I have so much admiration for Judis (who I consider something like a mentor) that I hesitate to disagree with him too easily. But I think Ed and Chait really have the better part of this argument. The key point is that you cannot extrapolate voting patterns from a party primary to the general. Suggestive, yes. But the direct arguments just don't hold up, as I tried to make clear in today's episode. The issue terrain is different, the partisan terrain leans heavily to the Democrats. And if things are really quite this bad for Obama, why is he still running even or ahead of McCain nationwide. Like Ed, this isn't to ignore some serious challenges. But the McGovern analogy really strikes me as a caricature.

One other point, it was John and Ruy's book, the Rising Democratic Majority that made this point, that the McGovern coalition, with the demographic changes that have occurred over the last 35 years, is much much bigger.

Poll numbers have a way of cutting through theories and casual impressions. Both Democratic candidates are roughly tied with McCain. Until I see that significantly change I will view claims that Obama has imploded with some skepticism.

I'm not sure what you mean Otto, Obama's base is as strong now as it has ever been. He took over 90% of the PA black vote, and he won every group under the age of 40 (is that correct or was it 35?) He won amongst highly educated voters as well.

Just because the last primary was in a state chock full of poor, aging, blue collar Democrats (Hillary's base, which are demographics that have been shrinking). Doesn't in any way suggest his "facade" is crumbling. It means his traditional base in this primary was smaller than it has been in other states.

But still, the areas where he struggled were those with lower incomes, shaky economies, the areas hardest hit by job losses. Obama can learn from this - he needs to strengthen his message on the economy. He needs to be able to speak to the demographic that worries about food on the table and paying the mortgage. He tried hard to do that during the last few weeks of campaigning in PA, but he didn't quite make the dent that he should have. He's going to have to do better for the GE.

Excellent analysis. If I may, I would add these other points:

1. McGovern was a remarkably ineffective speaker. People supported him because it was the right thing to do, but it was tough to listen to him even briefly. McGovern's heart was in the right place, but his communications skills were far below average. The contrast with Obama is total.

2. McGovern was rallying people around an extremely important cause, stopping the Vietnam war, but, unfortunately, was unable to broaden the discussion. People backed McGovern because of the one issue - stopping the war. Though McGovern would have favored it, he was not trying to build a broad, lasting coalition to change the basic alignment of American politics. That was probably impossible in that period. Had it been possible, McGovern would not have been the right person for the job.

3. In personal appeal and political vision, Obama is more like Franklin Roosevelt than any other president. Obama wants to build a broad new coalition to create an effective working majority and break the partisan deadlock. He conveys the sense that he would try to enact a progressive agenda without enforcing a strict ideology or trying to make 40% of the population feel excluded and abused. Obama has a long way to go to match FDR, of course, but he's already in a different league from McGovern.

Ironically, Obama may have no choice but to build a totally new coalition within the Democratic Party. Sen. Clinton's divisive campaign has set blue-collar workers, low income rural Democrats and feminists against African Americans, more highly educated and affluent Democrats, and Democratic activists in Moveon.org etc. She even seems to be trying to accentuate divisions between Jews and African Americans in order to gain short-term political advantage - that seems to be behind the talk of Farrakhan and the joys of nuking Iran when Obama might try to combat antisemitism, rather than just shunning antisemites, and might even dare to open diplomatic channels with Iran. In short, Hillary has been hard at work demolishing the remnants of the coalition FDR built.

If Hillary fails to destroy Obama and compel the party to nominate her even though she lost the election, Obama will have a challenge just reconstituting the Democratic Party as it was pre-Hillary.

It's those people BEHIND Obama I have question of. The Chicago grass roots machine that is thrusting him forward was not constructed by Obama, but by those pushing him as the front man I fear.

Personally, I think the Mcgovern analogy is one more reason that Obama shouldn't nominate Hillary as his running mate:

Remember amnesty, abortion, and acid? Well Robert Novak revealed, after the election of course, that the comment came from Tom Eagleton, the shock therapy running mate Mr. Kilgore talks about. As I understand it, Mcgovern gave the VP nod to Eagleton in hopes of bridging a part chasm that was developing. And Eagleton ended up stabbing him in the back both directly and indirectly.

