Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in ’72 (1973)

rollingstone.com

5 points·pimeys··9 comments

Excerpts from a pretty good book. The obvious follow-ons:

Why didn't Republicans and Trump suffer the same fate as McGovern did after losing? Why are Democrats and the mainstream media taking Trump and Republicans seriously?

What would Thompson have made of Trump's 2016 and 2020 campaigns?

Just ordered Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus", another take on the 1972 presidential campaign, focusing more to the campaign journalism.

Another good book. Crouse describes some of the same scenes as Thompson, which is always a fascinating thing.

Nixon won over 60% of the vote and only lost Massachusetts and DC. Biden got 51.3% of the vote and as many states as Trump.

To be clear, of the popular vote, not just electoral college votes.

(I'd looked that up just to check the statement. Statement checks.)

Clinton's 2016 campaign had a deliberate strategy of elevating Trump at every opportunity, because they perceived him as easy to defeat. Through connections, her campaign staff sought to elevate his status and media coverage. All of this is according to the DNC email leaks.

This backfired spectacularly, of course. But the Democrats are responsible for Trump, they literally threw gas on the fire of his popularity.

if this is news to anybody, google “trump pied piper emails” - trump was hillary’s opponent by choice.

Nit: I think the year in the HN title should be (1973) instead of 2973 (i.e., a full thousand years in the future.)

Not sure how that happened! fixed now.

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