When Will Moderates Learn Their Lesson? – By Ibram X. Kendi (The Atlantic) / Feb 24 2002
If centrists can’t move past their doctrine and recognize when their candidates are unelectable, then how will Democrats ever beat Trump?
The two major policy pitches of the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in 1972 were clear: an immediate end to the Vietnam War, and an immediate guarantee of a minimum income for all Americans. George McGovern ran for president that year, but the most progressive Democratic nominee in recent history did not get very far. He suffered the second-largest rout for a Democrat in American Electoral College history.
Incumbent Richard Nixon won 49 states and 520 electoral votes, severely wounding the spirits of countless young progressives. And I don’t think some of them ever fully recovered. “It was a generational defeat,” as BuzzFeed’s Katherine Miller wrote.
Some of these ’70s youngsters licked their wounds in 1972 and carried on with their progressive politics, howling for decades in lonely political winds. Other ’70s youngsters patched themselves up after the McGovern debacle by turning away from progressive policies, and by turning the Democratic Party away from progressive candidates, nurturing a deep cynicism about big, structural change. At the altar of Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution, some ’70s youngsters married themselves to moderation, or to conservatism. It was as if a progressive candidate had been their first love, and she had broken their heart, and they vowed to never, ever give another progressive a chance at breaking their political heart again.
Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is one of those ’70s youngsters who “loved” McGovern. Both men were highly decorated veterans who rose to political prominence as anti-war advocates in the early 1970s. When McGovern died in 2012, Kerry called him “a voice of clarity and conviction at a time when America needed it most.”
Kerry has endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, a moderate candidate. It is difficult to pinpoint the views that might define a moderate voter, because self-identified moderate voters are all over the ideological map. It is easier to pinpoint the moderate Democratic candidates and all their aides, surrogates, pundits, and donors with megaphones—and all the primary voters consuming and reproducing their talking points. Moderates tend to agree with progressives on the crises of health care, inequality, and climate change, while advocating for gradual remedies that they consider more politically or economically viable. Moderates are largely tailoring campaigns to centrist and Republican voters they believe hold the keys to the White House.
Continue to article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/moderates-cant-win-white-house/606985/
