I am a big fan of Paul Waldman, but I am deeply disappointed with his effort to decide whether or not a self-described socialist can be elected president. In particular, I find the following to be very dissatisfying.
But the most compelling answer to the question of whether a socialist can be elected president is that we just don’t know. We haven’t had a nominee like Sanders before, and prior examples of ideological outliers (say, George McGovern) were so long ago and in partisan environments that were so radically different than today’s that they can’t tell us anything about what would happen.
This simply isn’t true. I don’t dispute that 2020 is dramatically different from 1972. Arguably, McGovern would have won if he’d run in 2016 or even 2008 due solely to the evolving demographics of the country. But this isn’t the lesson we should take from McGovern’s crushing loss. He was doomed less because of his platform than because he could not unite the Democratic Party. The particulars of why he failed to do so are different. In our times, the challenge from George Wallace-types is encapsulated mostly within the Trump campaign rather than being an inter-party squabble. Still, it might pay to look at a 1972 post-mortem on why labor boss and A.F.L.‐C.I.O. president George Meany decided not to endorse McGovern.
The primary reason is clearly that the rank-and-file preferred Nixon and felt alienated by the politics of the New Left.
Perhaps George Meany felt honor‐bound to be responsive (i.e. in touch) to the rank‐and‐file workers of America. The Gallup Poll at the time showed “labor union families” favoring Nixon over McGovern by 52 per cent to 42 per cent…
…Perhaps senile George Meany and the senile executive board of the A.F.L.‐C.I.O. can still read newspapers (in braille?) and that during the last five or so years these doddering fools had noted that many of the ideologues of the new politics wing of the Democratic party have characterized labor’s leadership as racist, reactionary and imperialist, and caricatured its membership as beery, hawkish, ethnic slobs. Perhaps the A.F.L.‐C.I.O. leadership did not agree with those characterizations. Perhaps they felt instead that while some of the new politics was concentrating on Vietnam and the chic, anti‐materialist liberalism of the counterculture, amnesty, abortion, gay lib and marijuana—they, the labor skates, were up to more productive pursuits. Perhaps they take pride that the American labor movement has been the point of the lance for every decent, progressive and humanitarian piece of legislation that has actually passed into law over the last decade. That includes not only union‐oriented measures, but also civil rights, civil liberties, the environment, medical care, poverty, welfare, aid to education, mass transportation and so on down an extremely long list.
I presume much of that has some resonance for you as you look at what has happened to the Democratic Party over the last four years. But it’s not really my point that the Democrats can no longer win over the “beery, hawkish, ethnic slobs” in the Midwestern labor movement. The party is big enough to win without them now, provided that what remains is not divided.
The current Democratic majority in the House is built on a suburban/urban alliance rather than an ethnic/labor/urban/Southern alliance. But it can no more afford to lose the suburbs than McGovern could afford to lose labor. It also can’t afford poor urban turnout. It needs both to maintain its majority status, and also to protect its House majority. It probably needs both to have any hope of winning control of the Senate.
So, we actually can use McGovern’s loss as a useful precedent. And the question becomes whether Sanders will divide the Democrats in suburban districts the same way that McGovern divided them in Rust Belt districts. And, if so, how would he make up for it?
In 1972, we were told that the newly lowered voting age would bring out a surge of youth voters for McGovern. But only half of 18-21 year olds turned out to vote and 48 percent of them voted for Nixon. In any case, it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d all turned out and voted heavily for the Democrat. Without party unity, McGovern had no chance.
I covered this from two angles in my recent piece: Bernie’s Coalition Doesn’t Overlap With the Dem’s House Majority. On the one hand, even if Sanders finds a different winning coalition to take the presidency, that won’t be of much comfort to suburban Democrats who lose their seats. If it costs the Democrats control of the House and Senate, President Sanders won’t get anything done in any case. But, precisely because of this threat, the party will not unite around such an alternate strategy even if it has demonstrable prospects for success.
So, my belief is that Sanders would not unite the party and that many elected Democrats would walk away from him both in the campaign and even after he was elected, should he be so fortunate.
