Let me begin with a confession. When I started to report out and write this article, I had a simple thesis: Bernie Sanders is not George McGovern.
The catastrophic loser of the 1972 presidential election, McGovern has become a convenient bogeyman for any moderate or conservative arguing that leftism is a fatal disease in a general election. McGovern won just one state, Massachusetts, while the incumbent, Richard Nixon, commanded 96 percent of the Electoral College vote. It was then the largest Republican landslide in U.S. history.
Surely, though, I thought, the McGovern analogy was just glibness masquerading as historical analysis. America in 1972 was a different country—before personal computers, Star Wars films, and the electoral gender gap.
But the more I read about McGovern’s candidacy, the more I realized that the spirit of ’72 is alive today—just not necessarily in the way that most Sanders critics think.
To start, let’s play a game of “Name That Year.” Here are four clues.
- A profoundly unethical Republican sits in the White House during a fairly strong economy.
- In the Democratic primary, the early front-runner and establishment favorite is a veteran East Coast senator.
- But after months of leading in the polls, he falters in the early primaries, soon after the GOP president and his cronies concoct a scheme to undermine him —part of a dirty-tricks campaign that ultimately figures in an impeachment inquiry.
- Rising at the perfect moment to steal his momentum is a left-wing senator from a small, lily-white state. This senator advocates for single-payer health care and calls for the redistribution of wealth to the middle and lower classes. Over time, he consolidates the left-wing vote and bypasses an apoplectic Democratic elite with a grassroots campaign that—somewhat ironically, given his age— depends on the enthusiasm of young voters.
This is clearly a fitting description of the 2020 political landscape. Clues one through four refer, respectively, to Donald Trump, Joe Biden, the Ukraine scandal involving Burisma and Hunter Biden, and the thriving campaign of Bernie Sanders.
Every word of this description applies just as equally to 1972. Nixon was the incumbent. For much of the Democratic primary, his most likely challenger seemed to be Edmund Muskie, the long-serving senator from Maine, who had been nominated for vice president four years earlier. In February 1972, operatives for the Nixon campaign placed a forged letter in the Manchester Union-Leader newspaper, claiming that Muskie was prejudiced against French Americans. (The forgery is now known as the “Canuck letter.”) Muskie’s downfall provided an opening for McGovern. The left-wing senator drew enthusiastic support from newly enfranchised teenagers and won the Democratic nomination—before getting trounced by Nixon in November.
The similarities between McGovern and Sanders go far beyond the plot points that connect the stories of their ascendance. In matters of policy, rhetoric, and demographics, there is little doubt that McGovernism animates the Sanders campaign.