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[Douglas Carpenter]

18. first of all in 1984 Mondale himself would have been considered centrist in that time

He was a Hubert Humphrey protégé and pretty much was in the middle of the Democratic Party as it was in 1984. The entire labor establishment as well as the party regulars - state chairman, most elected office holders had pretty much all lined up behind Mondale in advance. No one else was taken seriously except an outside possibility of a serious challenge from John Glenn which never materialized. The Gary Hart rise was completely unexpected. Until the surprise New Hampshire upset hardly anybody had ever even heard of him. He may now be considered a centrist in contrast to a more traditional New Dealer like Mondale - but at that time - such parlance was simply not in use. I was actually involved in both my union and to some extent local politics in liberal San Francisco at the time. It was considered somewhat bad form to break from the Mondale pact. It was suggested more than once that supporting Hart or McGovern or Jackson or whoever would simply weaken Mondale and set him up to lose to Reagan. The Hart phenomena happened completely outside of the party establishment. I don't think there were many party regular at all who backed him at the time. And for the record because of my horror at Reagan -I worked harder in the general election for Mondale than I did for just about any other candidate in my life including McGovern and my neighborhood and my city at the time did go for him by a very wide margin.

If you agree that the 2016 nominee is an open question that cannot be settled until the primary and caucus process - then I don't know that we disagree.