George McGovern strongly called for the redistribution of income -- and lost 49 states to 1.
He called for a guaranteed minimum income and ran as the candidate who wouldn't drag America into any more unnecessary wars.
He was a wonderful man who had the fervent support of million of young people.
And he got slaughtered in the general election by Richard Nixon.
And so when Bernie calls for redistribution of income, many of us here an echo of a another candidate we loved, but who didn't have a chance in the general.
ON UPDATE: Ten years later, Walter Mondale honestly stated that both he and his opponent, Ronald Reagan, would need to raise taxes -- but Mondale's tax increase would not go to the rich but to improving everyone's lives. Reagan pretended he wouldn't be raising taxes. Mondale lost by 49 states to 1.
ON UPDATE: More than half of our states have Republican governors and most of them rejected free Federal dollars for Medicaid expansion. So I don't buy the argument that the times today are much more friendly to a candidate who pushes for the redistribution of income. It isn't a coincidence that tea party super pacs spent millions on ads against Hillary in the last few months, in an effort to help Bernie win. They view him as a much easier opponent in the general.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1972/05/04/george-mcgovern-on-taxing-redistributing-income/
George McGovern: On Taxing & Redistributing Income
George McGovern and Wassily Leontief MAY 4, 1972 ISSUE
INTRODUCTION
George McGovern’s proposals for tax reform and redistribution of income, originally released in January and published here in slightly revised form, should be read and reread by every one of the more than one hundred million Americans who dropped in the mailbox last Saturday or Sunday, with mixed feelings of civic pride and desperation, their income tax returns for 1971. McGovern’s brief statement contains more hard common sense and practical wisdom than the tired platitudes and inconclusive technical disquisitions that fill the 300 pages of the President’s Economic Report, which was transmitted to the Congress a few days after Senator McGovern made his program public.
The distribution of income is clearly emerging as the issue that will dominate the American political scene in the closing quarter of this century. The share that each member of our society receives in the immense and still swelling stream of goods and services produced annually by the American economy not only largely determines the level of satisfaction of his daily needs but also provides means for attaining many, if not all, of his highest aspirations. But more than this, under our political institutions the income and the amount of wealth controlled by any one group, in relation to other groups, determines decisively the power it can wield in influencing, not to say in directing, all government activities.
Twenty-five percent of the total gross national income is controlled directly by the government, and a much larger proportion indirectly. It is not surprising that by exercising a decisive influence on government policy, particularly in the economic sphere, a small group of citizens controlling a disproportionately high share of the national income and a still greater share of the national wealth has been capable of defending its economic and political dominance against all assaults.
In view of the close interdependence among all the parts of the modern industrial economy, the distribution of income and of wealth naturally depends, to some extent, on every one of its social and economic institutions. However, the power of the government to levy taxes, to borrow and to print money, and to use this immense purchasing power in any way it sees fit has long been recognized as one of the most effective means of bringing about a distribution of income compatible with the prevailing standards of social justice—or as an equally effective means of thwarting attempts to do so.
SNIP
= new reply since forum marked as read
And it's absurd.
I'll vote my principles, like I always do 
Sounds idiotic, doesn't it?
Either get on board, or get out of the way. Your FUD has no effect on us. Fucking deal.
Last edited Wed Feb 10, 2016, 06:26 PM - Edit history (1)
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH 
Why do you have to lie? Can't you support your candidate with honesty?
If not, you have bigger problems that tax-hiking boogeymen! 
The sound on my TV must be going haywire.
Prior to Reagan, wealth redistribution did not exist.
Since then however, we've had massive redistribution to the top 1%.
So if we can do it that way for 35+ years, I don't see why we can't just reverse it in the other direction. We all just have to aggressively be pushing our congress-critters to go along with it.
No Thanks.
Last edited Wed Feb 10, 2016, 03:50 PM - Edit history (1)
Quite the opposite, there had already been over 30 years of economic structures that discouraged sucking everything skyward.
Middle-class income jobs were still common. Pensions plans hadn't been gutted in private industry, unions hadn't been busted. Banks were still effectively regulated.
The economic landscape is very different from what it was in 1972.
Thank you! 
The largest voting block in America. Gone. Poof.
Do you know why? Us Sanders supporters do.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/23/how-gay-marriage-became-a-major-issue-for-a-generation-uninterested-in-marriage/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/06/26/almost-millennials-support-same-sex-marriage/upgBZbZ9IvJXY0ZMOElgtN/story.html
Just sayin'.
...as you can tell, I am old enough to remember them. 
The ads used in that campaign look familiar to some of the talking points used today
I agree that Bernie's candidacy may very well be fraught with danger. But that is what happens when one takes a risk, which nobody who runs for an Oval Office would eschew.
It all comes down to a balance of risk vs. benefit. As you can imagine, I am not so risk adverse that my principles need to be discarded. Not even close.
I will support the Democratic nominee no matter.
My best wishes to you.
The country was strongly divided over the issues of war vs peace, and even more significantly race (coded as "law and order" . Feminism was still considered kinda racy and radical by a large segment of the population. The flow of information through society was almost completely top down, the exception being an educational system that savored free thought much more than today's implementation. Our infrastructure was still the envy of a world that had just finished digging itself out of the wreckage of WWII.
Unions were still strong and so working Americans were not yet completely at the mercy of an emerging corporatocracy. Discussion of climate change was limited to mostly physics departments of major college Universities and dystopian science fiction novels . (Yeah, back in the 70s we knew something about it, and we were way over optimistic about how long it would take to unfold.) The big economic concern of the middle class was the effect of imports, especially cars and steel, on the structure of the American economy. The big economic concern of the upper class was (as suggested by the title of a New York Times best seller) "Preserving Capital" as the economy adjusted to going off the gold standard (the Nixon Shock of 1971), which basically upended the Bretton Woods system of international exchange.
In some respects, the landscape hasn't changed much. We are again dealing with issues of war vs peace, and unresolved issues of race (still coded as "law and order" . But back then, the middle class was trying to hold on to something they had. Now they are trying to imagine having something like that again. Economically, the landscape is completely different. Culturally, the landscape is completely different. The principal flow of information is now from peer to peer. Unions have relatively little power, and the average American feels (rightly) completely exposed to the unrestricted power of corporate influences. Our infrastructure is widely perceived as crumbling, and those who travel abroad come back astonished at how primitive and backward our infrastructure has become in comparison to other nations, and that knowledge is leaking out into the masses who cannot afford to travel.
It is a different era. The problems we face today do not resemble the problems neoliberalism was formulated to address (e.g. stagflation). The question being asked out there is: Can the current system work for me at all? The questions of 1972 were "Can McGovern's approach to economics work? What could I lose in the process?" These are vastly different inquiries.
For these reasons, I think your comparison to McGovern is specious. I believe you attempt to convey a lesson from history by staying safely within the shallows.
Trav
