How Would DU Have Responded to Jimmy Carter's Presidency

[Yavin4]

My guess is that these forums would have torn him into shreds, and Kennedy's primary challenge would have also torn these forums apart.

[geek tragedy]

1. Zero doubt about that. Zero. nt

[ananda]

2. Po Jimmah..

He made such a weak prez, and yet he is the greatest ex-prez EVER!

[NJmaverick]

33. +1

[niceypoo]

3. Jimmy Carter was pre Reagan

Jerry Springer style politics started in the Reagan era

[denimgirly]

5. Excellent Point.

I was going to comment about other things but you raised a valid pooint

[Whisp]

38. +1 brazillion

[saltpoint]

4. I would have loved it if the Carters had been our

neighbors.

I supported Kennedy's challenge while never doubting the basic human integrity of Jimmy Carter.

The Carter cabinet, IMO, left quite a bit to be desired.

[denimgirly]

6. Assumng we still had corporate-owned Repubs and weak Dems then...

My guess is half of DU would be supporting Carter no matter how weak he was ("its a master chess move")...and the other half will see through the weakness and demand someone stronge who would stand 100% behind the people and not sell out when times get tough. And the republicans will be bashing Carter no matter how much he asks to play nice and offer gifts of appeasement to them.

[WI_DEM]

7. not well--they wouldn't have liked JFK either--too moderate on civil rights and a big cold warrior

who ran in 1960 against Ike's cutting of the defense budget.

[Yavin4]

8. It's Funny How All of these Guys Become Left Wing Heroes After A While

JFK, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore. Maybe in 20 years folks will finally give Obama his due.

[niceypoo]

9. After a while?

Did the left attacked them while in office? Gore?

:rofl:

[Yavin4]

11. You're Kidding, Right?

The Left repeatedly said in 2000 that there was no difference between Gore and Bush.

[niceypoo]

12. Not at all

Show me where 'the left' said this

[Yavin4]

14. Were You Around in 2000?

There was no DU in 2000, but there were knock down drag out fights between Naderites and the Gore supporters in 2001.

Just google Nader and DU for some of those threads.

[niceypoo]

43. 'Nadarites' arent the left

Nice try though.

Al Gore didn't 'become a hero later' like you claim. Your whole premise is bullshit

[Jackpine Radical]

15. A few Naderites did.

I knew some. But for the most part, the left backed Bradley in the primary & then moved to Gore when he got the nom. I know that was my path, anyway. And Gore didn't exactly run a left-wing campaign in 2000.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. "A few Naderites"

Right, and it's the same few Naderites that have fucked up this board.

[BootinUp]

36. They said it with Nader support

loud and clear.

[happyslug]

32. Except the most left wing of the post FDR lot, LBJ

The left never forgave LBJ for Vietnam, a war he did NOT want to fight. LBJ felt he was force to fight it once US policy on Vietnam was set by JFK's approval of the Coup against Diem (Kennedy later said he did not want Diem died, but as a commentator later said, that was always a possibility in a coup, and why LBJ opposed the coup). LBJ opposed the coup on the grounds "one do not kill friends", the only person in JFK cabinet to oppose the Coup which lead to the assassination of Diem. While officially JFK denied participating in the Coup, they liked the results, so did the North Vietnamese, who viewed Diem as the only Politician in South Vietnam who understood what he was fighting against. Given Diem knew what he was fighting against he knew the weaknesses of his side, he balanced between keeping the landlords (the base of support for his government including the Governments of South Vietnam till 1975) and the peasants (The main support for the Viet Cong, the Peasants wanted land reform and the Viet Cong was doing so in areas their controlled) happy.

More on Diem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem

Yes, Vietnam cost LBJ his credentials as a liberal icon, The Great Society Program, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Medicare and Medicaid, are all secondary to Vietnam (And the last President, except for Clinton to actually balance the Budget).

More on LBJ:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

[EFerrari]

28. When did the mission become to "like" politicians?

I thought the deal was to get the best people in government and the best work out of them possible?

[zipplewrath]

10. A bit of a mix

He did battle with the Washington establishment (and lost by the way). So a place called "underground" probably would have been "on his side". The flip side is that
he was kinda "all over the place" and it would have generated no small amount of
frustration in understanding where he was, and where he was headed.

