Richard Nixon was enjoying considerable popularity in 1972 with the economy still going strong despite some worrying signs of inflation and detente with the USSR and China. He brushed aside two minor challenges from California's Pete McCloskey, a liberal Republican who thought he was not antiwar enough, and Ohio's John Ashbrook, a conservative who accused Nixon of appeasement of the two communist giants.Although Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy was a favorite Democrat pick, he declined to run. After that, Maine Senator Edmund Muskie was favored, but he was done in by a forged letter by Nixon's campaign which had disparaging comments about French-Canadians, an important voting bloc in his backyard. The paper also accused Muskie's wife Jane of loose morals. He broke down and cried at a press conference and his standing was badly damaged as a result.South Dakota Senator George McGovern meanwhile had been plotting his presidential campaign for two years. After he won the Massachusetts primary in April, an unnamed Democrat Senator, later revealed to be Thomas Eagleton, was quoted as calling McGovern "the candidate of acid, amnesty, and abortion. If they (Catholics and blue collar workers) find out what he stands for, Catholic America, particularly Catholic middle America, he's dead."Alabama governor George Wallace made another go for president but his campaign was effectively ended when he was shot in Laurel, Maryland on May 15 by a 24 year old man named Arthur Bremer. Wallace was left paralyzed from the waist down. Bremer claimed he had no interest in politics and shot him merely to get his name in the headlines, and that he would have shot Nixon if he'd gotten the opportunity. He was tried, convicted, and incarcerated in the Maryland Correctional Institute in Hagerstown until being paroled in 2007.
McGovern had spearheaded efforts to reform the primary system after Eugene McCarthy was denied the Democrat nomination in 1968 despite his having won most of the primaries. He alienated many fellow Democrats who refused to support his campaign. At the DNC in Miami Beach July 10-13, McGovern was nominated along with Thomas Eagleton as his running mate. But it came out not long afterward that Eagleton had undergone psychiatric treatment for clinical depression, including electroshock therapy, and he was forced to drop out. He was replaced on the ticket by Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver.The Democrat Convention saw the party's traditional bases such as organized labor and Catholics thrown overboard and the floor completely handed to the youth and New Left crowd. Instead of traditional delegates representing states, they were divided into groups such as women voters, black voters, LGBT voters, and so forth. The delegates made such demands as the immediate end of the Vietnam conflict, the legalization of all recreational drugs, and the abolition of age of consent laws.McGovern campaigned on ending the Vietnam War and instituting a guaranteed basic income. As he was already alienated from most of his own party, the Nixon campaign seized on the chance to depict him as a dangerous left wing fanatic. Nixon himself limited his active campaigning to a few large rallies and speeches, with the grunt work left to subordinates. He led McGovern by large margins throughout the campaign, helped along by the defection of large swathes of "normal" Democrat voters to the Nixon camp.
Nixon won reelection on November 7 in an overwhelming 49 state landslide with 60% of the popular vote. McGovern won nothing except Massachusetts and on the whole carried only 138 counties in the entire country. He had maintained the hope that the youth vote would carry him, but even that was unrealized as most voters under 25 cast their ballots for Nixon due to his ending of military conscription and passage of the 24th Amendment, which lowered the national voting age to 18. One rogue Virginia elector cast his vote for Libertarian Party candidate John Hospers. Overall McGovern performed best in his backyard in the Upper Midwest and on the West Coast while performing worst in the Rocky Mountain states and the South, where Nixon carried many counties by 70% or more of the vote. The president carried all major demographics aside from nonwhite voters.Yet all the gloating over Nixon's record electoral landslide obscured the fact that it did not translate into downballot gains for the Republican Party. Democrats remained comfortably in control of Congress and gained two governorships, making Nixon effectively a head without a body and Republican leaders grumbling.
>election that Nixon has no chance at all of losing>still needs to rob hotels
>>18399243>the abolition of age of consent lawshuh
>>18399256He didn't orhcestrate the break-in. The Plumbers were reckless in their conduct in that episode. It's crucial to note however that Nixon was vindicated in uitilizing the Plumbers in general as it's now well documented that he was spied on by senior officials.
>>18399243Considering what a LOLcow McGovern was almost all the political cartoons from this election you can find are Nixon-bashing ones.