My own personal looking glass tells me that if Obama loses to McCain, the Clintons will be blamed, while the reality will be simply that he lost.

If Clinton takes the nomination, she will do to McCain what she's trying to do in the primary, which is to win at all costs.

I'm hoping that whoever ends up taking on McCain will try to win at all costs, because I'm thinking that we need (pardon the expression) change.

To attempt to draw inferences of a current election from historical elections is a fool's errand, just as is framing a current candidate in terms of historical candidates, whether successful or not.

After all the electorate and the objective social conditions constantly change, and the qualities of candidates differ.

If I may add, I think the mistake that the Clinton campaign has made is run a campaign that was designed in the mid-1980s in the wake of the Reagan revolution. It is a design that failed Gore and Kerry. Though Bill Clinton ran according to the same design, he victories, I think, were due more to the force of his personality than to his strategy. He had the ability to connective with folks on a very personal level, a quality not shared by Senator Clinton.

Critical Elections and the McGovern/Obama Hypothesis

Not to get pedantic, but one crucial missing factor for this discussion is the concept of critical elections - sharp changes in pre-existing voting patterns that persist over several election cycles. Kevin Phillips has written extensively about this concept. He describes them as electoral revolutions that "hose down the corridors of power both inside and outside of government."

In the Modern era we see two of these occurring: 1932 with the New Deal Coalition (Blacks, workers, farmers and former socialists, former Progressives) prevailing over the Industrial Republican Coalition that had held sway for several decades, and 1968, with the emergence of the voting coalition that has dominated politics for the last 4 decades.

The New Deal Coalition persisted until 1968, when Wallace's candidacy signaled its demise by splitting away southern whites over the issue of Civil Rights, The fractures continued as Democrats lost white blue collar workers and rural voters over, not just civil rights and multiculturalism, but also an anti-war posture and pro regulatory environmental advocacy.

The result was the Law and Order Coalition which solidified is control over political culture during the Reagan/Bush Years. Carter was an outlier due to Watergate, Clinton was an outlier due to Perot's candidacy. Carter was no match for the Coalition in terms of actual policy changes and the Clinton Presidency was based on triangulating with the coalition, much talk - little action.

Looking at McGovern from this perspective sees him as the epitome of a New Dealer at a time when the nation was rejecting the model of the activist, liberal state and rejecting the Democrats' multicultural, anti-war and pro-environment agenda.

The situation could not be more different at present, as Kevin Phillips has consistently been pointing out in his recent books. The Law and Order/privatize everything/help out the big guy coalition has run its course. It has lost touch with the average voter and is clueless as to how to address the current convergence of economic, environmental, social and international crises.

If Obama is elected we will not be able to say if it is a critical election for several years, but it is also clear that he is the only candidate who could conceivably be the one who manages to change voting coalitions and take the nation in a new direction.

I wonder if she's winning Reagan Democrats who would vote Republican in the fall anyway, or vote for Democrats only in this election due to the mess the Republicans have made. I don't know. I know the DLC wants to bring the Reagan Democrats back, but I'm not very comfortable with these Democrats. So in that sense, it is similar to 1972, but not because of McGovern but because of a very long and continuing divide within the Democratic Party. I don't know how you get the Reagan Democrats back and keep me.

At the risk of being redundant, I think Judis is a terrific writer, reporter and analyst who's just wrong in this particular instance. Of course, the Republicans will do their level best to "McGovernize" Obama but I don't think they'll succeed unless he fails to preempt and respond appropriately. It's a different world, he's a much better candidate than McGovern, and the political landscape is much more favorable to any progressive. It is true that his winning coalition will look substantially different from what we've seen in recent presidential elections, but between new voters, younger voters, independents and disaffected Republicans, I think he can add more than he loses. I also think a substantial number of white blue collar Dems who voted for Hillary in the primary will ultimately recognize that Obama will fight for their interests and that McCain will continue the policies of an incumbent they despise.

