Sixty years ago LBJ went all the way to win a landslide over a dangerously extreme GOP opponent

In the 1964 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, ignoring his advisers, insisted on using the campaign slogan, "In Your Heart, You Know He's Right," suggesting that he was only saying what many Americans believed.

But Goldwater was considered by Democrats and even many in his own party as a right-wing extremist. So President Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign responded with its own slogan: "In Your Guts, You Know He's Nuts."

And sixty years later that same slogan is quite fitting for another GOP candidate.

Now to be fair, Goldwater was nothing like Trump. In 1964, his nomination brought the far right of the Republican Party into the mainstream. He supported limited government and cutting government spending on social welfare programs, but coupled that with a hardline anti-communist stance on foreign policy and defense He opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act because he felt it impinged on individual freedoms.

Still, Goldwater was among the Republican elders who went to the White House in 1974 to urge President Richard M. Nixon to resign. He was critical of the religious right, supported gay rights and defended abortion.

But there are striking parallels between the 2024 campaign and the 1964 campaign, when voters were presented a stark choice between a Democrat who wanted to wage a War on Poverty and a Republican who wanted to wage a war on moderates within his own party and roll back popular New Deal programs.

And in 1964, LBJ was determined to go all the way to win. He definitely believed, as Vice President Kamala Harris says today, "When we fight, we win."

I recommend the 2016 HBO biopic "All the Way" starring Bryan Cranston as LBJ. It depicts the dramatic events from November 22, 1963, when Vice President Johnson took the oath of office after President John F. Kennedy's assassination to November 3, 1964 when he celebrated his landslide victory.

During that momentous year, LBJ had to pull out all the stops to break the filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts by Dixiecrat senators. Johnson, who grew up poor, also laid out his agenda for a "Great Society" – he wanted to really make America great – that would lead to such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and education reform, and some of the first environmental initiatives.

There is one striking scene in "All the Way" in which Johnson listens in the White House to Goldwater's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco.

That's the speech in which Goldwater said: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Johnson says, "You know how you win a campaign is by not losing." And he was determined to win.

So Johnson unleashed what would be the first state-of-the-art television ad campaign. Many of the ads concluded with the tag line: "Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home." That line certainly holds true today.

And so while we're waiting for tonight's election results, let's look back at some of LBJ's campaign ads. What's striking is how sixty years later some of the ads remain relevant today.

LBJ touted the accomplishments of his administration and offered an optimistic vision for the future.

Economic prosperity. This could have easily described the record of the Biden-Harris administration.

The War on Poverty

Like Tim Walz, LBJ once worked as a teacher.

We won't go back!

Project 1965? Goldwater opposed Medicare and wanted to make Social Security voluntary.

Johnson reached out to Republicans who supported moderate Republican governors William Scranton of Pennsylvania, Nelson Rockefeller of New York, and George Romney of Michigan. Nikki Haley was also a governor.

The Johnson campaign hired an actor Bill Bogert, who was a Republican, to make this ad. Here are some of the quotes:

"President Johnson, Johnson at least is talking about facts ... but Goldwater, often, I can't figure out just what Goldwater means by the things he says."

And he added:

 "I mean, when the head of the Ku Klux Klan, when all these weird groups come out in favor of the candidate of my party — either they're not Republicans or I'm not."

And then there were the ads that sent the message that Goldwater was totally unfit to be president.

Some were restrained:

Some were scary:

And then there was "The Daisy Ad" – an attack ad that changed the face of political advertising. The ad only ran once and didn't even mention Goldwater's name.

In a May 1964 speech, Goldwater had suggested that tactical nuclear weapons should be used in Vietnam to interdict Viet Cong supply lines.

The Mad Men of the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency seized on Goldwater's remark and created "The Daisy AD" for the Johnson campaign.

But as the Smithsonian Magazine wrote: "The message was clear if only implicit: Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was a genocidal maniac who threatened the world’s future."

There was also this ad featuring a pregnant woman that cited Goldwater's opposition to President Kennedy's 1963 Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.

And finally there was an ad reminding voters what was at stake in the election. There was this final pitch: "When it is all over and you're in the voting booth, keep this in mind. America is stronger and more prosperous than ever before and we're at peace. "

Unfortunately that year also saw the Gulf of Tonkin incident with Johnson deciding to escalate the war in Vietnam by sending more U.S. troops, a decision that ultimately resulting in him dropping out of the 1968 presidential campaign.

In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the 1964 race was probably unwinnable for any Republican candidate. But Johnson won one of the largest landslide victories in American history, winning 61% of the popular vote to Goldwater's 39%. It was a 486-52 Electoral College rout with Goldwater winning only his native Arizona and five Deep South states in a harbinger of the realignment to come following the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

But Goldwater did launch the political career of a Hollywood actor who appeared in TV ads for the Republican candidate. Two years later Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California two years later.

As Yogi Berra once said: "It's deja vu all over again." Let's hope that the Harris-Walz ticket wins a decisive victory today over a candidate who's even more extreme and unfit than Goldwater.