In Delaware, a young 29 year-old Democrat won a surprise upset in the Senate election.
>>18399276They made cartoons about Reagan being a fascist while he was super popular lol
>>18399276if all you were looking at was Doonesbury and Herblock cartoons, what did you honestly expect?
>>18399298>if all you were looking at was Doonesbury andah Gary Trudeau, the guy who was such a bad boy back in the 70s and is now the lamest NPC Facebook-tier Democrat boomer who hates everyone born after 1980 except of course his precious daughter
Didn't McGovern's platform also support forced-bussing? It's quite interesting how many Democrats supported Richard Nixon because McGovern was just so ultra progressive.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKfKJL7LLOE
>>18399280>Biden might start going on anti-Civil Rights spiels once his dementia gets worseIt's gonna be kino
my favorite story was in the 80s, after McGovern left the Senate and returned to private life, that he tried to open a hotel in South Dakota and was stunned by all the government regulations and red tape he had to deal with
>>18399317It should be noted that in general many Democrats voted Republican on the Presidential level. The Democrats were simply the larger party on the Congressional/state level but there were always at least 20% of them who consistently voted Republican for President regardless of the national environment. Gerald Ford received 20% of the Democrat vote in 1976.
>>18399326The Democrats had a more effective national machine since the FDR years and it mostly held until 1994.
Unsurprisingly, the dudeweed crowd doesn't win you elections as Bernie found out, because they're stoned and don't actually vote.
>>18399334In the 70's 35-40% of the electorate were self-ID'd Democrats and only 20-25% were self-ID'd Republicans. Today they are roughly equal in size.
>>18399341It wins you California:P
In 1976 Democrats were 37% of the electorate and 20% of them voted Republican, while Republicans 22% of the electorate and 11% of them voted Democrats. So 7.5% of the total electorate were Democrats who voted Republican and only 2.5% were Republicans who voted Democrat. Shame Roper Center only publish from 1976 onwards because it was obviously even more lopsided in '72
>>18399317Yes>>18399241The scope of Nixon's win in 1972, was ENTIRELY based on the issue of busing. This theory is a hill I will die on, and I've got a mountain of evidence to support it.The population (all races) was against busing, but the democrats misread it as a civil rights issue. Once the issue blew up nationally (just before the election), the dems had mistakenly allowed a pro-busing plank on their national campaign platform. That killed the chances of every democrat from McGovern on down to dog catcher. Meanwhile, Nixon had figure it out over a year earlier; and positioned himself into the only politically-survivable position, where he refused to move from.It's an absolutely fascinating story; and I have dozens of hours behind me listening to all of the Nixon tapes which have their inner discussions on the subject.AMA on this topic
>>18399353>the scope of Nixon's winYes the scope maybe, but McGovern was still a terrible candidate who had no chance of winning. It is true that busing was universally hated which made it especially bizarre to see Kamala Harris praised for defending it in 2020.
some will say that he took away any issue McGovern could run on>beginning withdrawal from Nam>ending the draft>EPA/OSHA
>>18399241>Alabama governor George Wallace made another go for president but his campaign was effectively ended when he was shotYou forgot to mention that he was the frontrunner by that point. Would have been kino if he won the nomination,
When aggregating popular vote percentage with the percentage of states won, Nixon '72 is #1 in the last century or so
>>18399362> HarrisIt makes sense in the context, once you understand the context.Nixon first became aware that it was an issue with potential when he had a phone call with Chuck Colson on 9/12/1971. Conversation 8-87, found here:https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/secret-white-house-tapes/8-87In that conversation, he was told that there was a big protest going on in Boston, against busing; and that both black and white parents were protesting against it.After a few more calls, he ordered that a poll be taken to find out what was going on. The poll came back on 2/29/72, and it basically said:> nearly everyone was in favor of some form of desegregation > but nearly everyone was opposed to the idea of using busing as the solution.What it came down to is whether or not the parents thought their own kids went to good schools. If they did, they were opposed to busing. If they thought their kids went to shit schools, they were in favor. When I heard Harris's comments, I assumed she either had gone to a shitty school or found that the school she was bussed to was better.
>>18399379However due to tiny third-party factors, McGovern still ranks slightly higher than Landon.
