Half a century ago, the Democratic Party nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern for President, and sadly, he went on to suffer a massive defeat at the hands of President Richard Nixon, losing all states except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
This blogger and author was then a graduate student who was intrigued by McGovern, and loved the fact that he had gained a Ph. D. in History, as I was pursuing at the time.
I always loved McGovern for the rest of his political life, and was saddened by his death in 2012.
I felt he would have been good for the nation, but he was perceived as too far to the left, and this is what concerns me about Bernie Sanders in 2020.
Sanders is no danger to democracy, as some see it, but his ideas are self declared “Socialistic”, which I believe is a guarantee of a massive defeat.
I know there are readers of my blog, and students who I have taught and still teach, who do not agree with me about this, including my loyal contributor “D”.
But defeating Trump is even more significant than if Nixon had been defeated, as Nixon was brought down anyway, but that is not the case if Trump were to win in 2020.
So a moderate, mainstream Democrat, such as Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, or if he can revive, Joe Biden, and even Michael Bloomberg would be more likely to win the Presidency, and save us from another four years of Trump, preventing the total destruction of the New Deal of FDR and the Great Society of LBJ, and all other progress under Presidents of both parties in the past century and more!