What Hillary's astounding loss means for the Democratic Party

The New Democrats now face their own political reckoning

Hillary Clinton walks off stage
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In 1972, an insurgent faction of left-wing radicals seized the Democratic Party presidential nomination, doggedly defeating a slew of other candidates with tremendous effort, and put up George McGovern as the nominee. He proceeded to get absolutely flattened in the general election, losing by 23 percentage points and 503 electoral votes.

It was one of the all-time blowouts in American history, and it cemented a certain narrative in the minds of the younger Democratic politicos: The New Deal was dead, dead, dead. McGovern's loss, and the economic chaos which followed in the mid-'70s, convinced rising Democratic elites that old-fashioned pro-union labor liberalism was discredited, and Democrats needed to embrace neoliberal ideas coming out of Midwestern economics departments and the center-left opinion journals like The New Republic.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.