Word: mcgoverns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Anomaly. The question of a mandate will persist. Will the election of 1972 be remembered as an extravagant anomaly, an essentially reluctant landslide? McGovern, who had profoundly misread the temper of the American people, seized what is still the majority party and drove millions of Democrats, many of them unwillingly, to Nixon. But many are uneasy there as well, and it is not likely that they will find a permanent home there. Thus Nixon's mandate is indeed major, but, like all democratic mandates, conditional. He has temporarily taken the center away from the Democrats, and it remains...
...fragmentation of the coalition was assured by the nomination of George McGovern. The resulting disaster was clearly foreseen by Kevin Phillips, author of The Emerging Republican Majority, who believes that the nomination "locked" the Democratic Party into the "new left side." In a remarkably prescient assessment, he wrote that "the Democratic Party is going to pay heavily for having become the party of affluent professionals, knowledgeable industry executives, social-cause activists and minorities of various sexual, racial, chronological and other hues." Indeed, the convention that nominated McGovern in Miami Beach may itself have impressed that change on the voters...
While speakers in Miami repeatedly stressed that the Democratic Convention, because of the "McGovern rules," was the first that was truly representative of Democratic voters, much of the public got another impression. The party seemed to be largely composed of antiwar radicals, militant women, blacks and eccentric youths. For the first time in 40 years, white Southerners, ethnics, many Jews and older voters could not identify with the Democratic Party leadership...
...assess the impact of McGovern's candidacy on traditionally Democratic voting blocs, TIME correspondents across the nation kept a close watch on carefully selected representative precincts on Election Night. The precinct voting percentages (compared with 1968 figures) and interviews with voters clearly point to the magnitude of the damage done to the Democratic coalition...
After giving Humphrey a substantial margin in 1968, many of the ethnics rejected McGovern this year. Angered by his support of legalized abortion, his attitude toward drugs, his proposed "surrender" to Communist North Viet Nam and amnesty for draft dodgers, these lower-and middle-class Catholic voters deserted the Democratic national ticket in record numbers, contributing significantly to Nixon's margins in the industrial Northern states. The ethnic exodus from...