1968, 1972, 1994, 2000, 2002

People are still raising the specter of “Dean as McGovern.” (Actually “raising” is not an accurate term anymore. Every Dean supporter has heard this one too many times to count, for over half a year. “Waving around the specter with cries of ‘DOOM! DOOM!’ ” is a little wordy though.)

Here’s my main problem with these comparisons. It’s not that they’re inaccurate or unoriginal (though they are both those things.) It’s this: 1972 was not the worst year for the Democratic party in the last half century, and the belief that it was is a symptom of something seriously wrong with our party.

Yes, it was a landslide. But Democrats still controlled both houses of Congress. And of course, a year and a half after his second term began, Nixon resigned, and “don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts” bumper stickers became very popular. In my list of “lousy years for the Democratic Party”, 1972 is no higher than fifth.

These are my top four, in descending order:

4. 1994. Gingrich and friends gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. The loss of the House, in particular, is a huge blow, as redistricting & political polarization narrow the number of competitive races to a handful every year. The House rules give the majority party much more control over legislation than in the Senate, even if their margin is narrow, and the Republican House leaders are extremists. Even if we manage to re-take the presidency this year, if we don’t pull off a miraculous upset in the House Tom DeLay will prevent us from undoing most of the damage Bush has done to environmental laws, the federal budget, etc.

3. 2000. This one was, to a large degree, sheer bad luck. Gore ran a lousy campaign, and had a lousy strategy in the Florida aftermath. But Murphy’s Law applied to the Gore campaign to an astonishing degree in 2000: winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college. Losing the key state by the tiniest of margins possible, so that how votes were counted determined the result. The accidental votes for Pat Buchanan in liberal, Jewish Palm Beach County, which were several times Bush’s margin of victory. The errors on the voter scrub list. etc., etc. As a result of all these twists, with huge assists from Ralph Nader, Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court, Bush wins. So it is Bush who is in office on September 11, and Bush whom the country rallies around in its aftermath. This changes the political situation in a huge and lasting way, and the GOP is not shy about exploiting it.

2. 2002. With September 11 only a little over one year old, and a new war looming, the Democratic party leadership agrees on this national security argument:
(silence)
(nervous cough)
“Hey, look over there!”
The party leaders alienate much of their base by voting for the Iraq resolution–and there is a strong impression that many of them let their fear of Karl Rove determine their vote on matters of war and peace. There is only one senator up for re-election who votes against the resolution, and he dies in a plane crash a few weeks later. The Democrats also let the Homeland Security Department–their idea, if not necessarily a great one–become Bush’s main means of attacking them. End result: Republican gains in the House, control of the Senate. The G.O.P. now controls both Houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the majority of state governorships. There is a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. This has not happened since the New Deal (it may not have happened this century), although the G.O.P. is further right than it has been since the New Deal. The Democrats do have enough seats to filibuster bills in the Senate, but conservative Democrats consistently vote with the Republicans on almost every key bill.

1. 1968. There is a book about the 1968 election called “The Year the Dream Died.” The Vietnam War is killing thousands of kids, and bitterly dividing the Democratic party. Martin Luther King is assasinated, and inner cities around the country burn. Bobby Kennedy–maybe the only Democrat who could have united the party and even, at least in liberals’ fonder dreams, the country–is assassinated. The Democratic convention ends in bloodshed. Many, many Democrats (including my parents, who still regret it) stay home. Nixon beats Humphrey by a very narrow margin. The Democratic party–so successful in 1964 that people publicly wondered if conservatism was a dead ideology–has never fully recovered.

(1984 was probably worse than 1972 too, but I don’t think it was a crucial election in the same way.) You may disagree with my order, or some of my choices. But I don’t think you can make a good case that 1972 was the worst year for the Democratic party. And I think the widespread belief in Washington that “McGovern” is the worst name you can call a candidate is one more example of the profound error the Democratic leadership has made–the reason we’ve become a minority party, and the reason this short, snippy, formerly unknown governor from Vermont may win the presidential nomination. It’s so profound an error that I’m going to put it in bold type:

They think the goal of the party, and the measure of its success, is to get Democrats in office and keep them there as long as possible. (Ironically, they’ve been pretty awful at this too.) But the goal of the party, and measure of its success, should be getting Democratic policies enacted.