Anti-Bernie Smear #24: “Bernie is too far Left; he can’t win the general election — he will be another McGovern”

People who claim that Bernie is “too far Left” are mired in a false narrative that the Democratic Party itself has been fostering for decades in order to suppress and thwart Progressives.

We’ve all heard this argument many times and in many different ways. “We can’t go too far to the Left because then we will lose the swing states and the swing voters, and [INSERT REPUBLICAN] will win. It will be another landslide disaster like we had with George McGovern in 1972.”

The story of the McGovern loss is one that still dominates the debate among Democrats. Similar to the story of the “spoiler effect” of Ralph Nader in 2000, the fable of the McGovern debacle was created by the Democratic Elites and it has been nurtured and promoted by the Democratic Establishment to the point where it has become a matter of canon, a cautionary tale that cannot be questioned.

But this narrative is not based on the actual facts.

That was Then, This is Now

In 1972 President Nixon had an approval rating of over 62%

Firstly, we need to look at the very different circumstances that obtained in 1972. Unlike Trump in 2020, Richard Nixon in 1972 had a very high approval rating of well over 60%. The country was still at war in…