Someone stood up and made a pronounced judgement statement this morning....saying that the general problem in this upcoming election year....is that the Democrats have sent up a rather weak and marginal group as candidate possibilities.
I sat and thought about this for a while.
The last time that the primary system had a strong delivery of three potential candidates (roughly divided evenly around the 50 states)....was 1972 (Humphrey, Wallace, and McGovern). If you remember the outcome....while Humphrey arrived at the convention with slightly more votes, the convention ended up drifting over to McGovern. Most will say it was a terrible choice, and that Humphrey might have taken a minimum of twenty states in the national election....McGovern took one single state, and it was a dismal defeat for the party.
The 1976 primary season was mostly about Jimmy Carter, a marginal Jerry Brown from California, George Wallace, Henry Jackson and Mo Udall. Carter had no trouble in winning that primary period.
The 1980 primary? Carter found himself in deep competition against Ted Kennedy. Had Ted done better on Super Tuesday, this would have been a curtain-call for Carter, and the convention would have been a more interesting situation.
The 1984 primary? It was for Gary Hart to lose (which he did). The competition was Jessie Jackson and Walter Mondale (who won in the end).
The 1988 primary? A list of nobodies: Jackson again, Simon (who no one really knew), a young Al Gore, and a governor out of Massachusetts (Dukakis) who couldn't connect to southern voters.
The 1992 primary? Paul Tsongas (who no one really remembers), Bill Clinton, and Jerry Brown once again.
The 2000 primary? It was a fairly weak primary season....Bill Bradley and Al Gore.
Since 2000, you can skip that talk. Even in 2016, people do remember Hillary and Bernie, but beyond that....the other two guys names are mostly forgotten.
The chief purpose of a primary period is to stir people up and get them dedicated to voting in November. If they aren't stirred up.....then a low-turnout will occur. Presently? I would suggest that at least one Democratic voter out of each three....isn't that thrilled and probably laughs over the bitter marginalized fighting among the dozen-odd candidates left at this point. The debates? They didn't really help.
As for the convention? It really needs to have some type of crazy action coming out of it....if they hope to get 65-million people to show up in November. Course, maybe they are hoping that three-million dead folks show up and make up for the lack of enthusiasm.
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