I will confess that my original comment was somewhere close to the style of the sarcastic rant that certain of my followers have come to expect of me in my writing, both here and in the comments sections of these blogs. However on a precious few occasions these commenters tend to respond with lucid, well thought out responses that have caused me to either apologize or express my own opinions more sincerely.
Mr. Burch didn’t quite go that far in his response to me but there was more discussion of policy and there’s clearly from for accord between the way the two of us think than the majority of the people I have engaged in ‘spirited debate’ with over the past few years. To that end and because Mr. Dilliard’s article is about the kind of path the Democratic Party should take in future elections I am going to attempt something I have yet to try in these sections. It may be bold, it may be stupid, it may very well be both. But I’m willing to try it anyway.
One of the arguments Mr. Burch made in his comments section was that a path forward for the Democratic Party was to emulate the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern for President. By coincidence in the past few weeks I have just posted two articles dealing with what I consider the failures of those both campaigns. I will post the links to these articles at the bottom of the section.
Now my readers know that I’m an amateur historian and have written extensively about this period from the perspective of many of the other names mentioned in Mr. Dillard’s article, including the campaigns for Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace. For the articles below I have done extensive research from multiple sources. These include The Making of the President for 1968 and 1972, Jules Witcover’s 87 Days, a 2004 biography of McCarthy and Walter Mondale’s autobiography The Good Fight. I have fact checked these articles with an editor and I believe the conclusions that I reach are supported by both contemporary and later writings and while I have a certain bias towards both men in these articles which is hard to miss, it is based exclusively on what I have read at the time. I will admit my articles, outside from both men’s positions on Vietnam, have little to do with the policies discussed by either man. My focus was on the electoral results of each campaign and the conclusion that not only I drew but that contemporaries did based on the most important facts of all – the electoral response by the public in both 1968 and 1972.
What I am offering to Mr. Burch is to put the ball in his court. I am inviting him to write, preferably in an article of his own, an argument in which he defends his position of following in the path of McCarthy and McGovern based on the conclusions that I came too. He is welcome to take as much time as he needs to do so, is free to use any sources that I might very well have missed at the time (there is far from a shortage of material on either campaign) and I am willing to hear his defense. I do so, I should say, with an open mind because I do care very much for the future of the Democratic Party and the country. Discussions are no doubt being held within the corridors of power as we speak and I would not be shocked if arguments like this were being made. Winning over the opposition is something that people like myself and him will have to make in the next months and years. And if Mr. Burch can make a convincing counter-argument to the ones I’ve made here, I am more than willing to be won over or at the very least, listen.
This is a genuine offer. I have my own theories as to how the Democratic Party can move forward in the years to come. I’ve made them before in my columns and I intend to, eventually, make them later this year. Mr. Burch has his own, I know, but for the purposes of this proposal he needs to limit his argument solely to the strengths of McGovern and McCarthy’s campaigns for President in the years prescribed and his belief why they did not resonate with the electorate at the time and why, therefore, both the public and the Democratic Party – not the same thing – should listen to them now. He may very well have a perspective on this that I don’t and if that is the case, I will listen and present my own objections and/or concurrences when he does so.
Similarly I extend this offer to anyone else who reads this in the comments section and has a position based on the argument I make in these columns. This is not merely a plug for my readership, although it certainly may end up doing so. I have always welcomed respectable, rational debate on all of these subjects and have been disappointed on how relatively little of that there has been. (I will confess I have frequently been a contributor to that noise and I can’t promise that will change any time in the future.) But maybe this is, to use that tortured phrase, a teachable moment. I’m going to assume the possibility for it and I hope others do as well.
https://davidbmorris.medium.com/did-the-26th-amendment-fail-part-3-3a84bada618a
https://davidbmorris.medium.com/did-the-26th-amendment-fail-part-2-f8a032a4f225
Ignore the titles: the links will explain the reasoning.