Sometimes a Party Has to Sail Against the Wind

The open convention that wasn’t.

“The President is going to lose.”

That’s what the polls said, that’s what the headlines said, that’s what the members of his party said, that’s what his advisers said in quiet moments to one another—and maybe even what the President said to himself.

Inflation was high, gas prices were rising, the Middle East was in crisis, and his opponent who was loose on facts but high on charisma seemed unbeatable. What had occurred in the President’s single term mattered less than how the public perceived him. He had lost the confidence of the American people. The calm he had hoped to capture—the calm that he made the basis of his candidacy—hadn’t materialized. The chaos that had defined the prior years seemed to finally be crashing down.

The party was looking for a life preserver as the seas grew rougher. “We elected him—and we can de-select him,” said one Michigan congressman. This crisis in confidence came amid a brutally cold week when the party leaders gathered in Memphis in December 1978 for a rare midterm Democratic Convention. However, fearful of speaking too loudly, few came right out said the thing on everyone’s mind: President Jimmy Carter needed to go.

The party had abandoned its identity. For the prior 45 years, the Democratic Party had been the force behind social change in the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created the New Deal, transforming the United States government and its relationship to the American people. He had invested in a federal workforce, creating millions of jobs through the WPA amid the Great Depression, and created Social Security, the G.I. Bill, the establishment of a minimum wage, the abolition of child labor, and the right to collectively bargain. His philosophical heir, President Lyndon B. Johnson, had created Medicare, Medicaid, and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing Jim Crow, all in a term that had ended just a decade prior to that point.

However, Carter did not prioritize social welfare at all. In fact, he was a penny pincher. The man who had grown up in poverty on the plains of Georgia without running water believed a dollar saved was dollar earned. Acting on the advice of his pollster Pat Cadell, Carter leaned into the conservative movement that had grown under Nixon and would later blossom under Reagan. Cadell had advised him to “co-opt many of the [Republican] issue positions and to take away large chunks of their presidential coalition.” Carter had done so: he introduced no new social welfare, no healthcare, and no education bills; he let unions and factory jobs languish; he increased military spending (after promising not to); and he relaxed regulations to increase corporate profits.

But the belief in a federal government that could—and should—do more for its people was not dead. That much became clear when a healthcare panel began amid that dreary week in Memphis in December.

The room was packed, an unusual occurrence for a wonky, policy driven afternoon panel. The crowds hadn’t come to see Carter adviser, Stuart Eizenstat, or Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano—or even the panel’s moderator, the 32-year-old Governor Elect of Arkansas, Bill Clinton.

They had come to see Senator Ted Kennedy, who had grown up in opulence as the youngest of his clan between Hyannis Port, Palm Beach, Bronxville and London, who had been practically gifted a U.S. Senate seat for his 30^th birthday in 1962, and whose three older brothers had all been killed before he could say goodbye. In 1968, he had turned down the chance to be the Democratic nominee after his brother Robert was killed that summer. Then, the next year, his political life had been turned upside down when his own negligence helped lead to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne after he drunkenly got behind the wheel of a black Oldsmobile and drove the two of them into Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island. Kopechne drowned; