1964 United States Presidential Election (TNO: The Eagle's Nest)

The 1964 United States Presidential Election was the 45th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. The Republican-Democratic Party ticket of Senators Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas and Edmund Muskie from Maine defeated the National Progressive Party ticket of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace and former United States Army official Curtis LeMay.

After both the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon and the assassiantion of President John F. Kennedy happening in an interval of mere two months, Speaker of the House John W. McCormack took office and was sworn in on July 10, 1964. McCormack decided not to run for re-election, and in the surprisingly contested Republican-Democratic primaries, Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate Majority Leader, won over Wallace F. Bennett, picking Senator Edmund Muskie as his Vice Presidential candidate. In the National Progressive primaries, Governor of Alabama George C. Wallace won over Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, choosing US Air Force General Curtis LeMay as his running mate.

1964 was year marked by political chaos, societal upheaval, and tragedy. The resignation of President Richard Nixon, after accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice, and the subsequent assassination of his successor, John F. Kennedy, less than five weeks after, alienated a large portion of the american population to national politics, and cast doubt on the political and Party System, making the National Progressive Party have a serious chance of winning the White House for the first time in history. The apparent failure of the american military intervention on Madagascar, with the island falling to the German militarists, and the stalemate on the South African War, lefting thousands of american soldiers dead, with no end in sight, led many americans to radicalise, and the Anti-War and Hippie Movements gained momentum.

Lyndon B. Johnson ran on a platform of creating a "Great Society", promoting sweeping changes and domestic programs focused on eliminating poverty and racial injustice on the United States. George Wallace ran on a platform of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and states' rights, even pledging to repeal the 1962 Civil Rights Act, and a more aggresive foreign policy, specially against the Japanese Empire. Wallace positioned himself as a man of the people, and his often considered populist stances made him perfomance surprisingly well even on Northern states, such as Illinois, where the Republican-Democratic Party lost for the first time since the end of World War Two.

Even with Wallace's defeat, the 1964 election made the National Progressive Party shift away to the right, and many analysts consider his 1964 presidential campaign as a major player on cementing the NPP's position as "The Party of the South" and "The Party of the Cannon", referring, respectively, to his stances on segregation and on foreign policy against Japan.