The Tricky Dicky Democrats
How do you win an election easily? Well, your opponent would have to be ...well, let's just say ...INSANE! Like ...pretty insane!
If there is one thing that Democrats learned from their catastrophic defeat in the 1972 presidential election to President Richard Nixon under the infamous Democratic campaign of George McGovern, who only won Massachusetts and Washington DC, even more embarrassing for McGovern, he wasn't even from neither of these two small locations, that lesson Democrats learned is that you lose so bad only if an extremist is your candidate and that Nixon may have had something to do with why McGovern was the Democrats' nominee to topple ...huh... Nixon himself.
Democrat George McGovern lost so traumatically was because he was widely viewed by the American electorate, which was increasingly becoming more conservative at that time period, as a left-wing extremist, who is radical, insane, unrealistic, and well ...as Republicans famously called McGovern... ACID, AMNESTY, AND ABORTION! ...at a time when abortion was pretty unpopular with the American public, giving amnesty to draft dodgers during the unpopular war in Vietnam was a polarizing issue, and acid drugs were widely stigmatized. George McGovern was so unpopular that even Democrats, white Democrats in the south and the blue-collar north, hated him so much. It didn't help McGovern so much that his first running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had went through electrotherapy to battle depression, at a time when stigma towards mental illness was tricker and widespread.
In reality, George McGovern was a progressive who sought to end the Vietnam War and invest much of the resources of the federal government away from Vietnam towards helping Americans in poverty, expand civil rights even further for marginalized Americans, and create a fair, just, gentler, and kinder Anerican society that values progress, which were principles that made McGovern an enemy to the American war machine and the establishment that still rules the United States to this day.
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| Electoral results of the 1972 U.S. presidential election |
As shown on this presidential electoral map from the 1972 presidential election held that night, Nixon tallied up 49 states (DC is not a state) for 520 electoral votes (it was briefly 521, but one elector in Virginia defected from Nixon) to George McGovern's 17 electoral votes, but despite this, Democrats retained their comfortable monopoly in Congress, not because of McGovern, that's for sure.
How did this happen? Well, during the Democratic primaries in 1972, which process was reformed thanks to ...George McGovern ...after the disastrous 1968 Democratic Party process to nominate Democratic presidential nominees following the 1968 Democratic National Convention ended in a riot of Anti-Vietnam War activists, of course George McGovern won the Democratic primaries in 1972, but he also had inside interference helping him, ...from the Republican-controlled White House.
In the 1972 Democratic field, there was a Democrat from Maine, 1968 Vice Presidential nominee, Edmund Muskie, who Nixon feared would be a tricky challenger, so Nixon, being what people call "tricky dick", called in his goons and had them meddle into the 1972 Democratic primaries to help get their accurately calculated weak opponent, George McGovern, nominated by the Democrats.
It paid off, but with a price to pay for Nixon.
Now, 50 years later, the Democratic Party, now in control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, knowing the historical odds are not in the Democrats' favor in the 2022 congressional midterm elections, have resorted to "going Nixon" on the Republican primaries to get radical right-wing, Trumpian, January 6th apologists nominated for public office pitted against mostly moderate Democratic candidates, believing that swing voters will pick the Democrat over a crazy Republican.
There was criticism, but a strategy that could work but has risks, and Nixon certainly had that lesson taught to him pretty hard as his presidency would go on to crumble pretty hard in 1974 as he resigns in shame in the wake of the Watergate scandal. These extremist Republicans could still win elections, win critical power, on the backs of voter discontent with Biden and the state of the country, which would not look good for Democrats when consequences on the country falls out, but the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court has certainly weakened the already weak Republican Party into the 2022 midterms, costing them potentially the very small chance they had at reclaiming congressional power.
But before the 2020 election was being held, Trump actually tried to go Nixon himself on the Democrats. There was a sense that Biden could beat Trump easily, something that proved true on November 3, 2020. Trump tried to prevent this by dangling military aid meant for Ukraine to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into the corporate activities of Biden's son, Hunter, at the time of the saga of Ukraine's weak prosecutor for not investigating Burisma Holdings, an energy firm that Hunter Biden had worked for, Trump believed Biden had the prosecutor fired to protect Hunter Biden, though that narrative does not hold water. But Trump's scheme backfired, he was caught by a whistleblower, he brought his complaints to Congress which triggered impeachment proceedings, and it may have, in some way, helped Biden win the Democratic nomination out of the presumption among Democrats that Trump was scared of Biden. A very Nixon taking out Edmund Muskie-like situation except Trump wasn't smart enough to meddle in the Democratic Party primaries to help whoever was the weakest Democrat in the field and unlike Nixon, Trump was quickly caught.
By the very end of the midterms 2022, Democrats' dirty tricks have actually paid off. The Democrats outperformed midterm history by retaining control of the Senate, limited the Republican victory in the House of Representatives, barely losing the lower chamber, and slightly expanded their hand in state governments, making this the best Democratic midterm performance under a Democratic President since 1934 (not losing a single Senate nor ground in state government) and 1962 (losing house seats and gaining Senate seats by small numbers).
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