This seems like a high risk to take when the party as a whole is actually pretty cohesive, especially on the subject of beating Trump. There isn’t any pressing electoral need to shake up the coalition that just crushed in the 2018 midterms, nor to put that majority in jeopardy by not respecting the desires of the constituencies that entrusted the Democrats with power.
As far as I am concerned, the evidence from 1972 suggests that a divided party cannot compete against even a polarizing and much-hated incumbent. This isn’t some hangover from the culture war of the 60’s or a failure to recognize that times have changed. It’s is a simple observation about how to build a majority coalition and how to lose one.
There may be no pressing electoral need to shake things up, but if we just go back to policies of the past we’ll just wind up with another Trump.
Maybe…but there’s no candidate in the race who wants to “just go back to policies of the past”. Regardless of who the nominee is, that candidate will be running on the most progressive platform of any major party in at least 40 years.
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Martin, I don’t think your points are wrong, just out of proportion. Do you really think any Democrat is going to feel alienated by the politics of Sanders to the extent that they’d prefer Trump? Well, clearly you do think this and probably others think it too but always of other mythical Democrats. I’ve never heard a single Democrat say “I’ll vote for Trump over Sanders”. The primary results right now clearly favor moderate candidates so I think you’ll get your wish, but I will still vote for the most progressive Democrat still in the race when my primary comes.
I’m sure you would have told me that no Democrats would look at Trump and think, “he’s better than Clinton.” Where I live, Bernie Sanders will not win the Romney vote that Clinton claimed. It’s that simple.
Unfortunately I did know Democrats who fell for the Trump lies and liked his “straight talk” and “business experience”. But you’re right I was as stunned as anyone on election day to realize I didn’t live in the country I thought I lived in. But this election isn’t against the 2016 Trump. The 2020 Trump is damaged goods (for Independents and Democrats) and the same folks won’t be fooled again. Don’t think that I’m not scared about 2020, I just think that Trump is so bad that there is a rare opportunity to push farther left and succeed. Warren is actually my current choice, but I won’t feel alienated by the politics of Bloomberg should he win the primary. I will still show up and vote for whichever Democrat emerges. I do appreciate your efforts to keep making us all think!
I like and still like that Trump gives no fucks about norms. He’s using it for evil but slavish adherence to norms has hamstrung democrats repeatedly in the 20 years I’ve been paying attention. Remake the world and dare your opponents to stop you.
And there’s a significant difference between 1972 and 2020. Nixon’s approval rating between 1969 and 1972 averaged 49%. Around the time of the election, his approval rating was above 60%. Running as an incumbent, this was a severe uphill climb even for the best of candidates. Not saying that McGovern wasn’t, but even if the democrats had run someone more “moderate” than McGovern, chances are they still would have lost. Trump, on the other hand, is running as an impeached incumbent, whose average approval rating never got out of the mid forties. Unlike Nixon, he’s not very bright, and uses Twitter as the gun to shoot himself in the foot time and again, like recently with the tweet about Stone’s sentence. Even though scandal was beginning to swirl around Nixon, he wasn’t the alienation machine Trump is.
Regardless of who the democrats run, Trump will be an unparalleled unifying factor for the democrats.
I don’t think the concern is Trump over Sanders Democrats. The concern is turnout after the Republicans pound on Bernie for a few months. I think Sanders is a fraud who will make a terrible president. If Dems do nominate him, I give up. I have grave doubts about the American electorate’s ability to discern reality in the age of social media and without some sense of a shared set of truths, democracy is impossible. Bernie Sanders is qualified to be president? Reality – as I see it – is dead.
Would I vote? Maybe – probably – if only to disavow Trump. But I would do it without hope. I would worry that if he won Sanders would claim his political revolution had triumphed. And if I was black I would not stand in line for hours to vote for a candidate I dislike as much as I dislike Sanders. Hours to vote for a guy that disrespects Obama and thinks Joe Rogen is a-okay? Some Democrats – Democrats we need in droves – have to fight to vote. Will they fight to vote for someone they have rejected again and again? I don’t think you should take the black vote for granted.