Sure appreciate getting your thoughts on this, Ed, because the analogy has certainly been bouncing around this once-upon-a-time Gene teen boomer's head lately as I read various reports. Thanks for the input.

By the way, on the Clinton 92 model, and "its the economy dejas allover again stupid" I thought something I just read was interesting and might interest you and like minds, as it includes quotes from Obama-supporter Robert Reich, as well as Larry Summers and Robert Shapiro:
Econobamanomic Theory
By John Heilemann
from New York Magazine April 28 issue.
(Sure would like to know the identity of the "preeminent Democratic economist" who told Heilemann that “It won’t make a flying fuck of a difference to U.S. workers if there are labor standards in these trade agreements or not”)

I love a good historical analogy as much as anybody--what Reagan did to Ford in 1976 has been much on my mind of late, because I fear it is much on the minds of Hillary and her immediate circle--but I am kind of feeling the need to state the obvious. This is not 1968 or 1972 or 1976, nor is it any of the election year that followed in the next two decades.

The demographics of this country have fundementally changed. Whites are now the largest minority in a nation of minorities and the Reagan Revolution has collapsed under the weight of a moral and intellectual bankruptcy what was beginning to show by the end of W's first term. Even among our seniors, the differences between the life experiences of a 60 year old and a 70 year old are profound.

History is a tricky thing. Know too little, and you're an ignorant fool making ignorant mistakes like starting new wars before the old ones are done and getting into land wars in Asia. Learn too much and you can become its prisoner, parylized into indicision or folly by perceived perils that are the product of false analogy or, worse still, perpetually clinging to ancient grievances that are the proper province of the dead.

And the most dangerous history of all is that which has occurred in our lifetimes. We are genetically programmed to see patterns and make connections between the datapoints created by our own experiences, but we should never forget that it is that same programming that causes us construct a face out of a random arrangment of craters and lava flows on the moon.

Hubert Humphrey "threw the kitchen sink" at McGovern during the California primary contest in 1972. He accused McGovern of weakening U.S. defenses in general, of leaving Israel defenseless against the Soviets and their Arab friends, and of proposing left-wing programs on social issues. He rallied machine Dems, was backed mainly by senior citizens and old-guard labor leaders, and forced McGovern, way ahead in delegates, to go all the way to the convention to obtain the nomination. Although McGovern prevailed, he and his staff were exhausted at the convention and made their most famous and fatal errors there.

There is no Nixon in this equation.

To paraphrase Carville. Judis is acting like Gov. Bill Richardson.

Aidan:

I was careful to stick to the facts about Eagleton, other than the implicit criticism of McGovern for picking him without vetting, then backing him, then dumping him.

Yes, Eagleton was a "weak" Veep nominee, if not because of his mental health issues, then because of his drinking problem, and because he lied to McGovern about all of it.

I tend to agree with the point of view that McGovern would have been better advised to stick with Eagleton and use his candidacy to educate people about mental illness (which might have met a more amenable public than was understood at the time). But ask yourself this, Aidan: with all the advances over the last thirty-six years on public understanding of mental illness, do you really think there's any chance a contemporary presidential candidate would knowingly choose a running-mate with Eagleton's profile today, particularly given Eagleton's slim positive credientials? No, of course not. Maybe that's a negative reflection of where we are as a country with respect to mental illness, but it's no particular reason for condemning George McGovern.

Ed Kilgore

Watch Clinton's Penn victory speech. She lambasts an Iraq occupation that she voted for and the No Child Left Behind bill that she voted for.

To be a Clinton supporter is to live in a no-accountability world as a mirror image of GOP voters.

This is a small point in terms of your post but one I am compelled to make.

You wrote:

"Nor is he likely to choose as his running-mate an unvetted politician who turns out to have a string of drunk-driving citations, or has repeatedly undergone electro-shock therapy."