>>18399385I don't actually care what Harris says, it was the general reaction to their exchange. Biden said "busing bad", Harris snapped back "actually busing good" and the public reaction was "Harris owned Biden". That's bizarre.
Why was he called mcgovern if he didn't get to mcgovern?
>>18399399Biden won his first senate campaign race in 1972, he would have (even given his age), better than average living memory into how much of a mess 1972 was for most democrats. Meanwhile, Harris is too young to remember, and too politically inexperienced to have done the research.See image for an article shortly after the DNC convention. The pro-busing plank (only a month or so after the announcement that a court decision threatened to force busing national), caused absolute destruction for everyone in the dem party.I've got a clipping somewhere, but it was so bad that the dem running for the Michigan senate ran out and made sure his name was on the lawsuit to stop busing in Michigan, and one of the dems running for the house wouldn't stop calling the white house until Nixon's staff agreed to get him a picture with the President that he could show back home.It was also very interesting on the internal politics inside of the nixon administration. Everyone, including Haldeman and Colson, had been opposed to nixon's nearly silent position on busing. But following the poll, Nixon would only say:> I am against busing, but I am FOR good educationWell, when the situation finally blew up and nixon was left as the only man standing, there's a phone call on tape where Colson finally admitted that Nixon had been right all along and that everyone else (including himself) had been wrong.
>>18399414Again, I don't care about Biden's perspective or Kamala's perspective, it's her being *praised* for that exchange which was bizarre.
>>18399414Speaking of pictures; here's an example of the lengths people were willing to go to get their photo-op with Nixon> dude is running for senate> Nixon is mad at him for something else, so he's been leaving him out to dry> dude finally talks him into it> they won't have any real conversation, but they can do a photo-op at the airport while Nixon moves from his plane to his chopper on the way to a locationIt cracks me up because the best thing the guy could come up with was giving Nixon a "Nation's #1 Bowler" 'award'
>>18399417Ya, but that goes to what I was talking about. The people who were "praising" her were the same people who thought (or still think) that busing was a civil rights issue; and not an education issue.So ya, they'll praise her, thinking she's making some sort of civil rights stand; while those in the know realize she was an idiot talking about something she didn't quite understand. Of course the media is just as young and stupid as she is, so a lot of them went along with the mistake too.
First and foremost, McGovern was a weak candidate who thoroughly failed to engage party members and supporters necessary for winning.The 68 DNC descended into chaos and the McGovern Commission changed the rules to the point where the party was thoroughly fragmented.Nixon was leading by a wide margin in the polls, which is what made the break in at the DNC headquarters, and subsequent cover-up so mystifying. It was a series of a high risk, almost desperate actions to take, and all unnecessary.
>>18399455He was a decorated bomber pilot who flew 35 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe. He was also part of the coalition of rural and urban senators who created the wildly successful food stamps program that keeps farmers and poor people going.
>>18399455This is why Watergate frustrates me so much. So completely unnecessary.
>>18399459damn he really was a faggot
Nixon was quite a centrist and pragmatist while McGovern's platform was too radical at a time when the core Democrat base was still organized labor and Southern whites.
the Democrats, even if they still held onto Congress, were a mess with no leadership or centralized platform with the dudeweed people at war with the established union worker, Catholic, etc section of the party. in 72 Nixon looked strong and leader-like and the economy was still good at that point even with noticeable inflation setting in.
>>18399506he was a very well-read, intellectual guy actually one of the most book-smart presidents we ever had.
>>18399510>even with noticeable inflation setting in.I would assume that with the Gold Standard just ending that an immediate rise of inflation was expected anyway so voters were willing to give Nixon some leeway on that issue.
>>18399510Nixon's 72 campaign message was similar to Reagan's are you better off now than you were 4 years ago and considering the utter catastrophe of 1968 most agreed it was.
As I think was mentioned in the 68 election thread neither Nixon or Humphrey were popular with under 30s, it was mostly people's parents voting for them (some 20-something edgelords voted for Wallace). By 72 it was different, young people's hostility to Nixon had moderated considerably since he was winding down Vietnam, the draft, and lowered the voting age to 18. The dudeweed crowd were going to hate him regardless, plus they ended up writing most of the history about Nixon which is why it's so distorted, but most normies were not going to vote for McGovern.
