Beet
Atlas Star
Posts: 29,062
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« on: June 08, 2004, 08:36:11 PM » |
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« edited: June 08, 2004, 08:39:47 PM by Senator Beet »
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Why did McGovern lose so badly... I think the reason is that his platform was: Withdraw from Vietnam. And guess what Nixon did... withdrew from Vietnam!! Thereby robbing voters of any reason to vote for McGovern. If 100 U.S. troops were dying per week in Southeast Asia in October '72, McGovern would have done far, far, better, maybe even have won. But the fact is, a peace accord that most thought was serious was signed that year and most people genuinely believed the war was over.
College campuses began to die down as students did not have as much to protest about. Nixon may not have given them what they wanted as fast as they would have liked, but he did do so in the end. Voters naturally saw the end of the turbulence of the late '60s as a good sign.
As peripheral to this, Nixon did run as a liberal Republican, a now extinct breed of creature. This was back before the L-word became dirty. In the summer of 1971 he imposed wage and price controls, something unthinkable now, soon after his famous Clintonesque declaration of his Keynesian principles. It seemed to work: inflation fell in 1971-72 for the first time in years, and the economy boomed. The poverty and unemployment rates were to reach lows in 1972 that would not been seen again for over a generation.
He also had landmark summits with China and the Soviet Union that year, which marked a major realignment splitting the communist powers and paving the way for detente. People were thrilled at a new ally China to be used against the USSR.
So in sum the percieved end of the Vietnam war deprived McGovern of his message (btw, does Kerry have a message other than that we are losing jobs...in this he is very similiar to McGovern), and peripherally to this
Nixon was a moderate (left-wing liberal by today's standards)
Campuses calmed down
Wage and price controls seemed to work
The economy was booming (record high for the Dow)
Poverty, unemployment wealth inequality were at historic lows
Opening up of China and Cold War detente
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