The Kennedy candidacy would have ripped this place to shreds. Obama/Clinton cubed.
It would have pitched the "old guard" against the "new left". I don't think
it would have been pretty.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. Yes, I'm sure he would have been torn apart, and so would DU.

I didn't support Carter in the '76 primary because I thought he was too centrist. I supported Mo Udall. But Carter sort of grew on me, I think because of his apparent decency and honesty. He had immense hurdles: the energy crisis & wild, 20%+ inflation; the hostages and all that followed (a disastrous rescue attempt, the October Surprise); the attack of the killer rabbit, etc. I think he was really the first Democrat to go down due to a biased press. I remember the "malaise" speech--can even tell you where I was and with whom when I saw it--and very much admired him for having the courage to lay out the harsh realities without trying to sugar-coat them. But the public didn't want reality, and neither did the news media, who excoriated him for his honesty. I supported him in the '80 primary for a couple of reasons: for one thing, I thought it was a mistake to jump ship in the middle of a hurricane; and second, in those days I thought of Teddy as a sort of self-important limousine liberal who was presenting himself in all his majesty as a savior for the unworthy commoners. This wasn't all that long after Chappaquiddick, either, and I saw him as particularly vulnerable on that count. Anyway, in 1980 I was a Carter loyalist, mostly on what I considered to be character issues.

[Yavin4]

17. I Was Going To Mention Chappaquiddick

That too would have torn this place apart. Can you imagine a womanizing candidate who played a role in an accidental death of a staffer getting support on these forums against a sitting president?

My goodness.

[Jackpine Radical]

20. ...who not only played that role, but

whose subsequent actions somewhat suggested a coverup.

I remember a disgusting, ghoulish full-page cartoon in the old National Lampoon that tied Chappaquiddick to the 1980 Dem Convention. That issue was still very much alive in 1980, and many of us had serious characterological questions about Teddy on that and other grounds.

[sad sally]

24. And all the good he and Mrs. Carter have done for the world

since he left office. I cried when he congratulated Reagan, then wrote a thank you to them for their unselfish service to our Country as President and First Lady. Received a personal note back thanking me of all things - signed by both - a keeper.

[Wickerman]

16. Mildly on topic

the lyrics to Jimmy Carter by the great band Blue Mountain:

In the bicentennial summer of our faded glory land a bright new face appeared upon the scene. Of an honest peanut farmer by the name of Jimmy Carter. His eyes were set on every school boys dream.

Chorus: Well the odds were stacked against him but he was not afraid to fight, the mighty facist empire lined up on the right. So shake the hand of the man, with a handful of love, the one and only Jimmy Carter.

There was joy throughout the nation, at that great inauguration, the GOP stood shakin in their shoes. Serenaded by Willie, and toasted by Billy, this president with honest peanut roots.

Chorus: Well he said I'd never lie to you, and what's more he never did. Though the times grew mighty tough, he never flipped his lid. So shake the hand of the man, with a hand full of love. The one and only Jimmy Carter.

[sandnsea]

18. They'd have torn FDR apart

The left did it in his time too.

[Yavin4]

19. Yep. African Americans Were Being Hung and Burned in the South

and FDR did nothing about it.

[happyslug]

37. Could FDR have done anything about it?

Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" once described a late Imperial General as (paraphrasing) "His vices were the vices of his time, his virtues were his own".

The same can be said of FDR, he needed the support of the South to get elected. Yes, he won all but four states in 1932 and all but two states in 1936, but his margin dropped in 1940 and 1944. FDR knew it would happen and thus always dependent on support from the "Solid South". The "Solid South" was the base he built his coalition on (Along with Labor, Urban Centers and African Americans, all three having been strong GOP strong holds till FDR). Thus FDR strength was to reach out to all three groups, all three still having strong GOP connections for decades afterward (For example 30% of African Americans voted for Eisenhower in 1952, a number any other GOP candidate would kill for).

LBJ when he signed the Civil Rights Act told his fellow Democrats that he was giving the South to the GOP for a generation, but it was worth it (Yes, more GOP Congressmen voted for the Civil Rights Act then Democrats, but the Democrats were more dependent on the South at that time thus it LBJ's signing hurt the Democrats more then it hurt the GOP, even with more GOP Congressmen voting for the Act then Democrats did). It is how dependent the Democrats were on the South. Jimmy Carter only won in 1976 do to being able to carry his home state of Georgia, which he lost in his re-election campaign of 1980. Northern States were NOT that loyal to the Democrats at that point. Since 1980 the Northern States have turned as Democratic as the South was pre-1964, New England even more Democratic today then the South was in the 1930s, but that is recent development. New England was a GOP stronghold along with Pennsylvania and the American Mid-West.

