. He relied on "favorite son" candidates to win delegates and lobbied for endorsements from powerful bosses to obtain slates of delegates. The other candidates, who strove to win the nomination through popular support, criticized Humphrey's traditional approach. The June 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy left McCarthy as Humphrey's only major opponent. That changed at the 1968 Democratic National Convention when Senator George McGovern of South Dakota entered the race as the successor of Kennedy. Humphrey won the party's nomination at the Convention on the first ballot, amid protests in Chicago. He selected little-known Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine as his running mate. Humphrey was the first nominee who did not participate in the primaries until Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

“During the general election, Humphrey faced former Vice President Richard Nixon of California, the Republican Party nominee, and Governor of Alabama George Wallace, the American Independent Party nominee. Nixon led in most polls throughout the campaign, and successfully criticized Humphrey's role in the Vietnam War, connecting him to the unpopular president and the general disorder in the nation. Humphrey experienced a surge in the polls in the days prior to the election, largely due to incremental progress in the peace process in Vietnam and a break with the Johnson war policy. On Election Day, Humphrey narrowly fell short of Nixon in the popular vote, but lost, by a large margin, in the Electoral College.”