>>18399526>Reagan's are you better off now than you were 4 years agoI wouldn't profile Reagan's campaign in this manner. Obviously he used that line a lot in speeches but that wasn't really the general temperament of his campaign. His campaign was way more positive than Carter's.
>>18399535> a recession is when your neighbor loses their job> a depression is when you lose your job> a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job> - Ronald Reagan
>>18399379>wilson won the same percentage of states as hoover's landslideWay to go Teddy
it's something because McGovern had done really well in the primaries, he was the first real primary campaigner. he was energetic, imaginative, and made a true bid for national support while the other candidates were just trying to focus on 1-2 states they wanted to win.once he won the nomination though, dude was totally lost and clueless. making his acceptance speech at the DNC running into 2:00 AM the next morning was a retarded idea. then his terrible VP choice, Nixon's dirty tricks unit, and embracing the far left wing of the Democrat Party. his campaign ads were also godawful.
>>18399542The Carter campaign messaging can be summed up in 3 points:>reagan will start a nuclear war with the ussr>reagan will abolish social security>reagan will put black people back in chains
>>18399547don't forget:> he's way too old to be President>>18399545It wasn't all clear sailing for McGovern either. Wallace, who already had the unreconstructed southerner vote, also had support from being the only dem primary candidate clearly and openly against busing. This gave him enough of an edge to give him surprise wins in the Michigan and Maryland primaries. See image from the day after. Notice that as late as May, Wallace (though 2nd place in the delegate count), was still 1st in the number of primaries won.Meanwhile, Nixon (who never missed a chance to stay away from his enemies destroying themselves) did everything he could to keep Wallace in the race; going as far as to question whether they should give money to his campaign or give some sort of other back-room operational support; just to keep the dems fighting among themselves.
>>18399510>the established union worker, Catholic, etc section of the partyNixon also heavily played that up, he emphasized how he (ditto his wife) grew up poor and was just like you ordinary folk.
>>18399556Nixon was bipolar. My dad used to know a retired Secret Service agent who had guarded him and he said he was a generous, friendly guy who knew all the Secret Service guys' family members by name and bought them nice Christmas gifts every year, but any time something went missing he'd turn around and accuse them of stealing stuff.
>>18399600You see anon, when you have an established record of batshit insane agendas, it's not just going to forget when you campaign on centrist stuff during election season. Also all the pundits and commentators kept kissing her ass and saying "she ran a flawless campaign it's all Biden's fault" so idk what do you want anyway.
>>18399607you're forgetting that Nixon was from a generation where getting plastered was almost expected. most professional men were drunk basically all day long. Nixon had vodka bought to the Oval Office daily. most of his comments on the White House tapes like saying abortion was probably necessary when the baby had a black and a white parent were made after a few shots. the Christmas bombing campaign of North Vietnam was something he and Kissinger came up with after they'd drank a fifth of Jack Daniels together.thing is, this was totally normal back then and everyone did it. Nixon was still a very moderate drinker compared to Churchill. office buildings had liquor dispensary machines in them. three martini lunch was literal.
>>18399619You can still see it some tv shows where every other scene has a drink in it
>1972 was the first presidential election where California became the most populated state, replacing New York which had held that title for 160 years.[2]
>>18399607> he was bipolarHe was complex. He was an introvert who entered a profession which bests suits an extrovert. He carried the internalized stigma of never having been rich enough (or good looking enough) to have been handed an easy life like others (including the Kennedy brothers); and he had earned nearly every important thing from his own performance (first funding his law school though his poker winnings; later in, for example, driving a wedge between Russia and China).All that being said, something goes missing and its usually the staff and not family. Unless he was claiming things were missing all the time when they weren't missing.>>18399619In terms of the things Nixon is heard saying on the tapes; I would argue that Nixon tailored his approach, based on who he was dealing with. So, with Kissinger, it was always the world-shaking diplomat; with Colson it was the hard campaigner; with Haldeman it was the godfather-esque management and manipulation.I am partially convinced that most of the stuff he said that was (or was considered to be) racist was said to play the image of a tough guy to look good for Haldeman. Seemed (if I am recalling correctly) that most of that talk happened with Haldeman in the room and Nixon wanting to look like a bad ass.
>>18399241fuck, even Hawaii
>>18399647Hawaii was a much more purple state back then it didn't become solidly blue until the 90s.
there was a bumper sticker people in Massachusetts had during Watergate which read "Don't blame me, I voted for McGovern."
