General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: All three Democratic presidential losses in the Eighties were caused by centrism. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You would therefore dismiss any polls I presented and any news links I presented.
If you lived through that era(I was in my late teens in the run-up to the 1980 campaign)you know there was massive support for Teddy against Carter in the party. Polls were published all the time, up until Teddy's entrance in the race, showing him running tied with or ahead of Carter and ahead of Reagan. And even after the anti-Teddy backlash the Carter people engineereed, using vile stunts like having people lined up along Teddy's motorcade route into Chicago screaming "murderer! murderer!"
alluding to the Chappaquiddick accident) Teddy still took over 1000 delegates for the nomination and gained in support as the primaries went along. THAT was proof. The strong support John Anderson was getting as the only progressive, antidraft candidate in the race after Teddy's withdrawal was proof-Anderson's support only collapsed from 21% to 8% AFTER he listened to racist and right-wing New York mayor Ed Koch's media guy David Garth and switched from being the only remainng liberal to being a centrist who argued that Carter, in addition to Reagan, was also an extremist.
I was there. I saw it all.