2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: We Should Only Let Democrats Choose Our Nominee [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We'd have been worse off if HRC had had 95% of the delagates and the convention was as bland as the ones in 2000 and 2004.
And there's no historical support for the assertion that we do better when our nominee clinches the nomination early.
We've often done far better when the nomination was decided late in the game, in fact
in 1932, it took FDR 4 ballots to get over the top:
in 1948, the Southern delegations walked out to support Strom Thurmond before Harry Truman was nominated;
in 1960, JFK just barely won on the first ballot(he didn't secure his majority until Wyoming voted.
in 2008, Hillary didn't concede until June(and was at nearly a dead heat in the pledged delegate count at the time, with a small popular vote lead due to her insistence on actively campaigning in Michigan and Florida despite the fact that the party had asked all presidential candidates to boycott those states because they had violated party rules by holding their primaries BEFORE New Hampshire);
By contrast:
We lost badly in 1984 even though Mondale, the candidate of the "pros", wrapped up the nomination as early as humanly possible;
We lost in the EC in 2000 even though Gore essentially had it wrapped up in February;
We lost outright in 2004 even though Kerry clinched the nomination by the beginning of April;
So it's not as simple as saying "we'd have beaten Trump if ONLY Hillary had been acccepted by all as nominee after Super Tuesday and if only there was nothing in the platform that reflected the Sanders campaign".