What Democrats Still Don't Get About George McGovern

[Uncle Joe]

This article is from 2016 but the point still holds, I believe even more so now.

(snip)

For the past 40 years, whenever a Democratic presidential hopeful has given off the slightest whiff of leftish anti-establishmentarianism, party leaders and mainstream pundits have invoked McGovern’s name. In 2004, Howard Dean was the new McGovern. In 2008, Barack Obama became the new McGovern. This year, it’s Bernie Sanders’s turn.

But the Democrats’ fear of McGovernism is misplaced. McGovern didn’t lose because he was too far to the left. He lost because he was facing a popular incumbent presiding over a booming economy. Moreover, the Democrats’ belief that they need to steer clear of McGovernism, assuming it was ever correct, now looks increasingly misguided. With each passing decade, the types of voters drawn to McGovern’s 1972 campaign have become a larger and larger share of the American electorate, while the issues championed by McGovern have become more and more salient.

Instead of looking at Bernie Sanders and seeing George McGovern, Democrats should reconsider McGovern himself: He should have become the party’s Barry Goldwater. Lyndon Johnson’s 22-point rout of Goldwater in 1964 was, in many ways, a mirror image of McGovern’s defeat at the hands of Nixon eight years later. Indeed, in heaping skepticism on Sanders’s candidacy, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow compared the Vermont senator to both infamous losers.

But such simple comparisons miss a key difference between McGovern’s loss and Goldwater’s loss. The GOP’s response to Goldwater’s landslide defeat couldn’t have been more different from the Democrats’ reaction to McGovern’s. Whereas the Democrats shifted away from McGovernism towards tepid centrism, Republicans ultimately embraced Goldwater’s radical conservatism, paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s eight Goldwater-esque years in the White House. Most importantly, the parties’ divergent responses to sweeping defeat at the ballot box explain a great deal about the state of American politics today, especially the Democrats’ inability to effectively counter either the expanding extremism of the GOP or the increasing economic inequality and persistent racism that Republicans’ Goldwater-tinged radicalism has facilitated.

(snip)

https://newrepublic.com/article/130737/democrats-still-dont-get-george-mcgovern

Nixon's popularity ratings 1969-1974, if Trump had those kind of ratings, he would constantly need to change his trousers.

https://historyinpieces.com/research/nixon-approval-ratings

[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended. And thank you, Joe.

The rich always have an interest in attacking anyone, or any policy, that might diminish their wealth and control.

And the rich own nearly all of the US media, and that corporate controlled media is always eager to push the narrative that the rich prefer.

A perfect example is the Medicare for All issue. Medicare is hugely popular among seniors, yet the rich are promoting the nonsense that what is good for seniors will magically become horrible and unaffordable for the population as a whole.

If we cannot change the narrative, we will lose. It is that simple.

[Demsrule86]

12. McGovern lost and badly...so maybe the narrative of the left won't work at this moment or back then

either...maybe we need a new narrative. If you couldn't elect a person of the left back in 72 when our country was much further left...and you had a loss of this magnitude, time to reexamine your message and maybe look at the electorate more closely...you won't win this year either when the country has moved right.

Consider this we passed health care...it wasn't what the Bernie or Warren types want but it was something-the only health care plan ever passed and the people like it...now they have moved into health care is a right mode...and that is huge...if we win, and we incrementally put policy in effect that help people,(that they like) we will move the country left in a more gradual way than the "woke" desire. However, we have forward momentum...moderates won the house in 18 remember. And we need a perceived moderate as our nominee in 20 to bolster the house and maybe take the Senate. We can't move the country towards the left without winning elections and passing legislation that helps people thus changing or electorate and making them more open to liberal policy.

Every time we lose the presidential election,the Senate majority or the House majority, the country moves right...and then has to come back to the center before we can move left...the exact opposite of what that idiot Sarandon predicted. It is the only way.

[H2O Man]

2. Recommended.

McGovern was a good man. Besides those noted in the OP, there were three other, closely related reasons for his loss. First, the Democratic Party was divided; second, the Nixon campaign was engaged in corrupt activities, collectively known as "Watergate"; and third, as a result, there was difficulty in selecting a solid vice presidential candidate, which became more complicated when George and his campaign team made a couple of errors.

[Demsrule86]

10. First of all, the nominating process was a disaster, secondly the irony of Nixon is he would have

won with out Watergate by all measures and the VP had nothing to do with this either...this was a terrible loss and none of your explanations cover any of this...if the election had been closer maybe...but it was a blowout...and a complete disaster for us.

[H2O Man]

11. Respectfully disagree.

Without the ratfucking -- which every informed person knows was part of the Watergateefforts (see the Senate report), George would not have won the nomination. Saying that Nixon would have won the same way against others is, of course, speculation. Nothing more, nothing less.

