2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: George McGovern strongly called for the redistribution of income -- and lost 49 states to 1. [View all]99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Even the Republicans are pissed-off about Wall St. & income inequality ...
and now there is a huge pool of Independents for Sanders to draw upon,
having been an Independent for most of his political life.
In 1972 the Left was fractured & bewildered by the loss of JFK, MLK Jr.
and RFK, and Hippiedom was unraveling at the seams. But now a new
qnd vibrant progressive wave is on its ascendency and the sky is wide
open, demanding major change.
In 1972 white middle & blue-collor working class people were doing fine
economically, and were still stuck in a reactionary anti-change mentality,
and a dense cloud of Cold War anti-communism hung over the nation.
Today an avowed Democratic Socialist is capturing the imagination of
a beleaguered working class that has been ravaged by NAFTA, ripped
off by Wall St. and sold down the river by a co-opted and corrupted
Democratic party establishment .. and they KNOW it.
This is not 1972. It's 2016. These are very different times, with a whole
new inter-generational wave of very aware and very bright young voters,
middle class workers, and old timers who are all instinctively drawn to
any politician courageous enough to simply tell them the damned truth
for a change, come hell or high water.
Lastly, if we are wise enough to learn from our history, we need not repeat
it.