Ridiculousness. How do you feel about Michael “maybe we should have had redlining so there was no financial crisis” Bloomberg? A whole lot of the Congressional Black Caucus is lining up behind him.
Can you please actually look at Bernie’s governing record, as it exists, in reality? Bernie’s detractors and his super fans are really the worst. He’s an effective and capable politician. He’s not a revolutionary. If anything, it’s good if he wins and brings in lots of voters to the reality of real governance. Reality sucks.
I simply do not understand the “fraud” line of thought it is baffling.
It in itself is fraudulent.
For a slightly alternate take, see this article in the Atlantic that argues that Democrats like Bernie Sanders personally and will vote for him despite the socialism label, which itself has become fairly amorphous to many voters. It is an interesting concept that perhaps a politician having a long history of consistent views on the big things that will most likely not be achievable after the election might be preferable, even by those that don’t necessarily support those positions fully, to a politician that has shifted their positions for electoral advantage.
I do find it interesting, and a bit surprising, that the last poll showed Bernie doing the best of all the candidates against Trump. Obviously Democrats want someone that they think can beat the current occupant of the White House, but if it wasn’t already obvious, all of them have different strengths and weaknesses against him, so there isn’t going to be a clear choice about who is “best”.
At this point, I would like to just vote for the candidate that I think would make the best president, but unfortunately, the media has been dumping on her and and now labels her a hopeless long shot after a little over 1% of the delegates have been selected, so what the hell do I know.
If he gets the nom, the trappings of the establishment will fall upon him. Then what? Does he retain Joe Rogan when the Clintons are campaigning for him? I think it parallels going after GOP votes: why depend on people who hate you? Actually the efforts probably overlap, “antiestablishment” seems fairly GOP-oriented to me.
Not certain I fully understand your comment, but the Clintons will never ever campaign for Bernie. Hillary is still bitter. Rather than accepting the fact that she ran a poor campaign she harbors a grudge. Tonight Michael Moore reminded us that she didn’t campaign in all of Wisconsin. That is exactly why Bernie Sanders beat her there in the primary, and Michigan as well. He didn’t parachute into a few cities as she did and call it a day but went to the many smaller cities and towns. It paid off.
if we have to relive 1972, it will really suck to not have Hunter Thompson reporting it. But I’m glad he’s not here to see a president worse than Nixon.
and speaking of Nixon, he wasn’t really “much-hated” in 1972. gallup.com presidential approval ratings show him at 60% in late ’72. Looking back, I don’t see any Democrat, probably not even zombie JFK, beating Nixon in ’72 or Reagan in ’84 and i think those two candidates have gotten a lot of undeserved blame.
People were less willing to tell pollsters they disliked a president back then, so all presidents from that era had much higher approval numbers than we see now. Nixon was extremely polarizing and definitely hated with an intensity that was unprecedented in modern times.
Or there were liberal and conservative Republicans/Democrats, and it was much more difficult to identify with the party? Further, “approval” of the job of the president has until Barack Obama correlated with the economy. That is no longer the case. So fact: no one was beating Nixon in 1972. No one. Not even Jesus Christ or FDR’s corpse (ok maybe).
I probably agree that none of the large number of candidates for the nomination could beat Nixon in 1972, but that is because presidents are always re-elected when the economy is strong and not because Nixon was particularly popular. (This also still makes Trump the favourite in November.) Nixon was not a likeable man, and few people liked him, even among Republicans.
We certainly believed Nixon was beatable in 1972. We thought him very vulnerable on the war and we knew boomers could vote in massive numbers for the first time. Democrats were the majority party holding both the House and the Senate. We believed that the only reason Nixon won in 1968 was Democratic disunity. There would be no third party candidate in 1972. We had reasons to believe. Had the handwriting not been on written on the the wall at the convention, I would have been crushed on election night.
Maybe Nixon was all but unbeatable in 1972, but that is beside the point. The point is that Democrats nominated a candidate who had zero chance to unite the party. And because he could not do that, McGovern got 37.5% of the vote. Think about that. Democrats won most Congressional districts and Senate seats while McGovern got 37.5% of the vote. “We threw open the doors of the Democratic Party,” said McGovern later, “And 20 million voters walked out.” Maybe Muskie or Jackson or whoever else would have lost the general election as well, but nobody else would have been crushed like that.
