Why Bernie Sanders is electable
By Allan Lichtman, opinion contributor — 02/24/20 02:00 PM EST
Our party “seems all too anxious to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and we will do the same if we nominate†an extremist for our presidential candidate. Moderates “represent the most electable area of the party.†This is not a contemporary pundit or some Democratic Party operative warning about the potential nomination of avowed Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders. It was the moderate Republican Representative John Anderson cautioning about the nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
An internal memo by strategists for Democratic President Jimmy Carter showed they welcomed a Reagan candidacy, saying they could defeat him with a negative campaign of moderates versus right wingers. But Reagan won the Republican nomination and thrashed Carter by 10 points in the popular vote and by 440 electoral votes.
Reagan then, like Sanders now, had long experience in deflecting attacks on his alleged extremism. The real problem for the Carter campaign was the lack of a compelling theme for his reelection. An internal memo had a conspicuous blank in the space reserved for “general encompassing theme.†Whatever you may think of Sanders, among all the Democratic candidates, he has the boldest overarching theme for his campaign.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/484355-why-bernie-sanders-is-electable
