As I write this, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lost the New Hampshire Democratic primary to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders by a wide margin. Senator Sanders, who bills himself as an outsider and anti-establishment candidate won in every category of the New Hampshire democratic voting demographics except voters 65 and older. In my view, the reason Sanders didn’t carry those voters is simple. Those Democratic voters are the ones who probably remember the 1972 election campaign of South Dakota Senator George McGovern and see history repeating itself.
In 1972, Senator McGovern ran for President as a progressive and anti-war candidate. The democratic “establishment candidates” that year were former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. While Humphrey won the popular primary vote, McGovern won the nomination after a contentious platform fight that included immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, amnesty for war resisters, guaranteed jobs and family income for all Americans. It was this platform that promised to eliminate from the free enterprise system “anything which could potentially produce inequality” by using the tax system and federal law enforcement to redistribute income. President Nixon, the Republican incumbent, easily portrayed McGovern as a naive left-wing socialistic extremist in the general election and won 49 out of 50 states, garnering 520 electoral votes out of 538.
1972 was the first year that 18 year olds could vote in Federal elections and many supported the McGovern candidacy. This group of young people, who are now in their 60s, were shocked and dismayed at the size of the national rejection of McGovern and his ideas. That rejection also carried into the Congressional races that year with the Democratic party losing 12 seats in the House of Representatives.
In 2016, the Democratic Party now has a candidate in Senator Sanders, who is a declared Socialist and has his strongest following among young people and those with incomes under $200,000. He is leading in the polls and has a better than even chance of being his party’s nominee. But regardless, of how popular he is today with that demographic (and it’s a big one), the Senator has almost no chance of winning the general election for the same reason McGovern lost. Rather than vote for a declared socialist, who openly supports wealth redistribution in an improving economy and is a foreign policy isolationist; the electorate will support “any strong man who will make America wonderful again.” That was the tact Nixon took against McGovern in 1972 and it is one that will be used against Senator Sanders, should he be the party nominee, by the Republican challenger – no matter who it is.
There are many older Democrats who are not supporting Senator Sanders. It’s not because they don’t necessarily agree with all of the Senator’s lofty goals and ideas; but rather they know that idealism without pragmatism doesn’t win elections. You must win first – then idealism can govern. You can ask President McGovern why that is.