Nothing but nostalgic romance that it could have been done. I don’t care what you tell yourself, Nixon was popular because the economy was good, and job approval of presidents correlated with the health of the economy.
However, since Barack Obama, this is not the case. We are seeing partisan responses with economic health, and the job approval does not correlate with it. Republicans hated Obama no matter what the economy was, and the same goes for Democrats with Trump. Now obviously Democrats don’t have the same asymmetry and aren’t living in a fever dream of what Trump is actually doing compared with Obama detractors from the right, but nothing Trump could do on the economy would allow someone who doesn’t approve of him to vote for him. In fact, presidents for re-election usually somewhat overperform relative to their job approval, but Trump consistently underperforms his job approval.
Now it’s true that the economy (toplines) are fine and the country as a whole seems to agree (the lack/slowness of wage increases is still a thing and we aren’t near full employment). But it doesn’t matter. Because his job approval sucks.
Nixon was never popular. Never. Job approval and popularity are not the same thing. I agree that we were probably naive to believe a Democrat could beat Nixon, but believe it we did, right up to the fiasco that Was the Democratic convention.
I don’t understand your position. As best I can tell you think Trump is so terrible that any Democrat will win and the disagreement is that I think Democrats will lose if the nominee cannot unite the Democratic Party.
Bernie Sanders cannot do that because – like McGovern – he is running against the Democratic Party. It is likely the case that no candidate can unite the party because of the Bernie or Busters, and Trump will probably be re-elected anyway, (I am far more cynical than I was in 1972.) But, in my opinion, it is a far better option to go with that hope than nominating the one candidate who has zero chance of uniting the party and winning.
Been there, done that.
If Dems nominate Sanders, I will give up on politics as a meaningful activity and focus on baseball, 18th century literature and enjoying the rest of my retirement. At the end of the day, it won’t make any real difference to me whoever is elected. I don’t have to pay attention to any of it.
There is no question that Nixon inspired a lot of loathing in 1972. It is also true that Nixon moved significantly left (for him) prior to the election to position for the re-election (something Trump has not done as of yet and there are some indications that he is going further right). There was also a major cultural war (swirling around civil rights, an air of societal breakdown and the Vietnam War) going on, NIxon positioned himself to win the culture war and McGovern and his supporters totally played into it. McGovern never had a chance.
Candidly I was very politically active in Northern California in 1972 and defected from the democrats in the general election (for the only time in my life) due to the sanctimonious behavior of the McGovern-ites. They never made an effort to unite the party, they insisted the rest of us owed our votes to them, and their theory of the election was that a glorious crusade was going to bring victory. History doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme and the current approach of the Sanders people is rhyming with 1972.
>>People were less willing to tell pollsters they disliked a president back then, so all presidents from that era had much higher approval numbers than we see now
the Gallup numbers for Harry Truman dispute that statement.
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I do hope it is an exaggeration that a Sanders win will result in losing congress. I do agree, though, that he may find it difficult to get his agenda through a divided party even if we hold congress. Personally I think we have a problem within the party no matter who wins. The left most and center portions of the party really do not seem to get along all that much. We may have simply an agreed agenda to chase Trump the hell out. Good enough for me. Warren had been my choice but she seems mortally wounded and leaving us with Buttigieg, Sanders and Bloomberg.
I love Martin, I think he’s among the best in the business, and I even pay to subscribe to this site. But he has been off on two major things of late. He confidently predicted that Hillary would beat Trump in the last election and she did not. And he stated over and over again how confident he was that this primary season would clearly come down to Sanders and Biden, and it has not. This isn’t to crap all over Martin, who I absolutely love, but simply to say just vote for who you think is the best damn Candidate.
Any of the potential 3 have serious flaws. If the candidate is Buttigieg he will become the effeminate gay guy who is dragging his husband around on the campaign trail looking to impose a gay agenda on America and if you vote for the guy that might mean that you yourself are gay. And really how can anyone vote for someone who looks like mad from Mad Magazine. He will instantly be emasculated and reduced to a gay caricature and a symbol of everything liberals want to impose upon America in terms of culture War issues.
