Lesson of 1972 isn’t that progressive nominees lose. Dems lose when they are out of step with voters, like Hillary
This election cycle, Democratic Party leaders are pleading with younger voters to heed the lessons of history. Echoing George Santayana’s famous warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” they urge millennials to take a close look at what happened to Democrats in 1972. That was the year, they explain, that the Democratic Party made a monumental blunder at its national convention by empowering young people, women and minorities at the expense of party elites. The result was the nomination of George McGovern, a candidate whose ideas were so radical that they guaranteed a landslide victory for Richard Nixon.
Leaving aside whether such an interpretation of 1972 is accurate, there is a more fundamental issue here. What if pundits and Democratic Party leaders are focusing on the wrong election? What if the lessons that history has for us are to be found not in 1972 but in 1968? What if we are heeding the absolutely wrong warnings?