1976 Democratic Presidential Primary: Who Would You Vote For?

[liberalpragmatist]

With the benefit of hindsight, who would you have voted for (or who did you vote for) in the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination contest?

[wryter2000]

1. Someone voted for Wallace?

:shrug:

[liberalpragmatist]

5. TWO whole votes for Wallace?

?????!

[Greg Helmsley]

22. 4?

????

[wryter2000]

26. 5

Somebodies better be goofing with us.

[Greg Helmsley]

33. now up to 6

Is anyone gonna vote for Byrd?

[Redstone]

2. I couldn't vote in the primary because I've always been registered Indepent.

But you bet I voted for Carter in the election.

Redstone

[Nikki Stone1]

4. I couldn't vote then, but I remember the convention on TV

Big cartoon of Jimmy Carter with lots of teeth. Appealed to a kid. :)

[HockeyMom]

12. Same here

but this year I became a registered Democrat after 30 years of being an Independent. Time to end the charade.

[vireo]

3. Backed Mo at the time

but he wasn't on the ballot in Illinois, so I settled on Fred Harris.

Edited to add, I would have voted for Brown, but he wasn't in the race yet.

[Tiggeroshii]

6. Teddy ran in that primary, didn't he?

Or was it just in 80 that he ran? It makes me want to make a new poll for 80

[BuelahWitch]

37. It was '80

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Voted for Jerry. Would again if he ran.

[Greg Helmsley]

11. Did Jerry win CA Attorney General race?

nt

[wryter2000]

27. Sure did

I hope he kicks butt. I've enjoyed having him as mayor of Oaktown, but we're getting Ron Dellums, so we'll do okay.

[villager]

8. couldn't vote then, but wore my "Fred Harris" button to high school...

He was on to the oil companies...

[Mabus]

10. My mom knew Fred

back when he was married to LaDonna. I really liked Fred. I was just a little kid at the time but he invited us out to his place south of Norman, OK. I went horse back riding on his place and had my first experience with a rattler.

[Clark2008]

9. I am a Tennessean - so I'd vote for the Southern guy.

JIMMY!

:hi:

[Raine]

13. Udall

would have had the experience and could've probably gotten a second term.

[NoPasaran]

14. I was a Fred Harris supporter, but he wasn't on the ballot in Texas

So I voted for Shriver in the primary.

I ended up voting for Eugene McCarthy in November because all Carter's talk about being "born again" gave me the creeps.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. I was a Fred Harris supporter, too, but not sufficiently active in politics

to vote in the primary.

[Neshanic]

15. Jerry Brown winning? That explains alot.

[WI_DEM]

17. good point

[Moochy]

31. No kidding ...

fuckin libruls.. :sarcasm:

oh wait what did *you* mean?

[pennylane100]

16. I voted for Jerry but now I think I should

have voted for Carter

[KittyWampus]

18. What a great thread and poll! Can't vote in it, cause my history isn't good enough

and I don't remember enough of these guys.

Hope this gets lots of contributions. Great way to learn.

Thanks!

[WI_DEM]

19. If we hadn't gotten Carter in '76 we wouldn't have the Carter of today

the Nobel Peace Prize winning humanitarian we know and love. So I would still support Jimmy Carter as I did when I was a 12 year old kid in 1976.

[SoCalDem]

20. not fair. we know how it turned out

:)

[lapfog_1]

21. At the time, I remember that I liked Jerry Brown

but didn't think he could win. Jerry was the original "moonbat", er, uh, "moonbeam". So in the primary I voted for Udall.

Carter was the candidate. Nice guy, didn't seem presidential. More like a favorite college prof.
And his brother Billy... OMG.

I predicted to ALL of my friends (I was still in college) that IF Carter won, then Reagan would win in 1980. They all laughed and laughed... said I was delusional, they would all leave the country if Reagan won... Reagan was waaay to conservative to ever win. The republicans would never nominate someone so divisive, blah, blah, blah.

I was so convinced that I was right that I voted for Ford (the first and last time I ever voted for a Republican for anything).

As it turns out...

[mikeargo]

23. I wasn't old enough to vote in '76

But I was a political junkie at 16 (kind of hard to avoid when you live in New Hampshire). One name missing from the list is the guy I would have voted for - Birch Bayh. He didn't do too well in the early primaries and soon dropped out. I quickly became a Jimmy Carter supporter.

[MGD]

45. In 1976, I voted to stay up until 10:00 pm but was defeated by a parental overide vote. nt

[Catchawave]

24. I lived in California at that time, so....

I worked for Brown in the primaries, then shifted to Carter for the Big Cheese :)

[PsN2Wind]

25. Woulda voted for Jerry Brown

just to have Linda Ronstadt for "First Old Lady"!!!

[wryter2000]

28. I honestly don't remember who I voted for

But California's primary is so late, the candidate is usually decided by the time I get to vote.

[Vidar]

29. I wrote in Jerry Brown in that election.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

30. I'd Have To Say Carter, On Behalf Of Never Having Heard Of Any Of The Others LOL

[Warren DeMontague]

32. I was too young to vote, but I remember I liked Jerry Brown.

The more people made fun of him, the more I liked him.

