A Jimmy Carter primary was a bad idea because he actually had principles.

[AlabamaLibrul]

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Jimmy was sunk with or without a Primary challenge.

The only way I can see a challenge against Obama is under similar conditions--if it's obvious he's sunk, and there's nothing left but to make a statement from the Left.

[banned from Kos]

2. Carter had principles but passed NOTHING with a liberal Congress

I mean, literally, Carter passed NOTHING! (except deregulation in transportation, banking and energy a'la Ron Paul)

[FrenchieCat]

3. Are principles those things ones hangs on to no matter how many people are hurt in the

in the process, just so those with these priceless principles can feel personally righteous
as everything falls apart around them?

I think the President's bipartisan approach qualifies (and I don't like that),

as does the progressive activists' principles of believing that rational compromise is not a principle,
as does the Teabagger's principle that Obama must be defeated, no matter what happens in the world.

The point is that even principles are relative to whomever holds them.

[AlabamaLibrul]

5. At what point does repeated "rational compromise" become irrational?

When your jobs plan is lifted directly from Republican policies (I'll save comment on that for now) and they still don't want it?

When every Republican Presidential candidate raises their hand and says even if they were to get 90% of what they want, they wouldn't give on the other 10%?


When does it become too much to engage in "rational compromise" after "rational compromise" with a group that doesn't believe in the word?

[FrenchieCat]

9. I believe the time is now.....

[PurityOfEssence]

11. No, principles are ethical beliefs, as opposed to opportunism to sustain one's personal image

Obviously this needs to be explained to the retaliatory partisans.

It's outrageous to hear scorched-earth Obama partisans flail about at those they proclaim to feel morally superior. How dare others claim the schtick of the Obama stalwarts and think that they're superior. The Obama partisans have DEMANDED a place of unquestioned honor as defenders of all that is true and good, regardless of performance. Obama's long legislative career of accommodation and corporatism was somehow supposed to change, and the very evocation of the name was to bring a hush to the unwashed masses: he was and is transcendent, regardless of performance.

Those who differ must be crushed.

This shouldn't be too hard to understand, but those who will throw away all of our futures in order to laud an individual will shriek and rage in righteous dudgeon lest they are ever seen to be wrong. This will not end well, and it's not the fault of those from the left who sounded the alarm.

Carter cared about some things. He still does. The very image of the five former presidents standing in the Oval Office on Obama's inauguration day says it all: they all shunned Carter, the only one with any spiritual decency.

How very, very sad.

[madokie]

4. Sure it was

a big part of why President Carter didn't win in November of '80 was the campaign that Ted Kennedy ran. Very very negative campaign. I remember it well. Jimmy being Jimmy didn't counter in kind either like he probably should have but he just wasn't going to let himself get drug down to teds level at any cost. He ultimately had another incident that sowed it up for the puke reagan, A very suspicious hostage situation for 444 days and they were released a few hours of st ronnies inauguration, very suspicious indeed. But Ted Kennedy had already done Jimmy a number. I sorta forgave Ted for that in the years since but I still feel like he was one of the big reasons that ronnie the raygun was elected.

The republicons treated President Carter with disdain just like they did with Clinton and now with Obama. The difference now is there is also race in the equation. These old rich (white, mostly,) corporate owners aren't ready to give up the reigns just yet. They'll oppose any woman for the same reason. Bigots all of them save a few. I'm sure you can find a good honest one or two out of the whole bunch but I'd bet that number wouldn't grow very big

[banned from Kos]

6. that is a good question for the OP.

What did progressives GAIN with Carter?

Earlier - I cited the Superfund - passed on his way out the door in 1980. Other than that? Zilch.

[hifiguy]

7. By far the biggest reason why Carter lost in 1980

was the Iran histage issue. Which, it must be said, was manipulated by GHW Bush for Raygun's benefit. But that was what sank him, not Ted Kennedy. I was there.

