Democrats Have Their History Wrong — and Are About to Make a Grievous Mistake

[Ferd Berfel]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by mcar (a host of the General Discussion forum).

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/democrats-have-their-history-wrong-and-are-about-make-grievous-mistake



Lesson of 1972 isn't that progressive nominees lose. Dems lose when they are out of step with voters, like Hillary.


This election cycle, Democratic Party leaders are pleading with younger voters to heed the lessons of history. Echoing George Santayana’s famous warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” they urge millennials to take a close look at what happened to Democrats in 1972. That was the year, they explain, that the Democratic Party made a monumental blunder at its national convention by empowering young people, women and minorities at the expense of party elites. The result was the nomination of George McGovern, a candidate whose ideas were so radical that they guaranteed a landslide victory for Richard Nixon.

Leaving aside whether such an interpretation of 1972 is accurate, there is a more fundamental issue here. What if pundits and Democratic Party leaders are focusing on the wrong election? What if the lessons that history has for us are to be found not in 1972 but in 1968? What if we are heeding the absolutely wrong warnings?

Much like 2016, the 1968 election was supposed to be a coronation.....

[joeybee12]

1. GDP...nt

[katmondoo]

2. I don't see a huge surge to go extremely left

[Qutzupalotl]

4. Here's one from yesterday:

[redstateblues]

3. The last Democrat to run on raising taxes on the middle class

Was Walter Mondale who won one state. His home state MN. Those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it.

[clarice]

5. I pointed that out last week in an OP....got lambasted for it. lol nt

[tkmorris]

7. Good thing no one running now is proposing that

[surrealAmerican]

8. You've written this before, but ...

Walter Mondale was the safe, mainstream Democratic candidate in that race.

[BainsBane]

6. People are voting based on who they think can best

do the job, not on history.

1968, with an incumbent president so unpopular he could not seek his party's nomination, and it was supposed to be a coronation? For whom exactly? Humphrey? RFK before he was assassinated?

In 2016, women and people of color are supporting Hillary Clinton, as are young people in many of the states she has carried. But you are insisting that they are wrong because they aren't following a minority who insists their own definition of "progressive" is more important than the votes of the majority of primary voters.


Clinton has 1.5 million votes more than Sanders. It's not even close, and that gap is about to get much wider.

[1939]

9. In 1972

There were more states with caucuses or party conventions and fewer with primaries than today. Popular vote in all primaries summed together was pretty much a three way tie between George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace. The McGovernites just got organized and made stealth assaults on the state caucuses and conventions and ran away with the nomination.

[mcar]

10. Locking

Violates the SOP for this forum. Suggest reposting in GDP.