>>18399647>>18399650It's true that Hawaii sometimes voted Dem by small margins, but at the end of the day it's a fact that it only voted Republican in the '72 and '84 landslides.
>>18399653>bunch of faggots trying to act smug Ford won more states than Carter btw
the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston was closed in '74. it had been operating since Thomas Jefferson was president. the official reason was it was too outdated, but there were accusations that Nixon ordered its closure as punishment for Massachusetts denying him a 50 state sweep.
>>18399665damn California was a lot redder back then
>>18399665That deep blue county in Texas voted for Trump in 2024
>>18399667The West Coast in general, it shifted hard Democrat in the 90s because>a lot of defense jobs diminished with the end of the Cold War>GI/Silent Generation voters retiring>a lot ended up moving to Arizona>Prop 187
>>18399241>popular vote is 60% to 37%>winner gets 97% of the electoral votesour election system is bullshit
>>18399675Winner-take-all leans too heavily into how many states you win, but raw popular vote would also be retarded. The ideal should be somewhere in the middle. See >>18399379
>>18399665the takeaway is that next to his home region in the upper Midwest it seems McGovern did best on the West Coast which had the largest concentration of dudeweed voters
>>18399668>it's real
>>18399353Non-whites still voted McGovern. He was just some decades behind his times, by 2040 forced integration and whitey being forced to give everything to niggers will be the platform to run for as a conservative republican.
>>18399675Could be worse, you could be Canada where a small group of extremists get to play kingmaker since the red guys and blue guys are too busy splitting the vote with functional identical platforms
>>18399243>>18399241>nominate guy trash talking you as your Vice President what was McGovern thinking ?
>>18399265Just leftists things
>>18399829as far as I can tell his voter base was mostly nonwhites, welfare recipients, and dudeweed people
>>18399688if you go back to the 68 election the rural counties of TX were still mostly Democrat while Republican strength was highest in Houston and DFW, while it's the reverse now.
>>18399256Yeah. I have no idea why he ordered to make Watergate. I have met four theories I can believe:>Democrats had evidence for Nixon getting money from Greek junta (Greek connection) which was killing its political opponents and Nixon wanted to steal it before it become a scandal>Operation was made to reveal democratic run escort ring possibly used for blackmail. The only unreaveled Watergate tapes can provide evidence for that>It was CIA smear campaign meant to kick out the Nixon who didn't like them from the office >The operation was ordered by Nixon, but Democrats discovered it and allowed burglars to break in so they can have a chance to remove him from the office which was impossible with McGovern as candidate
>>18399619it was a better time. used to work at a state legislature and one of the old timers who had a voice like a frog with a stoma would always tell me stories of the good old days when they rated the difficulty in getting a bill passed by the number of cases of crown royal it'd take to get it passed. Once people stopped drinking in caucus deadlock became much more frequent as did people using nerd faggot tricks to kill bills instead of just voting for or against them.
>>18399665What was going on in South Dakota?
>>18400817McGovern's home state.
>>18399243>The delegates made such demands as the immediate end of the Vietnam conflict, the legalization of all recreational drugs, and the abolition of age of consent laws.Never hears of this. Source?
>He was admitted to the California bar in 1937, and began practicing in Whittier with the law firm Wingert and Bewley in the National Bank of Whittier Building.[27][35] His work concentrated on commercial litigation for local petroleum companies and other corporate matters, as well as on wills.[36] Nixon was reluctant to work on divorce cases, disliking frank sexual talk from women.[37] >In January 1938, Nixon was cast in the Whittier Community Players production of The Dark Tower in which he played opposite his future wife, a high school teacher named Thelma "Pat" Ryan.[27] In his memoirs, Nixon described it as "a case of love at first sight",[41] but apparently for Nixon only, since Pat Ryan turned him down several times before agreeing to date him.[42] Once they began their courtship, Ryan was reluctant to marry Nixon; they dated for two years before she assented to his proposal. They wed in a small ceremony on June 21, 1940. After a honeymoon in Mexico, the Nixons began their married life in Whittier.[43] They had two daughters: Tricia, born in 1946, and Julie, born in 1948.[44America literally had Incel president. And they cancelled him because he was incel