Your characterization of the late Sen. Tom Eagleton as an "unvetted politician" is simply untrue and incredibly unfair. As someone who had the great honor of knowing Senator Eagleton personally and being quite familiar with the details of what was known or not about him when he was selected as the Vice Presidential nominee in 1972 I feel compelled to say that you just don't have it right.

By 1972 Senator Eagleton had been elected statewide in Missouri as Attorney General (1960), Lt. Governor (1964) and then United States Senator Senator since 1968 having defeated an entrenched incumbent in a primary as the liberal anti-war candidate. Prior to his election on the state level he was elected Prosecuting Attorney in the City of St. Louis in 1956. At the time St. Louis was the largest city in the state and one of the 20 largest in the country. Winning statewide as a liberal, Catholic urban Democrat in a rural dominated, Jim Crow, largely protestant state was no mean feat in and of itself in 1960.

His personal difficulties were known but not widely publicized, there was no effort to cover them up or deny them and those circumstances hadn't prevented him from achieving the stunning electoral successes he had achieved. Neither did they prevent him from being re-elected handily more than once afterward.

That the national press and public would react as ignorantly as they did in 1972 with respect to his having been treated for depression is what it is, but it is hardly a result of the Senator being an "unvetted politician". The issue of his driving record (including no arrests) was hardly on the radar screen with respect to the controversey over his place on the national ticket and frankly, was nothing all that out of the ordinary in that period of our history for either politicians or private citizens.

And lastly, you wrote:

"particularly given Eagleton's slim positive credentials?"

Tom Eagleton was one of the most eloquent and charismatic public figures in the Democratic party at that time (and I would add it was a time populated with far more gifted speakers than our present time and thus, that he stood out on that score is all the more impressive). His passionate oratory was well known and well recognized. He was a courageous and articulate spokesman for the liberal Democratic agenda. He was a fearless and unapologetic opponent of the war in Viet Nam in a state that the common wisdom would have predicted would never support an anti-war candidate. He was one of the most influential doves in the Senate. He was a candidate that connected with average, blue collar voters and had a very strong track record as a vote getter with that constituency. I don't know what your basis is for saying he had "slim positive credentials" but it couldn't be based on knowledge of Tom Eagleton or his career.

After 1972 he was one of the leading figures of opposition to Nixon and the war in the Senate. He was a central figure in passage of the War Powers Act and on other measures designed to curtail Nixon's ability to continue the war in Viet Nam and to keep future Presidents from abusing their powers to wage war. It was Tom Eagleton's amendment that finally cut off funding for the war in Viet Nam and put an end to the killing there.

Our nation would be far better off if we had more "unvetted politicians" with "slim positive credentials" like Tom Eagleton in office today.

To Ed Kilgore,

Ed, I meant to add one last point to the theme of fratricidal warfare within the Democratic Party: in both 1972 and 2008, a party establishment used to governing resented upstarts who beat them at the grassroots. The irony: among the upstarts in 1972 were Bill and Hillary, who worked for McGovern's Texas campaign.

Don,

Actually, the press did a poor job in 1972--see the classic book by Timothy Crouse, Boys on the Bus. Robert Novak (yes, the same one) and his partner Rowland Evans were the first to propagate the image of McGovern as radical. Reporters covering the McGovern campaign went from dismissal in the early primaries to praise when McGovern won the later primaries to disdain after the Democratic convention, successively portraying him as bumbler and opportunist (the Eagleton affair), moral prig (for condemning Nixon's immorality), and then hapless loser. Meanwhile, Nixon was inaccessible to the press during the campaign, and they never laid a glove on him.

I resent the snarks at we boomers. Many of us have been trying to fight the good fight against the establishment for 35 years to no avail. Case in point:

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-hedge-on-healthcare-2008-04-23.html

Even BEFORE the election, the establishment Dems are telegraphing that they will sell us out on healthcare "reform". Heck, and we're not even talking universal health care here.

How can anyone take this party seriously? It ought to be renamed the preemptive surrender party.

It is cute though how they are so willing to announce that the campaign is one big lie months before the election. If I were a Republican, I'd run with this great quote from Rockefeller:

“We all know there is not enough money to do all this stuff,”