New York Magazine: Ed Kilgore: 'George McGovern Didn’t Lose in 1972 by Going Too Far Left. Neither Will 2020 Democrats'

Source:New York Magazine- George McGovern For President in 1972, was President Richard Nixon's early Christmas gift. And the Democratic Party's vacation in Hell.

"One of the most persistent arguments surrounding the 2020 presidential contest is that Democrats are heading “off the deep end” on a left-wing ideological bender that will mean disaster in the general election. The warning is very often associated with the specter of 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, who lost 49 states four years after Hubert Humphrey lost by an eyelash and four years before Jimmy Carter won the presidency. The obsession with the idea that 1972 may repeat itself is a bipartisan phenomenon. Some McGovern Redux takes are from conservatives who are simply promoting the perennial claim that Democrats have become an anti-American cabal of baby-killing hippie socialists with a fresh urgency given the current extremism of the GOP. And some of these takes are (and have been for many years) from self-styled moderate Democrats grinding axes against self-consciously progressive aspirants to the presidential nomination."

Read more at New York Magazine

George McGovern's 1972 political platform from Wikipedia

"In the 1972 election, McGovern ran on a platform that advocated withdrawal from the Vietnam War in exchange for the return of American prisoners of war[15] and amnesty for draft evaders who had left the country,[16] an anti-war platform that was anticipated by McGovern's sponsorship of the 1970 McGovern-Hatfield amendment that sought to end U.S. participation in the war by Congressional action. However, during a meeting with Democratic Governors conference, Nevada Governor Mike O'Callaghan asked McGovern what he would do if the North Vietnamese refused to release American POW's after a withdrawal. McGovern responded, "Under such circumstances, we'd have to take action," although he did not say what action.[17]

"McGovern's platform also included an across-the-board, 37% reduction in defense spending over three years;[18] and a "demogrant" program that would replace the personal income tax exemption with a $1,000 tax credit as a minimum-income floor for every citizen in America,[19] to replace the welfare bureaucracy and complicated maze of existing public-assistance programs. Its concept was similar to the negative income tax long advocated by economist Milton Friedman, and by the Nixon administration in the form of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Family Assistance Plan, which called for a minimum family grant of $1,600 per year, later raised to $2,400. The personal income tax exemption later became $1,000 under President Reagan. (As Senator, McGovern had previously sponsored a bill, submitted by the National Welfare Rights Organization, for $6,500 guaranteed minimum income per year to families, based on need.)[20] In addition, McGovern supported ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment."

Source:The Big Picture'- Maybe Thom Hartmann, really is Commie, since he works for President Vladimir Putin. LOL

From Thom Hartmann

"A lot of Hillary's supporters say they like Bernie Sanders - but that they're afraid that Sanders might lose the general in a landslide. But it's not 1972 - and Bernie Sanders isn't George McGovern."

I agree with Ed Kilgore on one thing: Senator George McGovern wasn't as Far-Left as people believed. Which is like saying that Pat Buchanan, isn't as Far-Right as people might think. Or it's not as hot in Arizona in the summer as some people might think. It's only 120 degrees in the summer, instead 130 and besides: it's a dry heat and there's no humidity. That's still very hot compared with most of the rest of the country that's dealing with temperatures in the 80s and 90s, 70s in the Northwest and even 60s because of all their damn rain. And Pat Buchanan is still pretty Far-Right, especially since now he's arguing that maybe President Vladimir Putin is right about liberal democracy dying.

Senator George McGovern before being elected to Congress, served as a fighter pilot during World War II. And then ran the food program that served hungry people in the Kennedy Administration. Growing up in South Dakota he was devoutly religious and remained that way his whole life. He wasn't some hippie pacifist Socialist that believed that America was the real evil empire and that Fidel Castro and Russia were the good guys. He knew that they were bad people that had to be dealt with.

But when you give speeches on the Senate floor arguing that American soldiers were the real war criminals during the Vietnam War and you have a new social program and tax increase to solve all of Americans problems for them and you continually bash American businesses that hire all of these American voters that depend on these companies for their jobs and lifestyles, that puts you on the Far-Left in America.

Especially in 1972 with the emergence of the New-Left in America ( Socialists and Communists, not Liberals ) in the late 1960s and early 70s. And then you have these group of middle-American voters ( that the Far-Left likes to just put down as blue-collar, small town white people ) who represent a large chunk of the American electorate, who are not wealthy, who work hard to make a good living in America and if anything think that they're already overtaxed and that government is already trying to do too much for them, who are people who are just looking for an opportunity to make more money and be successful, who are proud of the American military and think that America is a great country, you're going to look extreme to these voters. Whether you're George McGovern in 1972, or Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in 2019-20.

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other Far-Leftists ( or Democratic Socialists ) and their supporters will argue that America has changed and that minorities are now a bigger part of the American electorate and you now even have young Caucasian-American voters who aren't afraid of socialism and Socialists and even like Socialists and socialism, but here's the problem with that argument: minorities whether they're African-American, Latino, Middle-Eastern, Asian, Jewish., whatever racial or ethnic background, they're not monolithic as voters.

None of these racial and ethnic groups are monolithic as voters. Just because you're a minority doesn't mean you're left-wing and all Caucasians are right-wing. Not even all middle age and older Caucasian voters are on the Right. Caucasian voters regardless of ethnicity aren't monolithic as voters either. And the other problem that left-wing in the Democratic Party has is that the group of voters that they're targeting are the least reliable as far as people who go to the polls and who vote. Young voters of all ethnic racial backgrounds.

For a Democrat to win the presidency in 2020, they still have to be able to win big states in the Midwest and probably even Florida in the South, if they lose Ohio again. You can't run a Democratic presidential campaign in 2020 thinking you only need women regardless of race, young voters regardless of race, minorities. And you can't win the minority vote and get new minority voters to the polls, by thinking they're automatically going to show up and vote for you, because of President Donald Trump. You have to reach out to them and get them to the polls yourself and appeal to them for their votes.  

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