[PatrickforO]

3. Interesting post. Thank you. nt

[redqueen]

4. K and fucking R!

Cannot fucking wait for ranked choice voting.

[democrank]

5. Highly recommended

Thank you for this truth-filled article.Decorated veteran McGovern, that awful “leftist”, served his country flying many, many combat missions.

[Demsrule86]

9. He was a great guy but no matter what he lost in a devastating way...a complete disaster.

[NYMinute]

6. All that mental justification cannot explain this

[greatauntoftriplets]

7. That was my first presidential election.

The results were devastating.

[Uncle Joe]

13. Here is some more mental exercise

(snip)

To the surprise of nearly everyone outside of the McGovern campaign itself, the strategy worked. In confidential memos, the Nixon reelection campaign called the George Wallace and McGovern efforts “the only two smart campaigns.” McGovern, in particular, worried Nixon’s advisers because his “class appeal” was “pinning the adjective ‘rich’ to Republicans.” McGovern had been “badly underestimated” and was “potentially very dangerous to the President,” the Nixon analysis concluded.

But the McGovern campaign began falling apart almost immediately after McGovern secured the nomination. At the Democratic National Convention, McGovern didn’t give his acceptance speech until nearly three in the morning. Making matters worse, McGovern and his advisers selected Senator Thomas Eagleton, an anti-abortion Catholic, as his running mate in a sop to the party’s more socially conservative wing. Though Eagleton had assured McGovern that there were no skeletons in his closet, it soon leaked that Eagleton had undergone electroshock therapy, and, after initially pledging his support for Eagleton, McGovern removed him from the ticket, a turn of events that made McGovern look both incompetent and cruel.

Perhaps the deepest damage to McGovern’s campaign came not from its own ineptitude, but from the candidate’s fellow Democrats. Early in the primaries, an adviser for Hubert Humphrey, one of McGovern’s main opponents for the nomination, promised, “We are going to show that McGovern is a radical, just like Goldwater was in 1964.” Keeping that promise, Humphrey claimed during a televised debate prior to the California primary that McGovern’s Demogrant plan would hike taxes on a middle class family making $12,000 by more than $400. The number wasn’t remotely true. According to both private calculations by Nixon’s Office of Management and Budget and independent academic estimates, the bottom 70-to-80 percent of families would pay less under McGovern’s plan than under existing law or Nixon’s proposals. But Humphrey’s claim not only stuck, it practically wrote the script for an anti-Demogrant commercial that Nixon would run in the fall.

(snip)

Any Democratic nominee was doomed in 1972. Modern election forecasting models based on variables like the state of the economy and the incumbent’s approval ratings make clear, in retrospect, that Nixon was destined to win in a landslide. Taking any guesswork out of the result, Nixon stoked the economy with expansive fiscal and monetary policy, and when polls showed that the public preferred McGovern on issues like inflation and taxes, Nixon shifted to the left. He took the unprecedented step of instituting wage-price controls to clamp down on inflation and promised to sock it to the rich and slash tax rates on the working class if reelected. “The essence of this is redistribution,” Nixon’s top domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman, told an astonished press. On foreign affairs, Nixon could justifiably claim that he was not only winding down the war in Vietnam, but also cooling off the Cold War, thanks to his famous trip to China. The Democrats could have resurrected FDR and Nixon would have trounced him in 1972.

(snip)

https://newrepublic.com/article/130737/democrats-still-dont-get-george-mcgovern

[NYMinute]

21. ...

Any Democratic nominee was doomed in 1972. Modern election forecasting models based on variables like the state of the economy and the incumbent’s approval ratings make clear, in retrospect, that Nixon was destined to win in a landslide.

The situation is different now. However, only a far left nominee is doomed. Bernie will be destroyed by Trump and his own admissions of being a socialist plus his baggage of hundreds of trillions of dollars of programs will make most people not vote for him.

People should remove the blinders, wake up and smell the coffee.

?v=1489436645

[ahoysrcsm]

45. Are Sanders supporters embracing the McGovern parallel?

All signs point to "yes"

[crazytown]

18. Mondale ran on a platform more conservative than Carter,

against a highly popular president. He didn't do too well either.

[NYMinute]

22. Mondale promised to raise taxes. That doomed him. nt

[crazytown]

27. Yeah - a fiscal conservative,

more conservative on that score than the Gipper, as he said only too often.

In this round, competitors and commentators have endlessly badgered Warren, looking for a Mondale Moment of their own - a sound bite to hurt her in the GE - "I will raise middle class taxes", then whined when they did not get. Why can't she just be hones with the American people, like Fritz

[BlueWI]

41. Moderate and conservative Democrats doomed him.

They voted for white privilege, dreams of empire, and dismantling environmental regulation when there was still time to prevent climate disaster.

