#georgemcgovern

[wardsutton]

For The Boston Globe.

[cw21dlr]

Twenty-one-year-old Kathleen Kennedy toured the country with George McGovern in support of his 1972 presidential bid.

[jesterrificness]

Apt. Oh and before you hit "post" on that long response about how badly McGovern lost or any variation that reinforces the colonialist/imperialist narrative that permeates our politics. Dont. Just don't. I have neither the interest, nor the energy to own you in my response. #georgemcgovern #colonialism #imperialism #resist

[aparchives]

On this day July 12, 1972, George McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in Miami Beach.

[infinityonwestadams]

Going in on #DanFlavin #1972 #GeorgeMcGovern @ #diabeacon #ledeepspace (at Dia:Beacon)

[azspot]

Reagan’s 1980 campaign was pure Goldwater. He promised sweeping tax cuts and a “return to spiritual and moral values.” He pledged to take on Communists abroad and welfare “cheaters” at home. Most controversially, Reagan echoed Goldwater’s racist dog whistle by pledging to restore “states’ rights.” By following small-government conservatism, Reagan told the nation, America would be restored to “a shining city on a hill.” Reagan’s supporters cast their candidate as the heir to Goldwater’s throne. “Barry Goldwater was the philosopher,” John Sears, Reagan’s campaign manager, explained. “Ronald Reagan is the articulator.” For good reason, conservatives saw Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in the general election as the complete vindication of Goldwater conservatism. By winning, Reagan placed views once seen as fringe conservatism squarely at the center of the GOP and demonstrated that all it takes is one fortuitous election to fundamentally shift the American political landscape.

What Democrats Still Don’t Get About George McGovern

[azspot]

But the Democrats’ fear of McGovernism is misplaced. McGovern didn’t lose because he was too far to the left. He lost because he was facing a popular incumbent presiding over a booming economy. Moreover, the Democrats’ belief that they need to steer clear of McGovernism, assuming it was ever correct, now looks increasingly misguided. With each passing decade, the types of voters drawn to McGovern’s 1972 campaign have become a larger and larger share of the American electorate, while the issues championed by McGovern have become more and more salient.

What Democrats Still Don’t Get About George McGovern

[yostivanich]

McGovern was the last of so many things — the last true prairie populist, the last truly antiwar war hero, and, really, the last true insurgent to rise through the primaries and capture the nomination of a major party. (Carter me no Carters. The party establishment fell in line behind him the way it never did behind McGovern. There was no “Democrats for Ford” operation run against him. It only turned against him once he was in office.) Accepting that nomination, at a time when the Vietnam War was still raging, and when the country was not yet aware of the depths of the crimes committed by the incumbent and the men around him, McGovern delivered one of the great acceptance speeches of all time, and the only thing that anyone remembers is that it took place in the whiskey hours of the morning. He said: We are entering a new period of important and hopeful change in America, a period comparable to those eras that unleashed such remarkable ferment in the period of Jefferson and Jackson and Roosevelt. Let the opposition collect their $10 million in secret money from the privileged few and let us find one million ordinary Americans who will contribute $25 each to this campaign, a Million Member Club with members who will not expect special favors for themselves but a better land for us all. In the literature and music of our children we are told, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. And for America, the time has come at last. This is the time for truth, not falsehood. In a Democratic nation, no one likes to say that his inspiration came from secret arrangements by closed doors, but in the sense that is how my candidacy began. I am here as your candidate tonight in large part because during four administrations of both parties, a terrible war has been chartered behind closed doors. I want those doors opened and I want that war closed. And I make these pledges above all others: the doors of government will be opened, and that war will be closed.