All three Democratic presidential losses in the Eighties were caused by centrism.

[Ken Burch]

29. There were no candidates to Mondale or Dukakis' right who'd have done better in '84 or '88.

Carter was hopelessly behind Reagan before Teddy got in...and with millions begging Teddy to run, he couldn't have been true to himself and the people if he'd stayed out. Teddy would never have been able to call himself a progressive again.

And Teddy bore no blame for Carter's inexusable decision to abandon his support of human rights and back the Shah against the Iranian people to the bitter end. If Carter had done what he should and cut the Shah loose in the first place, there'd have been no embassy hostages. If he'd put full employment before the rich man's goal of low inflation, Reagan would have had no "misery index" to destroy him with in the televised debate.

Nobody outside of South Carolina knew about Fritz Hollings(and he had no compelling policies).

John Glenn couldn't win a primary. He didn't even have polls showing him doing well in Ohio.

And Reuben Askew was yesterday's man by '84. Nobody cared about him anymore.

In '88, Al Gore had no strong appeal anywhere and was just as much of a passionless stick as he was in 2000.
No national polls showed him doing well against Bush the First.

Besides which...even if we had elected those guys, what good would it have done? They didn't disagree with Reagan on anything. What's the point of electing a Dem to preserve a Republican status quo? They wouldn't have done anything different than the Right in secret, wouldn't have made any good Supreme Court nominees(they'd have picked a bunch of Tom Clark types and that's it)