Marshall Matz, a policy adviser for Sen. George McGovern's failed 1972 bid warned Dems

[Gothmog]

15. I was amused by the article cited in that thread

The amusing article cited in the OP of that thread 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