It wasn't Mondale's fault that white voters couldn't see past their pocketbooks and privilege and embrace public investment or fiscal restraint.

[dsc]

29. In what respect was he more conservative than Carter?

[crazytown]

30. Less liberal platform across the board.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/22/us/democrats-platform-shows-a-shift-from-liberal-positions-of-1976-and-1980.html

[Demsrule86]

8. That is nonsense...we will lose badly if we run either Sanders or Warren in the general. Elections

are won in the middle even now...more so now. It was way more liberal in 1972 in terms of the country than now. The county is center left, Biden can win a general. If you couldn't elect a person of the left in 72, you sure as hell won't now...after Reagan,Bush and Trump...all of whom pushed this country to the right. Look at the midterms...we won the house with moderate voters and candidates.

[David__77]

14. I find the characterization of the country as moved to the right interesting.

Not only are there things occurring in the "social" realm that would never fly with the majority back in 1972 (same sex marriage, for one), social services provided by the state have expanded significantly. For instance, food stamps:



Meanwhile, the state is providing health care for tens of millions more people than in the past.



At the same time, there has been a big reduction in unionization, a lot of deregulation, and significantly increased economic polarization, for instance as measured by the Gini coefficient.



I'm not sure that, overall, I'd say that things have moved to the right. That said, I also think that the "left" and "right" labels may not be too useful.

[Demsrule86]

16. Food stamps have been cut to the bone first of all and one has only to look at individual states

and the Senate to see this. The mid term was won with moderates, the GOP controls more statehouses than we do, the Senate has more GOP types than we do...and we have 40 moderates that gave us back our majority in the House...to say the country has moved left is just not true...wishful thinking really. I don't think the party has moved left either as much as some claim...if at all.

[Demsrule86]

19. First of all, we have larger population so I don't see what the charts prove. Secondly, labels do

matter. The house was won by 40 moderates...we will not take the Senate unless we can win in red or purple states...because there are more of them than blue states. That is just a fact. We have less statehouses and legislatures than the GOP...and the state we won most recently is Virginia...it was won by moderates...and only Biden according to polls is winning in Virginia which does not surprise me. It is what it is...I don't like it, but I would rather run moderates and make incremental progress which will develop an appetite in the public for good programs as the ACA did...than lose elections buy running pure left candidates and make no progress.

[David__77]

24. I'm cool with moderates, liberals, progressives, or whatever provided I like their policies.

I also get that people can care about labels.

If today's "moderate" supports increasing the minimum wage to, say, $15.00, increasing spending on social services including health care, opposes military adventurism, supports gay rights and abortion rights - sounds good to me!

[NYMinute]

23. False statistics

The population has grown from 1970s and primarily with poor immigrants. This skews the data on social program recipients. It is touted by income inequality devotees but it is spurious.

If you have 25 people in a town and 5 of them are poor; suddenly 50 poor people move in, the poverty goes from 20% to 73% without any change in any other economic matrices.

[David__77]

26. I can understand providing context for the data.

I don't know if you're arguing that the statistics themselves are false, or that it's advisable or necessary to provide additional context. If it's the latter, I totally get that.

[crazytown]

15. He also lost because Nixon was running as a "Peacemaker"

SALT treaty with the Soviets, Diplomatic relations with China, winding up Vietnam War etc.

[Demsrule86]

17. McGovern offered to get down on his knees to broker a peace agreement...so I don't think so.

[Paladin]

20. Here's what happened when I brought up McGovern here at DU in 2016:

I caught a bunch of nasty ageist bullshit---from some particularly obnoxious Bernie supporters. That's correct: some backers of the far-from-young Mr. Sanders, giving me shit about my evident age. All because I expressed some passing awareness of what happened, way back in 1972.

[NYMinute]

25. The swarming has not ceased. nt

[TwilightZone]

31. Some of them seem ready to write off older voters entirely.

Alienating a reliable voting bloc isn't a very good strategy, but some of them have been rather assertive about it. They are convinced that young voters are going to show up in droves and older voters won't matter. They apparently don't understand basic math.

Frankly, it's so off-putting and odd that I have to question if some of them are Sanders supporters at all.

[The Mouth]

37. Bernie's biggest drawback

is some of his supporters. And I was for him in 2016, until Hillary won the nomination, but damn, he has a disproportionate share of disrespectful, rude, ignorant, and fanatical people supporting him.

[Paladin]

38. My experience, precisely.

Bernie's asshole supporters killed my enthusiasm for him. If it's Bernie vs. trump, Bernie will get my vote, but it will be a sorrowful act.

[Gothmog]

28. I trust the man who helped run McGovern's campaign

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Uncle Joe]

33. I trust logic and history.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/lobbyists/summary?cycle=2019&id=Y0000028383L

[JudyM]

34. Can you please explain what this means? More than just that he's a lobbyist?

[Uncle Joe]

35. Google Edesia and see what you get.

[JudyM]

36. Ah, I see. Ok, thanks for that info. Just a tad bit of conflict of interest that might sway him.

Things aren’t as innocent as some would suggest.

