What If Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy Did Not Divide the Democrats in 1980? Lessons from History for Both Parties in 2020

If Democrats Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy could have seen the future in 1978 and known that their feud would lead to Republicans dominating the White House and the Senate from 1981 to 1993, might they have patched things up? They both viewed the Reagan years as contributing to dramatic income inequality, a sop to the wealthiest, massive and unnecessary increases in defense spending, an increase in poverty and homelessness, an end to energy conservation; and a dramatic increase in imported oil.

They both deplored Reagan’s abandonment of human rights as a cornerstone of foreign policy; his support for Efraín Ríos Montt, dictator of Guatemala, who was later convicted of genocide; Reagan’s backing of the right-wing contras in Nicaragua; his support for Saddam Hussein in war against Iran, giving him chemical weapons; and war against Saddam that both opposed in 1991, to supposedly free Kuwait.

Carter supported Bernie Sanders for president in the 2016 Democratic nomination fight. Senator Kennedy’s widow Vicki, strongly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, saying how much Teddy admired her. In some ways, Ted Kennedy in his later years as a legislator was ironically less liberal and more of a deal-maker and compromiser than Carter. He was certainly more a part of the “eastern liberal establishment” than Carter.

But back in 1980, Kennedy was a champion of New Deal liberalism. At the Democratic convention, Kennedy said Ronald Reagan was ““no friend of labor . . . no friend of the senior citizens of this nation . . . no friend of the environment.”

Criticizing Reagan later on civil rights, Carter said: “If I had been president for four more years, we wouldn’t have had a resurgence of racism and selfishness.” Kennedy no doubt agreed.

Jon Ward, author of “Camelot’s End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party” (2019) and a reporter for Yahoo News, examined the feud between the two men, the warring factions in the Democratic Party, how the media covered it and what turned out to be: evidence of America’s sixth major political party realignment, in which Carter and Kennedy were mostly powerless players and electoral losers in the invisible patterns of American politics and history.

In 1980, there was a conservative train coming (in the form of Ronald Reagan’s victory) that would decimate the Democratic majority in Congress. Neither Kennedy nor his chief supporters in organized labor had any inklings. Carter did believe that his policies were as liberal as the country would tolerate, and history has probably proven him correct.

The same might be said of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. American political parties are now realigning into the seventh political party system. You can’t unite a political party and win elections by sending a primarily negative message, that you are not as bad as your opponent. That’s what Carter tried to do to Reagan in 1980, and that’s what Hillary Clinton tried to do to Trump in 2016. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, but it was probably the last gasp for the Bill Clinton “New Democrat” coalition. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, she would have faced intense criticism and deep impatience from the Bernie Sanders left and likely lost re-election in 2020, just as Carter did in 1980.

“Whether Trump is the last gasp of the Reagan coalition, just as Carter marked the end of the FDR era for the Democratic Party, remains to be seen,” Ward wrote.

In realignments, the political center shifts due to demographics, cultural, economic and market changes. Politicians, who reflect these forces, are caught off-guard and can’t hold their coalitions together.

By Ward’s account, both Carter and Kennedy each blamed the other for the Democrats’ defeat in 1980 even decades later. Both were stuck in their own silos, factions or echo chambers, and neither had the flexibility or creativity to break out. Kennedy felt snubbed by Carter’s refusal to debate him throughout the primary campaign. Carter maintained a “Rose Garden strategy,” didn’t want to put a senator on a equal footing with the president of the U.S., even a Kennedy.

The Carter people, in turn, made much of Kennedy’s “snub” of Carter at the Democratic convention; Carter accused him of drinking too much on Carter’s big night. Kennedy maintained the snub was not intentional, that he shook Carter’s hand and the president was perfectly free to raise their hands together for a photo and he would not have resisted.

The feud between the two men is a cautionary tale and “a reminder of what happens when an intraparty rivalry becomes so personal that the combatants lose sight of the greater cause of winning the general election,” Ward wrote in an excerpt from the book in Politico.

Carter, an early advocate of fiscal conservatism, and limited government, would pioneer “a third way” between liberalism and conservatism that Bill Clinton would successfully pursue in the 1990s. But liberal Democratic activists in 1980, nostalgic for the imperial presidency of John F. Kennedy and New Deal/Great Society liberalism, were not ready to accept such modest policy goals. They felt Carter reduced the power of the presidency. He carried his own bags and shunned “Hail to the Chief,” becoming small and powerless in the public’s eyes.

