The first election I voted in was McGovern-Nixon. Your analysis here is congruent with my experience. Some other points: Young people opposed Nixon because of his Vietnam War stand. Most of us (at least those in my circle) weren’t concerned with McGovern’s liberal positions on other issues or with the internecine party squabbles. We were probably as fervent as Sanders’ young supporters, but support for McGovern wasn’t that broad among older voters. Sanders has attracted a more diverse base and has articulated his policies clearly to that base.
My father had been a blue dog Democrat (because of what he perceived as Herbert Hoover’s contribution to the Great Depression), but he had no sense of kinship with McGovern (as opposed to Kennedy and Johnson, for whom he voted), and he broke with his tradition in 1972.
I think the basis of my father’s change is more universal than we’d like to admit. We think we’re voting for a particular candidate’s ideology or platform, but that’s just a superficial shell. We choose on the basis of affiliation — people we feel belong to our group. To my father, Nixon wasn’t a member of the party of the wealthy; if anything, McGovern seemed to embody elitism and aloofness. McGovern secured the Democratic nomination because anti-war voters saw him as a kindred spirit (and because McGovern tilted the party machinery in his favor).
Comparisons of Sanders to McGovern are misleading at best (and misleading voters may be the goal of certain so-called moderate pundits). They would be more accurate in comparing the candidacy of the so-called moderate candidates with that of Michael Dukakis (who gained the nomination but carried only his home state of Massachusetts in the general election. For most of the campaign, Dukakis claimed to be a moderate; finally, after Republican dog whistle propaganda like the racist Willie Horton ad, Dukakis referred to himself with the L-word. At that point, he had nothing to lose, but he still lost badly. Not enough people affiliated themselves with him, and plenty of folks saw him as on the other side.
It’s hard to say if any of the Democrats is creating enough kinship to win the general election against Trump, who has a fairly solid base of people who would never vote Democrat (even if they don’t see Trump as one of them).
If (instead of those idiotic match-up polls) we could create separate parallel universes — one for each Democratic hopeful as the party nominee against Trump — it might well be that each Demo would lose. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the candidate who came closest to winning was Sanders (with Warren as second close). If you believe in Sanders and vote for him (or Warren and vote for her), you might be supporting a losing candidate, as we did in 1972. But you won’t have to feel that you’ve sold out in order to play it safe.