[Gothmog]

40. You may want to read all of the article you posted

[TwilightZone]

32. "Nixon's popularity ratings 1969-1974"

Trump would kill for Nixon's ratings from '69 to early '73. It was only in early '73 that the tide turned, as clearly noted in the graph, and it wasn't until mid '73 that his approval ratings were lower than Trump's are now.

[Gothmog]

39. I was amused by this article

The amusing article cited in the OP does a great job of showing how sanders and McGovern are alike

McGovern entered KELO-TV’s studios to declare his candidacy for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. To call McGovern a dark horse candidate for the 1972 nomination would be an understatement. In August, Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder gave McGovern scant 200-to-1 odds of securing the Democratic nomination. Heading into the election year, McGovern’s poll numbers sat in the single digits.....

But the McGovern campaign began falling apart almost immediately after McGovern secured the nomination. At the Democratic National Convention, McGovern didn’t give his acceptance speech until nearly three in the morning. Making matters worse, McGovern and his advisers selected Senator Thomas Eagleton, an anti-abortion Catholic, as his running mate in a sop to the party’s more socially conservative wing. Though Eagleton had assured McGovern that there were no skeletons in his closet, it soon leaked that Eagleton had undergone electroshock therapy, and, after initially pledging his support for Eagleton, McGovern removed him from the ticket, a turn of events that made McGovern look both incompetent and cruel.

Perhaps the deepest damage to McGovern’s campaign came not from its own ineptitude, but from the candidate’s fellow Democrats. Early in the primaries, an adviser for Hubert Humphrey, one of McGovern’s main opponents for the nomination, promised, “We are going to show that McGovern is a radical, just like Goldwater was in 1964.” Keeping that promise, Humphrey claimed during a televised debate prior to the California primary that McGovern’s Demogrant plan would hike taxes on a middle class family making $12,000 by more than $400. The number wasn’t remotely true. According to both private calculations by Nixon’s Office of Management and Budget and independent academic estimates, the bottom 70-to-80 percent of families would pay less under McGovern’s plan than under existing law or Nixon’s proposals. But Humphrey’s claim not only stuck, it practically wrote the script for an anti-Demogrant commercial that Nixon would run in the fall.


As McGovern barreled toward the nomination, leading Democrats’ attacks became more desperate. Anti-McGovern Democrats staged an “Anybody But McGovern” movement at the convention. When that failed, some pledged that they would not campaign for him and might even support Nixon. A Democrat even handed Republicans their best attack line: “The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot,” an unnamed Democratic senator told the press. Hugh Scott, the GOP’s Senate minority leader, transformed the quote into “the three A’s: Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion” and a golden political slur was born. (Ironically, the unnamed Democratic senator who had originated the line was none other than Eagleton, though McGovern didn’t know it at the time.)

By the time November rolled around, McGovern’s loss to Nixon was a fait accompli.

I note that Nixon selected McGovern to be his opponent and sabotage several other candidates It is clear to everyone that trump really wants to run against sanders and that trump feats Biden. trump was willing to break the law to try to get dirt on Biden.

I note that Nixon was likely to win in that most POTUS who have a decent economy are re-elected but here Nixon won by historic margins. If sanders is the nominee, trump will likely win 45+ states easily

[David__77]

42. Sounds like a claim is that Humphrey released misinformation against McGovern.

...

[Recursion]

44. I mean, I certainly hope the article is wrong about a strong economy making an incumbent unbeatable

Because crossing our fingers and hoping for a recession is both immoral and a bad strategy.

[Recursion]

43. "This time it will work!"

But, I mean, yeah: this article pretty well sums up my main complaint about Sanders, that he is very much determined to win the 1972 Presidential election.

[UncleNoel]

46. I was there. I met McGovern and spoke to him personally and

I testified before the McGovern Committee on Party Reform in Meridian Mississippi.

I met him while coming out of a New Democratic Coalition meetting (hosted by Tommy Smuthers) as he and I met in the center of the outer room and spoke for a few minutes. Personally, face to face, he was a powerful man who radiated power, but he came across on TV as a Milquetoast. He and he rest of us were anti-Vietnam, but the country as a whole was not. He performed weakly in southern states where I was active in the Civil Rights movement. I believe this was the central issue that brought him down. Yhe anti-war left was us and the country was the middle way.

We did not make a mistake in my view, but the situation now calls for us to heed the voice of middle America. Middle America now is not reactionary as it was then and there is not the generational divide that pitted older Americans against idealistic youth. The Democratic Party as a whole is far more ldft than it was then on most issues and the middle way is the best way to move forward with progressive goals. IMO.