How would carter have best served the progressive cause

Which would have been better for American progressives

  • Carter loses 1976

    Votes: 23 76.7%
  • Carter wins 1980

    Votes: 4 13.3%
  • Liberals needed something much more dramatic

    Votes: 3 10.0%

  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .
Honestly, losing in 1976 for now, as the GOP is the one who gets humiliated this time, and has to deal with the period of endless suck.
 
Option the first: 1976 was, as they say, a good election to lose. Had the 1970's been a decade of exclusively Republican administrations, it might have earned them a reputation for economic incompetence and strategic drift. 3 succesive failed terms, combined with the widening rift between conservatives and moderates, could just possibly end the Republican party as we know it.
 
1st make Carter a progressive

Carter was in no way a full-throated progressive!!!
If anything, he was Reagan-Lite.
He was OK on civil rights, but very much into God and national defense.
IIRC his lukewarm support of the ERA doomed it to defeat in Congress.
OTOH, it may very well be it was impossible to make that bill pass, but I think it just needed a little nudge to become law. YMMV.
Also, keep in mind, Carter snuck in after a demoralized and bitterly divided primary campaign decimated any establishment candidates. Much like Clinton did in 1992 (also with scant support from Congress on the best of days!).
Gee, how history repeats itself, but I digress.

As to letting the GOP lame duck its way through to 1980, with the second or third president under its lackluster banner, you could possibly butterfly Raygun Ronnie and make a fatal split between the Libertarians, moderate GOP, and
evangelists all going their separate ways in a fratricidal bloodbath that would make Whigs spin in their graves.:eek::eek:

I see it ushering in a spectacularly lackluster Era of Ill Feeling as Democrats no longer have significant external opposition where the Great Society dinosaurs and progressives start barracking over who inherits the keys to Congress and Presidency.

However, the Dem taking the helm in 1980 probably wouldn't be anyone really progressive or be in much better shape. I'm thinking Scoop Jackson, Mondale, or some other DNC figure that would NOT have let the worst domestic bits of the 1980's -hollowing out of industry, all the corporate restructuring shenanigans, insane govt borrowing and AIDS crisis go as far as they did.

OTOH would Scoop, HHH, or Mondale have pushed the USSR as hard with the SDI bluff, Pershing/ACM deployments, and/or supporting the Afghans and contras to end the Cold War?

Plus, much as I despised the hypocrisy of much of the Contract with America crowd in 1994, they hit a vein of genuine popular disgust with business-as-usual (Dem) politics in Congress. Move that ahead ten years if Dems are the only viable national party from 1980 to 1992.
I also see a much more active militia movement at the same time, b/c the right wing would NOT be anywhere in range of power with a much wider "liberal" consensus making them cry and whine in the corner about being ignored. IMO w/o Carter and Reagan giving the evangelicals much entree to DC, they stay marginalized much longer and radicalize more and get squished by the FBI as terrorists.
 
Actually, I get irritated every time i hear the term 'progressive' being used as a synonem fo 'liberal'. Although Progressives are generally to the left, they are not New Deal liberals, and it irritates me to hear the terms become synonems.
 
Maybe Carter could have come back later, with some sort of "morning in America" thing?

Doubt it. In a situation where Carter loses in 1976, he'll be blaimed for throwing away an easy victory against the man who pardonned Nixon etc.

For what it's worth, I think a Carter loss in 1976 would mean the almost certain election of a more liberal dem come 1980. A seat in the senate may not be out of the question for Carter in this scenario-he's fairly young in 1976, so having him in the senate (where he could be an affective supporter of any dem administration) may be the way he chooses to spend the rest of his political career.
 
Get rid of the Presisdent who didn't want universal healthcare, who vetoed the Department of Energy, who didn't really support the Equal Rights Amendment, and who couldn't work with a supermajority in Congress! Carter was Reagan-lite as already mentioned.

Actually, I get irritated every time i hear the term 'progressive' being used as a synonem fo 'liberal'. Although Progressives are generally to the left, they are not New Deal liberals, and it irritates me to hear the terms become synonems.
Henry Wallace did that. Truman was sick of the whole labeling thing in general called for a "forward-looking program" without using labels. ;)
 
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