[Strawman]

34. Carter is clearly the most capable and decent, but...

He did not play well with others in Washington DC. He was too stubborn. An effective Democratic president would be a Carter/Clinton hybrid. Clinton compromised too easily after he got burned on health care and in the 1994 midterm and Carter alienated too much of his own party. Carter was usually right and his commitment to principle was beyond reproach, but he was ultimately unable to play the game effectively and get very much of what he wanted.

So I don't know who I'd pick. Philosophically, I like Jerry Brown, and I voted for him in 1992 over Clinton, but there's more to consider. And I dunno if I could endorse Bensten, he always seemed to much of a supporter of corporate interests, on the other hand, I think he might be the best at playing the game and getting what he wanted. The rest of them, I don't know much about. Scoop Jackson, I mostly know about as a hawkish Democrat who alot of neocons got their start working for, so he's out.

Guess what this says about my thinking is that I want a Democratic president who wants what I want and is capable of playing the game of Washington politics effectively enough to get it.

[B Calm]

35. Didn't Brown want to legalize marijuana?

[Lowell]

36. I voted for Jimmy Carter

and would vote for him again. He was a victim of the early neocons and their dirty tricks machine.

[Tiggeroshii]

38. I said Jerry Brown

Of course I am from California. A little biased I suppose

[Octafish]

39. Frank Church pulled the lid off the BFEE...

The late, great Senator from Idaho knew how to use a Congressional investigation.

Behold what Frank Church and his committee discovered:

CIA powers and 1975 Church Committee

Report by Paul Wolf
Published here: 22/09/01

The cry for expanded CIA assassination powers is being supported by a lot of inaccurate references to the 1975 Church Committee investigation. “Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans,” as their final report was called, was the most in-depth investigation into the American intelligence establishment ever made.

Reporters are claiming that the Church Committee tied the hands of the CIA, and now it’s time to restore their power to use whatever ruthless and inhumane means may be necessary to implement our foreign policies. In fact, although the Church Committee exposed a closet full of nightmarish operations carried out against American citizens, and some of the CIA’s activities in Chile, it was by no means an accounting of CIA atrocities around the world, and had no legal implications whatsoever. Its function was simply to inform the public of the widespread abuses that were being committed in their midst.

Among other things, the Church Committee revealed that:

* a CIA program to open mail to or from selected American citizens generated 1.5 million names stored in the Agency’s computer bank.

* intelligence units within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) created files on over one million Americans.

*the FBI carried out five hundred thousand investigations of so-called subversives from 1960 to 1974, without a single court conviction.

* computers in the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored every cable sent overseas, or received, by Americans from 1947 to 1975.
Army intelligence units conducted investigations against one hundred thousand American citizens during the Vietnam War era.

* the CIA engaged in drug experiments (the MK/ULTRA Project) against unsuspecting subjects (two of whom died from side effects).
at least two foreign leaders were the direct targets of CIA assassination plots (none successful).

* letters written anonymously by FBI agents were designed to incite violence among blacks.

* the FBI COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) targeted civil rights activists and Vietnam War dissidents.

* the FBI attempted to blackmail civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and encouraged him to commit suicide.

* the CIA manipulated elections in democratic regimes (Chile was but one of several).

* the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allowed tax information to be misused by intelligence agencies for political purposes.
intelligence agencies carried out burglaries in the homes and offices of suspected “subversives”.

* the CIA infiltrated religious, media, and academic organizations.
(Source: America’s Secret War: The CIA in a Democratic Society, by Loch K. Johnson, Oxford University Press,1989)

Among the worst CIA paramilitary operations was the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. According to former CIA Director William Colby, some 20,000 members of the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) were murdered. “Infrastructure” referred to civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers.

CONTINUED...

http://www.labournet.net/world/0109/us15.html

FWIW: At the time, I was for Brown. Only now do I know enough to know what Sen. Church meant for our country.

[ellisonz]

40. Carter.

Neutralizes the residue of the Southern strategy...

[QMPMom]

42. Carter. The same one I actually voted for in 1976. Voted for him in 1980, too.

And I have never regretted it. Just like I don't regret voting for Clinton - twice.

[Bluebear]

43. MO! "a liberal alternative to the Southern centrist Jimmy Carter"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Udall
:loveya:

[Nicole]

44. I voted for Carter then

I would vote for Carter now.

[sandnsea]

46. Carter all the way

I was living in Mississippi that year so I may have heard more of him than I would have if I were still in California. He was trustworthy, simple, I believed him when he said he'd never tell a lie. Things were sure messed up. I never had any hope for any kind of better life until the last couple of years of the Clinton Administration. That didn't last long. I sure don't know why people can't see the misery Republicans always bring us.

[RoyGBiv]

47. Fred Harris ... Oklahoma Liberal

Yes, I wrote "liberal" and "Oklahoma" in the same sentence. :-)

He wouldn't have won the general, for the same reason Udall wouldn't have won, but still ...