In 1968, during the final year of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, Herblock focused on the presidential election. When Johnson chose not to run for reelection, Herblock commented on the quarrels between the new left and the moderates in the Democratic Party. After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the Democrats selected Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their nominee. On the same day the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, won the election, Herblock castigated his failure to report campaign donations. Ultimately, however, it was the Electoral College that received Herblock’s harshest criticism as an antiquated institution.

Despite concentrating his attention on elections, Herblock also commented on Defense Department spending, decried the left’s protest movements, and contrasted goals of the Poor People’s Campaign to the increase in pension benefits for members of Congress. He reacted to both the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, and that of Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California.