People totally misread the Democrats in the 1970s. I saw another Tweet today that talked about another Democratic "death spiral" like in the '70s because the lefties pushed the party too far left. 1972 was my first presidential election. McGovern didn't lose because he was too radically leftist; he lost because he wanted to get out of Vietnam and the majority of voters--including centrist Democrats--still loved the war, or at least bought into the "peace with honor" bullshit of Richard Nixon.
It's easy to spot this in history during my lifetime: Americans dig war; until they don't anymore. It happened with Vietnam. Folks loved it, until they didn't anymore. And that happened relatively quickly. The revisionists who want to pretend they never supported the War want to change the subject into "McGovern was too radical", rather than that he was weak and unmanly and not warlike enough for them.
It happened in the second Iraq War of GW Bush. Everybody loved it, including most Dems. Until they didn't. But by then the damage was done. But they loved his manliness. Almost everyone at The New York Times and folks like Chris Matthews on MSNBC were all in. Until they weren't. Americans like to appear tough.
And it happened again when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan. The war-loving media came out in full force. We didn't look tough enough or manly enough or something. So an American war disaster of 20 years was recharacterized as successful and running smoothly until Biden botched it up. Pretty incredible.
In all these cases, the centrist and conservative pundits were all in. Only years later do they pretend that they were against the war all along or some other type of revisionism.
Never underestimate Americans' love for war.
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