Democratic Primaries

Btw, even as a kid, I wasn't foolish enough to really believe Jimmy Carter's populist "reform candidate" claims that Democrats were corrupt and needed an "outsider" to clean them up. But I'd never run into his ilk before and had no idea that his "grassroots reform" candidacy was a very standard ploy for power seekers who couldn't get anyone who knew them to write even a token check. A strategy Sanders copied almost point by point 40 years later.

In our defense we didn't have the internet to research then, but I have no excuse that I managed to have no idea he was actually economically a small-government conservative who went to war against his fellow Democrats over that, not their supposed "corruption." When it came down to it, I voted happily and cluelessly for him.

What came next was not the exciting period of change we'd been promised (but not examined the details of). We instead had a disastrously failed one-term administration even though we had a Democratic president and Democratic majorities in both the house and senate! They'd hoped to make big things happen, and instead, with a president implacably hostile to their progressive goals and determined to shrink government, that administration's legacy was ending the New Deal era with a whimper. And I was one of the voters responsible for trashing a truly magnificent opportunity. A lot like what happened in 2016, in fact.

Who could have known, though? Those who'd seen Carter's type before of course and weren't fooled by him, not that it occurred to me to ask any of them.