Look at the 1948 Election and the 2008 Election maps:

1948:


2008:


http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

Notice in 1948, every North Eastern State, except Massachusetts and Rhodie Island went GOP, but every NorthEastern State went Democratic in 2008.

In the South, every state went Democratic or Dixiecrat in 1948, but GOP won every Southern State, Except North Carolina, Virginia and Florida in 2008. That is a fundamental switch, FDR had to face a nation very much like the 1948 (Except he had weak GOP opponents) thus FDR could NOT afford to offend the South. Truman almost lost the Election of 1948 for he did offend the South and lost four states to the Dixiecrats (Labor and African American saved his re-election). And the reason for the near lost was Truman had backed the first federal Anti-lynching laws, integration of the Armed Services and other minor civil rights for African Americans. I do NOT know if FDR could have wage a campaign like Truman did in 1948, and that is wanted needed to be done to win that election. Truman style was NOT FDR's style, thus FDR was more dependent in the South then was Truman for re-election and for that reason FDR did NOT support anything that would offend the south.

[kestrel91316]

21. Exactly right.

[hedgehog]

22. An even better question would be to ask how Carter's Presidency

would have turned out if the DU and the rest of the Internet had been around then. The Big 3 networks and a few selected publications filtered the information about his administration to the rest of us. Looking back, I think his image was very different from the reality.

Among other questions; would the Iran hostage crisis have been such an issue had it not been for ABC reporting on it nightly? We've seen here how the cable networks turn trivial stories into the cause of the day until something better comes along.

[Rowdyboy]

25. Roger that.....

DU would have despised Carter, abhorred his AG Griffin Bell and split in two over the Kennedy challenge.

Very interesting point-I'd never thought of that twist.

[EFerrari]

26. I can tell you how I responded to Jimmy Carter.

My husband and I went and voted for his re-election after commuting home sixty miles with two kids under ten and after the election had already been called.

[Yavin4]

29. Carter Was A Huge War Hawk

His admin was the first that started arming the Afghan resistance fighters, a mistake that we live with to this day.

Also, he allowed the Shah to come here to get treatment which kicked off the Islamic revolution in Iran.

[EFerrari]

30. And? Maybe you didn't, but out here in CA, some of us knew exactly who Raygun was. n/t

[Proud Liberal Dem]

27. Forget Carter What about Clinton?

:nuke:

[The Green Manalishi]

31. Tip O'Neal ripped him a new one

in his book 'Man of the house'. Tip was furious because Carter wouldn't go to bat for his legislation. Carter was weak and ineffective and didn't put energy into trying to get anything through and not overly supportive of Democrats in tough races.
What a *GREAT* Ex President, though.

[happyslug]

39. Citing Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, who rolled over for Reagan

O'Neal permitted the Reagan tax cut to be written by the US Senate and then passed by the House. The US Constitution clearly says all TAX bills MUST start in the House. The Senate can modify it, but can NOT begin one. In the past when such a bill was done by the Senate and sent to the House, the Speaker just ignored it calling it unconstitutional on its face. O'Neal let it enter the house docket like any other bill passed by the Senate. Thus making sure it would pass.

O'Neal made a deal with the last of the Conservative Southern Democrats to win election as Speaker of the House and NEVER made an effort to control them. He claim if he had, they would have bolted to the GOP. My attitude it would have better for the Democrats to leave them, even if that meant losing control of the House. O'Neil wanted power more then anything else and his rolling over for Reagan on the Tax Cuts, the Military Budget, the cuts in Social Programs clearly shows that. Yes, his hands were tied do to the need for support from the Boll Weevils, but sometime you have to fight and sometime that means giving up power, and that was something O'Neal was NOT willing to do

[The Green Manalishi]

40. hmmm an interesting take

Thanks. Sounds plausible.

[davidwparker]

34. Carter was the last (D) Pres with courage to match his

convictions.

