A President who rose to power under controversial circumstances wins election to a second term outright. His party also increases its control in Congress. The winner declares he has a "mandate" from the people. Meanwhile a war in a far-off land involving increasing casualties for US troops quietly continues.

Bush's victory in 2004, right? Guess again. I'm describing the election 40 years ago - 1964. The President is Lyndon Johnson. The "controversial circumstances" was the assassination of President Kennedy one year before. The war was, of course, Vietnam.

At this time 40 years ago it seemed the Democrats had a solid lock on national politics in the US. After all, since 1932, a period of over 30 years, they had controlled Congress for all but one term and had lost the Presidency only twice, to the World War II hero, Eisenhower. But something now was rotten. LBJ had mislead the people as to his true intent in Vietnam, campaigning as a "peace " candidate. In fact history would reveal that he'd made a secret deal with the military -industrial complex as soon as he assumed office [and some would say before], to escalate the war as soon as the elections were over. He also hid from the public during the campaign how bad the situation was in Vietnam, and furthermore, had fabricated a non-existent attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, off Vietnam's coast, in order to get Congress to give him unlimited power to wage war.

But even more sinister, President Johnson had allowed the citizenry to be mislead about the circumstances upon which he had assumed office - the Kennedy assassination.

Shortly before the election, in September 1964, he'd accepted and indorsed a fraudulent report, which came to be known as the" Warren Report", after its titular chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren.

This report concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy. In fact, most of the commissioners, if not all, and President Johnson had sufficient information to believe that not only had Oswald not acted alone, but that there were two persons using the name Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas that day, and that both had been involved in covert intelligence operations on behalf of the US for several years. See this author's articled in LA INDY MEDIA entitled "Reversal of Fortune". as well as www.jfkresearch.com/armstrong.

As a result of Johnson's defrauding the public about the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam in the 1964 campaign, the Democrats lost the White House in1968, and in fact have only won three Presidential elections since then. They have also lost control of the Congress, first the Senate in the 1980's, and then both houses for the last 10 years. They also have lost influence and control in other centers of power such as the media and business.

Call it what you want - I call it the Kennedy Curse -but the fact remains that the party that seemed so invincible on election night 40 years ago is now on the verge of oblivion. It all started with the cover-up of JFK's murder.