And as far as Bloomberg goes, has anyone actually listened to the man talk. If you felt Biden rallies were lifeless, Bloomberg rallies will make a typical Biden rally seem like a Slayer concert by comparison. Being able to generate some excitement and at least have some kind of meaningful rallies is actually important. I think it’s safe to say there has never been a more sleep inducing less charismatic candidate.
I remember in the last election cycle day after day after day watching non-stop footage of Trump before thousands of cheering fans and then as far as Hillary goes, nothing. She almost never held those type of rallies and partially because she couldn’t. That hurts when people see non-stop footage of thousands of people cheering someone. You start to internalize it as something big something special might be going on. We didn’t have that on our side last time and it hurt.
None of these three candidates for my top three picks. My initial two choices were Warren and Biden. Warren because I thought she was best for the job, and Biden because if I couldn’t have Warren, well, I’ll go with the electable dude, meaning Biden.
But now that he choice probably comes down to the above three, I’m probably going to end up voting for Sanders.
He was also off about Mueller.
I strongly suspect Joe Manchin would switch parties if Bernie wins. Barring a miracle, that alone would leave Mitch McConnell to stop Bernie’s entire agenda on Day One.
I think if Manchin had ever intended to do that it would have happened already. After his vote to convict Trump they aren’t going to be rolling out a red carpet.
If we get to 50+ Veep the GOP would not only welcome Manchin, they’d give him his choice of committees.
In Hungary, the opposition to Fidesz was fragmented for the better part of a decade, allowing one-time reformer-turned-despot Orban to rule with increasing impunity. Opposition tried a different strategy in last year’s municipal elections: they swallowed their (often significant) differences and united. Opposition not only reclaimed control of Budapest, but a clear majority of municipalities. Whether that coalition holds the next time general elections are held there is an unknown, but if nothing else a powerful lesson was learned, and opposition has some power it did not have before. I know – a different system (parliamentary), but it’s turned into effectively a “two-party” or “two-factions” situation there. The Democratic Party has a very diverse and at times divergent membership. I suspect a lot of us will have to swallow some very significant differences to overcome Trump’s advantage of being merely an incumbent. We’ve been one election away from a dictatorship since the aftermath of 2016, and will be for the foreseeable future. We did 2018 about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. We have no alternative to standing united at least one more time once the primaries are over and the convention delegates sort out who the nominee is. The alternative is bleak – a future of corruption, grave injustice, and what effectively becomes one-party rule. That’s a future I don’t want my kids inheriting. It’s not a future my elders worked and fought for. We can learn from 1972, but also let’s see how opposition deals electorally with despots elsewhere. The successes and failures will be telling.
As long as the moderates do some swallowing fine. But usually they do the shit feeding and the left does the shit eating. Thete needs to be a balance.
The 2016 Democratic Party Presidential candidate ran on the broadest leftist platform of any viable Presidential candidate in the history of the United States. The Party’s 2020 Presidential candidate will almost certainly have an even more broadly leftist platform than the Party’s 2016 candidate. The 111th Congress, the first under President Obama, had the broadest set of leftist accomplishments of any Congress in American history. (The Congresses under FDR excluded non-whites and women from receiving protections and benefits from the New Deal programs and regulations they passed into law, and the Congresses which worked with LBJ to pass the various Civil rights Acts and Great Society programs also presided over the abomination that was the major escalation of the Vietnam War.) So no, I don’t agree that the left of the Party has done nothing but eat shit in recent years. The Left that exists outside of the Party makes that case, but as we can see by the piss poor job the Green Party has done in its campaigns, very few voters are in their camp.
I like the point you made. We have to have unity in the party. Not Borg/Republican unity, but unity nonetheless. A lot of non-white progressives HATE supporters of Bernie with a white-hot passion. They don’t have a beef with Bernie himself, and overlap on most policy positions. But having Bernie Bots Bernie-splaining how their lived experiences are not relevant or getting called names when challenging a Bot on a logical fallacy gets old fast.
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