The extent of the populism and independence of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern is questionable. They were mavericks to a degree throughout their careers, but they were also, for the most part, in the mainstream FDR tradition. McCarthy was a longtime ally of Hubert Humphrey and a friend and supporter of Lyndon Johnson for most of the '60s. He opposed the Vietnam War relatively late. McGovern was a Kennedy Democrat, not an agrarian populist or left-wing radical. In some ways, their 1968 and 1972 campaigns represented co-optation of the Jeffersonian-oriented New Left and Counterculture movements. Advocates of black power, women's liberation, and peace were channeled into electoral politics and made use of by professional politicians. The early support of McGovern '72 by such stalwarts of the Vital Center as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith suggest that the campaign was not as radical as it appeared from a distance. Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 campaigns followed this same pattern. Still, the themes expressed by these efforts were enough to draw disfavor from the powers-that-be. Party leaders crushed the populist-sounding insurrections and formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and the Democratic Leadership Council to keep the McCarthy-McGovern-Jackson wing of the party in its placeone of virtual powerlessness.
Interesting that this guy has not given up on the party, even having written a book critiquing its problems, including the above. The whole article leads to the conclusion that we need an alternative but he just can't quite go there himself. L
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