Help me out in refreshing my memory .. I was on 5 yrs old in 68
Lots of stuff was blown up in '68, and many important people were assassinated. A hard-core leftist's wet dream come true; society collapsing all around them, providing them with a chance to take over and completely reshape the country to fit their own socialist goals.
Sadly for them, the public did what it usually does when society and government goes out of control: They elected a Republican. (Not that Nixon was all that conservative himself, but compared to his opponent, and what the left was dreaming of, he might has well have been Barry Goldwater.)
(sez Timesink, who wasn't even a fertilized egg in '68)
To my memory, it's more like 1972. In 1968 LBJ decided not to run for the presdidency again--pangs of conscience or knowing he would be defeated, whatever. Gene McCarthy was the anti-war Democrat who got some traction, then Bobby Kennedy knowing a political trend when he saw one jumped into the race. Sirhan Sirhan assassinated him after the California primary. The establishment liberal Democrat, Humphrey, won the mess that was the Democrat Convention in Chicago (riots, demonstrations, etc.). Obviously Nixon won the election.
However, in 1972 we had the unabashed peace at any price candidate in George McGovern who promised to crawl on his knees to Hanoi to stop the war. (Howard Dean is almost as revolting but not quite.) Nixon whipped McGovern in a landslide (49 states if memory serves).