I've come across two pieces today - one by Erick Erickson at The Resurgent, and one by S.E. Cupp at The New York Daily News - that examine the same basic theme: the parallels between where the Democrats seem to be headed in 2020 and how things unfolded for the Republicans in 2016. In each case, an overcrowded field of presidential contenders would not winnow itself down due to the stubbornness of candidates who surely realize(d) they don't / didn't have a chance, so that the party was left with a candidate that much of the country found completely unpalatable. Erickson's focus is on how the looming specter of Bloomberg keeps the prevailing of Sanders from being a certainty, but leaves Dems with the possibility that the former New York mayor, who greatly alarms most kinds of contemporary Democrats, may shake out to be their man. Cupp doesn't seem to think the Bloomberg factor is that significant, but points to Trump's ascendancy going from a remote possibility to a reality, suggesting that Sanders may have a similar successful trajectory.
It got me to thinking about the way primary season has shaken out to give the country the choices it has had in all the elections since 1972.
That year, Richard Nixon's popularity was proven by his landslide victory. Yes, the Watergate scandal had broken that summer, but the Dem choice, McGovern, was the first candidate to represent the faction within that party that spoke plainly about its view that US involvement in Vietnam was dishonorable. The radicals who had come off the streets to commence a Gramscian long march through the institutions threw their support behind him. The voting public had no appetite for a pivot in that direction.
In 1976, the Republican candidate was the first in a line of what I call afflictees of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome. That's a term I used to use a lot here at LITD and still occasionally find useful. A Reasonable Gentleman is the kind of Republican politician / officeholder who cannot or will not speak of the stark difference between the collectivist ideology of the Democratic Party and the worldview that at least ought to inform Republican politics. Gerald Ford just wasn't up to the task. The Reasonable Gentleman is basically what a lot of people call RINOs or squishes. The Dem candidate, Jimmy Carter, intrigued the public with his mix of Baptist faith, grits-and-gravy Southern sensibility, concern about the energy situation, and support from the rock stars of the day.
By 1980, Carter had proven such a miserable failure, with inflation and economic indicators generally out of hand, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the spread of Marxism-Leninism in Central America, that the contrast between him and the towering Ronald Reagan was the clearest contrast any of us now alive have ever see. Ronald Reagan's three-pillar conservative bona fides were in impeccable order. He'd been recruited into politics by none other than Bill Buckley.
By 1984, Reagan had proven that tax cuts can turn around a troubled economy. He didn't do detente with the Soviet empire, much less impeachment. He spoke of that empire's demise as a reality within the world's grasp. He forthrightly supported the right to life movement. And he did it all with a cheerfulness, an optimism, and a dignified bearing that mightily impressed the nation. Mondale? He was basically cobbling together a platform of elements from both the ever-more-radical left wing of the Democratic Party and its "establishment," for want of a better term (and there surely is one). He proclaimed that he was a feminist and that he would raise taxes. He didn't stand a chance against Dutch.
By 1988 the Soviet Union was so plainly on its last legs, and the economy so good, and Michael Dukakis exuding doofusness at every turn, that Vice President George Bush's run was a walk in the park.
Bush deftly managed the US role in the actual collapse of the Soviet empire, and commanded Desert Storm superbly. But he made the fatal mistake of trusting Democrats, and it cost him Republican support. He'd come across so resolute when he said "Read my lips: No new taxes!" and then he sent Richard Darman up to Cpitol Hill to negotiate spending cuts in return for - you guessed it - tax increases.
That was Bill Clinton's opening. He had a heaping helping of that Southern charm - even a thicker accent than Carter's - a bit of a wonky air about him (he'd given a stemwinder of a speech at the 1988 DNC convention), and spoke of a Third Way effectively enough that it looked like something other than a mushy middle. There were hints that he was a rascal, but his machine was able to sufficiently tamp down those who tried to make it a full-blown issue.
By 1996, however, much more about that rascal streak had come to light, as had various scandals dating back to his time as governor of Arkansas. His wife's utter unlikability and power-hunger was becoming obvious. Congress had gone to the Republicans in the 1994 midterms. It was becoming clear that the whole reason he'd gotten into politics was Still, his opponent was a Reasonable Gentleman of the first order. I mean, Bob Dole? Really?
2000 was a hot mess. The final decision extended considerably past early November, and the nation was subjected to the grind of magnifying-glass examinations of hanging chads and David Boies appealing every court decision that didn't go the Dems' way. Al Gore finally exited the stage, to the relief of an exhausted nation. George W. Bush seemed like a healthy mixture of humanity ("compassionate conservatism") and firmness. He was of east-coast pedigree, but, due to his father's oil-business career prior to getting into politics, had grown up in Texas, and had that charming folksy drawl.
In 2004, even though no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq - a concern not only of the Bush administration at the time, but of Democrats such as Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Bob Graham and Sandy Berger as far back as 1998 - the US had achieved the mission of removing Saddam Hussein from power in that country, thereby bringing relief to a terrified Iraqi populace. US domestic life was stable. John Kerry, whose persona was another mixture of radical-wing and Dem-establishment, seemed out of tune, and he lost to George W. Bush.
In 2008, a totally new political creature appeared on the scene: Barack Obama. The racial angle allowed a lot of Dems to support him so as to indulge in that classic Dem emotion, self-congratulation. That angle's unprecedentedness went far in obscuring Obama's radicalism. Here was the first true candidate who came out of that hard-left wing. He'd been mentored as a kid in Hawaii by Communist Frank Marshall Davis. John Drew recalls how, at Occidental College circa 1980, Obama had advocated revolution. He wandered into a socialist convention in New York City while at Columbia University and became a fan of the thought of Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven. As a community organizer in Chicago, he was under the tutelage of such radicals-who-came-in-off-the-street-to-subvert-the-system-from-within as Heather Booth, Greg Galluzzo, Robert Creamer, and Bill Ayers. He attended Trinity Church, the pastor of which was liberation-theology proponent Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright. He gave a talk, oozing with lavish praise, at the farewell dinner for Rashid Khalidi, who was leaving Chicago for the east coast. Khalidi was fiercely anti-Israel. Obama said he'd learned a lot sitting at Khalidi's kitchen table. He was on record supporting single-payer health care. In his autobiography The Audacity of Hope, he wrote of feeling like a sellout for going to work for a private-sector law firm.
But he was undeniably charming and glib. He knew how to play all the cards he'd been given. And, again, the Pubs put up a ridiculously squishy Reasonable Gentleman, John McCain.
21012 was a repeat, with Mitt Romney standing in in the Reasonable Gentleman role.
So that's the series of choices we've had over the last half-century.
What stands out to me is that Dems have fairly consistently offered solidly leftist candidates. Sometimes they won, sometimes they didn't. Only once in that time span did Republicans put forth an actual conservative. He won handily twice.
And now we're going to get a Dem candidate even further to the left than Obama (there are no moderates in their field; people need to stop applying that term to any of them) and the Republican candidate is going to be - well, you know.
I think it's pretty clear that retrospective such as I'm putting forth here a half-century hence will deem this the age of cacophony and incoherence. That is, if there's still a United States of America at that point, if the infantilism that has beset both parties has not so thoroughly degraded our political life that we've morphed into something having nothing to do with freedom, dignity, prosperity, strength and reverence.
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