The nostalgia for JFK was understandable, Ward wrote, quoting acclaimed author Theodore H. White. Since J.F.K.’s death, “Americans had been abused by history,” White wrote. “Vietnam, race riots, Watergate, inflation, rising levels of crime and squalor in America’s cities. J.F.K. was the last president “who had given Americans a sense of control of their own destiny,” and he had presided over the nation at a time when the economy was stable and “working people grew comfortable and the rich got richer.”

Kennedy was seduced by strong supporters in organized labor who came to detest Carter, but were also declining in political power; from his solid support in the Northeast, in Pennsylvania, in California. Kennedy viewed Carter as lacking in basic political instincts, but the country had changed dramatically since his brothers ran for president in 1960 and 1968. The man from Georgia proved he did have political instincts by beating Kennedy handily for the nomination.

Carter viewed Kennedy as entitled, as if he felt the presidency was owed to him. A Carter aide said the senator had “an almost child-like self-centeredness.” Yet Kennedy never ran for president again after 1980, despite his popularity within the party, devoting himself to becoming one of the most powerful senators in American history, praised at his memorial service for “deep generosity and selflessness” by Vice President Joe Biden and others who served with him in the Senate for decades. For Carter’s part, he went on to become universally acclaimed as the nation’s best ex-president. Both men misunderstood and under-estimated each other and their predicament in 1980, Ward wrote.

Carter, in his interview with Ward, still attributed his defeat by Reagan to the fight with Kennedy. Years after Kennedy’s death, Carter blamed himself for not “bending over backwards” to accommodate the senator and prevent him from making the primary challenge.

But even if Carter had wooed Kennedy, he would have been damaged politically.  In 1976, Teddy offered to give a rousing nomination speech for Jimmy but Carter rejected it on the grounds that he did not want to be too closely associated with Kennedy-style big government liberalism.  As I’ve written before, if Carter offered an olive branch to Kennedy in the late 1970s by pushing health care reform, and it passed Congress, ‘Cartercare’ instead of ‘Obamacare’, would have been a political disaster in the short term of the 1980 election cycle.

Kennedy’s supporters in 1980 insisted on a platform fight to add a $12 billion economic stimulus spending program, to fight unemployment, and wage and price controls—proposals far to the left of Carter’s at the time.

Even if Kennedy had not pressed Carter from the left, California Governor Jerry Brown, a nemesis of the president since the primaries in 1976, would have. He ran briefly in 1980. Carter likely would have lost to Reagan anyway. It is difficult to imagine a realistic scenario in which Carter won. So many things were against him. He didn’t convey much vision for a second term.

And Carter, whose campaign accused Kennedy of “panicking in a crisis” — a reference to the auto accident on Chappaquiddick island — is revealed in Ward’s book to have panicked in a crisis of credibility in the summer of 1979, according to his close friend Bert Lance. Overwhelmed by the demands of the presidency, he mysteriously and impulsively went on a 10-day retreat at Camp David, after which he suddenly fired most of his cabinet. This raised many public doubts.

Ward does a workmanlike job of recreating the conflict by reviewing journalistic archives, books and transcripts by the principal players, and interviews, including with President Carter. He doesn’t really offer much of a new perspective on the fight, however, for those of us who remember it well, except for reinforcing the political science theory that Carter and Kennedy were pulled apart by historical and cultural forces much larger than themselves. Every few decades, American political parties undergo major realignments as the political marketplace changes. It leads to a one-term presidency every 24 to 28 years or so.

From a historical perspective, any president elected in 1976 was probably doomed to defeat in 1980 by forces beyond his control: high inflation combined with high unemployment, and the Iran hostage crisis. If Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan won in 1976, as they almost did, they would have been perceived as failed presidents in 1980, and that might have opened the way for a “new Democrat.” But probably not a big government New Dealer like Ted Kennedy. It took the Democrats 12 years, until 1992, to adjust to the new political marketplace, winning with Southern moderates Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

My bet is that the same thing will happen to one of the major parties in 2020. A stunning defeat will lead to years in the political wilderness, and some much-need soul-searching.

Related:

• Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Lessons From History for Trump and Democrats (Yahoo News).
• How Ted Kennedy’s ’80 Challenge Broke the Democratic Party, NPR.
• Camelot’s End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party” (2019)
• The Humiliating Handshake and Near Fist-Fight that Broke the Democratic Party (Politico.com)
• The Last Time a Powerful Politician Challenged a President of his Own Party (Vanity Fair)
• Memo to Jimmy Carter: Kennedy Did Not Sabotage Health Care Reform
• Boston Globe review: The End of Camelot and the Era of FDR.
• See my piece, “The Seven Phases of American Political Party Realignments and What’s Next.”
• “Eastern liberal establishment.“