And yes, I do want to see a primary challenger to Pres. Obama.

I'm sorry, but I don't see disagreements on a message board as that big of a deal. Continuing a lot of *'s agenda and expanding them, that I see as a problem.

[Yavin4]

35. And You Would Have Hated Carter Even More Than Obama

Carter was far more conservative than Obama.

[niceypoo]

44. Carter was a flaming liberal compared to Obama

Obama is a Reagan Democrat, at best

[Yavin4]

48. See My Post #46

Carter was far more to the right of Obama on foreign affairs than many people think.

It's just that time whitewashes away certain issues.

If you hate Obama, you would have really hated Carter.

[dave29]

41. All of my Carter threads were locked

:shrug:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. As someone who was already an adult during the Carter administration

I had mixed feelings. I thought he was more intelligent than Ford, and I had no doubt that he had good intentions. If we had followed his environmental ideas, we wouldn't be in the oil-dependent straitjacket that we're in now.

He was also unfairly criticized for the hostage situation in Iran. As he revealed when I heard him speak in the early 1990s, his advisors on Iranian culture had told him that Iranians feel that they have to respond to a public threat and that to back down in the face of a public threat is to lose honor. Therefore, all the negotiations for the hostages release went on in private, but carried a stern warning that if the hostages were harmed in any way, he would order the bombing of Tehran. As an indication that he was telling the truth about it, people who remember those days will recall that one hostage started to develop strange neurological symptoms, and the Iranians immediately sent him home. (He turned out to have the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis.)

I fully believe that the Reagan camp negotiated with the Iranians to keep the hostages till Reagan's inauguration day. That was just too coincidental.

He also got unfairly blamed for stagflation, a terrible combination of high interest rates (set by the Fed, whose chairman he had not appointed) and price inflation (caused by a spike in the price of oil).

I appreciated Carter's stand on human rights. Much to the disgust of the Republicans, he disliked right-wing dictatorships (the Argentine, Chilean, and Uruguayan juntas were in full "kill the dissidents" mode at the time) as much as left-wing ones.

However, I fault Carter on two points--

1. His funding of the MX missile. It was a dumb idea, missiles kept moving on a vast rail system, when we couldn't have decent passenger rail in this country.

2. His sending the CIA (or allowing the CIA) to recruit Islamic fanatics to fight the Russians and to treat the INVITED Soviet troops as invaders who rolled into Afghanistan just because that's what nasty Russians do. The legacy of that move, and of Reagan's continued support of the mujahedin continues to haunt us.

I did criticize him at the time, but this isn't North Korea, so I was allowed to do that.

On the whole, though, we would have been better off if Carter had won in 1980 instead of Reagan.

And Yavin, I dislike Obama more than I disliked Carter, because Obama is mostly continuing Bush's worst policies. He is either corrupt or too weak and unsavvy to horsetrade for some better policies.

[Yavin4]

46. Jimmy Carter Wrote

"... the most intense and mounting opposition to his policies came from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which he attributed to Ted Kennedy’s ambition to replace him as president."

Carter, Jimmy, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, p.8, (2005), Simon & Shuster

Like I said, most of our Liberal Dem heroes are only heroic in retrospect. I was a teenager during Carter, and most of the Liberal Dems hated Carter, esp. the Liberal Dems in congress. The party was split right down the middle, and the fact that Ted Kennedy didn't even embrace Carter at the convention became a story itself.

[okie]

45. There are reasons to be critical...

...especially in light of his reputation as a great defender of 'human rights'. We sent money and arms to El Salvador, despite the protests of people actually fighting for justice there.

http://www.share-elsalvador.org/25anniv/romero-carter.htm

The policy of arming Indonesians while they slaughtered between 100,000-200,000 people in East Timor (a country of 700,000 at the time) continued. His administration could have stopped the South Korean military from killing 1000-2000 students in Gwangju, but did not. And of course, much of the tragedy in Afghanistan today has roots in the Carter years. None of this is to say Carter was any worse than those who came before and after him. I don't think it's useful to put emphasis on the actions of specific presidents. I think the system is just fundamentally in opposition to things like left-wing movements in Latin America, and democratic student uprisings in states where we have 'interests'. So, we should criticize Carter (and all presidents), but be mindful that the central concern is the structure Carter operated within.

[uponit7771]

47. +1