During this year’s presidential primary, I became fascinated by the use and abuse of historical analogy.  Would disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters turn the Democratic Convention into another 1968?  Would the #NeverTrump movement succeed well enough that the we’d enter the Republican Convention without a clear candidate, as in 1976?  Was Trump Goldwater in ’64? Or Wallace in ’68? Or even Buchanan in ’92?  And of course all such analogies provide opportunities for historians to weigh in on pasts which, suddenly, seem very present. Read more