[sad sally]

8. With the nightly count of days by Ted Koppel.

It turned out, over the course of those 444 days, that in many respects, America itself was held hostage. Certainly, President Carter was held hostage. He ended up - and I think we need to remind ourselves, Neal, a couple of oldsters like you and me, that there are many millions of people alive today who were not alive at the time.

But Jimmy Carter, after the hostages were taken, was in the midst of an internal race against Ted Kennedy for the nomination of the Democratic Party, and he announced that the hostage crisis, in effect, was the essential part of his agenda.

The White House announced something called the Rose Garden Strategy, which said, in effect, the president wasn't even going to be able to leave the White House, so important were those hostages to him.

I recall him saying they were the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing he thought about at night - from a humanitarian point of view, a wonderful expression of his own sentiment. From the point of view of the leader of the United States, however, it said to the Iranians: Boy, we've got you exactly where you want you.

And on that day that you were just citing, which was 30 years ago today, the Iranians deliberately held the hostages on the tarmac at the airport outside Tehran until, quite literally, the very second that Ronald Reagan raised his hand, swore the oath and became president of the United States.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/133086344/Is-It-Time-To-Get-Over-The-Iran-Hostage-Crisis?du

[Tesha]

15. The Iran hostage situation made Carter appear weak, and Americans *HATE* the weak.

This is the exact phenomenon that will undo Obama
as well; he appears to have no willingness to actually
stand for anything.

Americans, being generally the bullies that we are,
*HATE* wimps and he will be punished for this.

I claimed at the time that the geopolitically correct
(albeit absolutely ruthless) response to this early
exercise of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorist power
would have been:

1. Fire powerful missiles into our embassy
compound, destroying the compound, our
own hostages, and the hostage takers.

2. Announce to all of Tehran (using leaflets, radio,
loudspeakers, etc.) something along the lines
of "Now, owing to the erroneous leadership of
your Ayatolla Kohmeni and as punishment for having
taken our citizens hostage, all of Tehran will
now be destroyed."

3. Destroy, using conventional weaponry, Tehran.


I think we could have headed-off the entire rise of Islamic
terrorism at that moment.

In the long run, we've done much the same thing to many
different Islamic sites, but we did it all in "slow motion"
so they never got the message that we would be ruthless and
offer no quarter. The punishment should have been swift and
certain and obviously linked to the provocation.

Tesha

[TheKentuckian]

10. Jimmy was toast. The "popular wisdom" would be not to ride a dead horse if he had not drawn a

primary. Reagan sewed it up by not sounding mad as a hatter and not being a bumbling moron when foreign policy was debated.


The reality is Carter asked for sacrifices and Reagan offered the path without any responsibility. Add in the hostage situation and the failed rescue and folks were ready for snake oil. Carter was not going to win, Reagan could have lost with the wrong slip up but Carter was not going to win and lost the establishment of the party by being too conservative and certainly too combative with his own caucus.

It is almost purely magical thinking that the primary was the what killed Jimmy's chances.

[banned from Kos]

12. Carter's presidency was so poorly timed that he got no SCOTUS appointment!

think about that.

Carter was a good guy all around but he barely got an at-bat.

[customerserviceguy]

13. He was the only President of the 20th Century

to not have a Supreme Court appointment. That affected what's happened over the last few decades as much as anything else has. What would a Carter nominee have done with the 2000 election?

[TheKentuckian]

16. I agree with that but he was toast. The only way for him to have won was for Reagan to lose.

Obama was in a somewhat similar place against McShame, all he had to do was pass the bar and speak intelligently on foreign policy and he was in.

[cali]

14. that's an utterly ridiculous statement.

And Carter as President was hardly the saint many make him out to be. I love the guy and his post-presidency, but he made more than his fair share of compromises as prez.

In any case, even if it were true, your statement, without any exposition, remarkably inane.

[rucky]

17. The "primaries kill incumbents" argument is a fallacy

but not for that reason.

You look at the approval ratings of every sitting president who was challenged in a primary, and they're all below 50% going into re-election. Low approval leaves an opening for a challenger, and low approval is why they lose in the GE.