When a national tragedy occurs a year before your election usually you're given the benefit of the doubt.
Really? Because he wasn't given the benefit of the doubt in the primaries.
'64 was a couple of cycles before primaries became decisive in the nomination race (hence Humphrey's win in '68). I'm not even sure LBJ was formally on the ballot in a lot of places - I believe he was a write-in candidate in the NH primary (same as in '68). Also, Wallace could be written off at that point as a racial protest candidate, not somebody who represented broad dissatisfaction with Johnson.
I do agree that people tend to overstate the impact of a primary challenge. Carter probably would have lost without the Kennedy challenge, and Reagan's bid didn't seem to have any discernible impact on Ford.
Wallace was hardly his only opponent. Heck, LBJ plus Wallace were only around half of the pledged primary votes. LBJ clearly did worse in the 1964 primaries than Carter did in the 1980 primaries. But of course you're not going to hear about 1964 from those who want Obama to get a free pass in the primaries. The fact that he did poorly in the primaries and set the all time record for percentage of the popular vote (since they started keeping track in the 1820s) makes their argument crap.
It's also hilarious what they mention 1976. How many Republicans would take another term of Ford over 2 terms of Reagan?
