A couple weeks ago I noticed a map that flies in the face of the narrative of the Democratic Party put forward by both the chattering class and a fair number of academics. I knew Jimmy Carter was strong in the South, but I didn't realize how strong. He won the 1976 election by basically sweeping the South, winning every single former slave state except for Virginia. Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, both Carolinas, Missouri, Kentucky, etc. all voted for Carter. To learn more about how this happened I decided to read the definitive journalistic account of the 1976 election, which was written by Jules Witcover. There are lots of interesting historical tidbits in it from George Wallace winning Boston in the 1976 Democratic primary, to the size of Bob Shrum's ego (even way back then), to just how unloved a national candidate Scoop Jackson was, no matter how much the DC and national security establishments loved him. But something I did not realize is that in practice there were two separate Democratic races in the primary season that year. In the first part of the race Carter essentially had the center to himself, with Wallace to his right, and several candidates (Udall, Bayh, Harris, Shriver) dividing up the vote to his left. Then late in the race, with Carter barreling forward towards the nomination, and Udall the only original candidate still campaigning against him, two major candidates (Senator Frank Church of Idaho and Governor Jerry Brown of California) entered the race in May. May! It's unthinkable that something like that would be attempted today. Church and Brown were game competitors who won several of the late contests, but Carter was already so far ahead that winning one of the last big contests (Ohio) was enough to give him the nomination. It was such an odd nomination campaign that I am a little surprised people drew lasting lessons out of it for so long.
Posted by armand at April 8, 2010 07:59 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Books | History