George McGovern, Walter Mondale or Hillary Clinton?

[rbroome]

@Reddy_Mercury

Of the three, which was the worst candidate?
I’d have to say, as a Democrat, Hillary. Such a weak candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. Nixon may have been “Nixon” but at least he was more intelligent and classy than Trump. Reagan was much more stylish and a better speaker than Trump could ever be. The fact that Hillary could lose to Trump to me makes her the biggest failure in modern American presidential politics, and I wish she’d just retire. I keep seeing her pop up in the news saying crap and she seems to be unaware of just how she failed and let millions of people down.

Huh?
Hillary won the popular vote and lost the election by losing a series of close races in battleground states.

Mondale lost every state but his own. His total was 49 to 1. And he came pretty close to losing that one.

I have participated and voted in all these races. Mondale is by far the worst candidate. No one during the race thought he stood a chance. Democrats at least thought that McGovern and Clinton could win.

[Shodan]

@astorian

Again, while George McGovern and Barry Goldwater got skunked in their elections, and definitely “lost the battle,” both men won the war. Each man transformed his party.

Thus, there’s a bright side to McGovern’s loss that I can’t see in Mondale’s or Hillary’s.

It does not seem to me that McGovern won the war - Nixon lost it for him. McGovern lost, and then Carter managed to squeak out a win over Ford because Ford pardoned Nixon and said something stupid about Poland. Four years later, he lost to Reagan, who did indeed represent a transformed party. It wasn’t until twelve years later that the Dems nominated another Southern cracker with a big grin and as much political savvy as Carter had naïve incompetence, and even so the GOP took over Congress two years later.

I guess it remains to be seen if the Hillary loss is going to transform the Democratic party in any significant way. Granted that the Clinton headlock on the Dems because of Bill’s genius at fund-raising and his resume is gone, but I don’t see any widespread change in the party - so far, they are just playing scandal-of-the-week against Trump and losing special elections.

I don’t know how the Dems will transform themselves. In 2018, will they try to gain seats in Congress with the same “a vote for a Republican is a vote for Trump”? That may not pay off - it hasn’t in three out of three special elections so far, and they have a lot more seats open in the Senate than the GOP. And their chances in the House are not particularly good either. Are they going to transform into the party of Bernie Sanders? I know Sanders is rather popular on the SDMB. Among the general electorate? That’s taping a great big “Kick Me Hard” to your crotch before every campaign stop.

Will they run against Trump in 2020 the same way they did in 2016 - pick the obvious insider and hope the “come on - you owe us this election” line goes over better? Remember the definition of insanity.

Regards,
Shodan

[Siam_Sam]

@rbroome

Huh?
Hillary won the popular vote and lost the election by losing a series of close races in battleground states.

Mondale lost every state but his own. His total was 49 to 1. And he came pretty close to losing that one.
Hil
I have participated and voted in all these races. Mondale is by far the worst candidate. No one during the race thought he stood a chance. Democrats at least thought that McGovern and Clinton could win.

Yes. Mondale is a decent person, but it’s hard to believe anyone would think he was a better candidate than Hillary. I think they’re just too young, those believers.

[Reddy_Mercury]

@Thing_Fish

I don’t personally remember the McGovern campaign, but his basic problem was that there was a political realignment in process. The civil rights movement had emerged, and Northern liberals were no longer willing to collaborate with Southern racists, so the Democratic coalition that had existed for the previous few generations was no longer tenable. It might have been possible to nominate some Humphrey figure to hold the party together for another election cycle or two, but the split was coming, and it was going to leave the Democrats as a minority party for a few cycles. And Humphrey couldn’t beat Nixon when Nixon wasn’t an incumbent, so I doubt that stratstrategy would have worked even in the short term.

So I can’t comment on McGovern’s personal political skills, but I think his loss can be attributed to structural factors beyond his control, and I don’t think the Democrats had a potentially electable candidate available to them, so I won’t call McGovern a poor choice.

I think Clinton was the worst choice, in that she blew a very winnable election. I’ve argued at length that Sanders would have beaten Trump like a drum, but I also think that O’malley or pretty much any generic Den would have done so.

Hard to say about Mondale…Reagan was very popular going into the election, so he had an uphill battle. Again, like 1972 and unlike 2016, it’s not clear to me that the Dems had a clearly superior alternative available.

McGovern’s problem was he was waaay too liberal for 1972, and for Democratic Party standards in 1972. His nomination alienated blue collar socially conservative (not necessarily racist - just people opposed to things like Pot) voters and alienated traditionally Democratic allies like the Teamsters and other unions. George Meany came out and pledged his support publicly for Nixon in 1972. Running McGovern in '72 was basically like running Goldwater in '64. Too soon

[Reddy_Mercury]

@Siam_Sam

Yes. Mondale is a decent person, but it’s hard to believe anyone would think he was a better candidate than Hillary. I think they’re just too young, those believers.

Mondale was running against Ronald Reagan, one of the most charismatic and well-liked Presidents EVER, who had an arguably successful first term under his belt. The economy was out of recession and starting to boom again, and Reagan got all the credit for it. I don’t think anyone could have defeated Reagan in 1984. Hillary was facing Donald Trump, a guy who had no political experience or allies, and was basically a fringe conspiracy nut who would’ve been squashed by anyone not named Hillary, and anyone who didn’t take the rural working class vote for granted. That’s why she’s a worse candidate. Losing to Ronald Reagan is much different than losing to Donald Trump.

[rbroome]

I have participated in all three elections.
For the OP, it is Mondale by a landslide.
Yes, Reagan would have beaten almost anyone.
But to have a candidate lose 49 of the 50 states, and only hang on to his own home state by less than 4000 votes, describes a candidate that was spectacularly unqualified to run. I remember the election. Weeks before voting day, the only discussion left was whether Reagan would win all 50 states or just the vast majority.

It wasn’t just that Reagan was very popular, it was that Mondale was seen as completely outclassed and unable to do the job. Even by committed Democrats.