.......even though it's has been disputed over and over again. Consider these excerpts from the New Republic article: What Democrats Still Don’t Get About George McGovern:
But the Democrats’ fear of McGovernism is misplaced. McGovern didn’t lose because he was too far to the left. He lost because he was facing a popular incumbent presiding over a booming economy. Moreover, the Democrats’ belief that they need to steer clear of McGovernism, assuming it was ever correct, now looks increasingly misguided. With each passing decade, the types of voters drawn to McGovern’s 1972 campaign have become a larger and larger share of the American electorate, while the issues championed by McGovern have become more and more salient.
Instead of looking at Bernie Sanders and seeing George McGovern, Democrats should reconsider McGovern himself: He should have become the party’s Barry Goldwater. Lyndon Johnson’s 22-point rout of Goldwater in 1964 was, in many ways, a mirror image of McGovern’s defeat at the hands of Nixon eight years later. Indeed, in heaping skepticism on Sanders’s candidacy, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow compared the Vermont senator to both infamous losers.
But such simple comparisons miss a key difference between McGovern’s loss and Goldwater’s loss. The GOP’s response to Goldwater’s landslide defeat couldn’t have been more different from the Democrats’ reaction to McGovern’s. Whereas the Democrats shifted away from McGovernism towards tepid centrism, Republicans ultimately embraced Goldwater’s radical conservatism, paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s eight Goldwater-esque years in the White House. Most importantly, the parties’ divergent responses to sweeping defeat at the ballot box explain a great deal about the state of American politics today, especially the Democrats’ inability to effectively counter either the expanding extremism of the GOP or the increasing economic inequality and persistent racism that Republicans’ Goldwater-tinged radicalism has facilitated.
Further down in the article:
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.)
Read the whole article:
https://newrepublic.com/article/130737/democrats-still-dont-get-george-mcgovern
I'll be away from the computer most of the day, so I won't be able to reply to criticisms until late this afternoon; sorry 'bout that!
= new reply since forum marked as read
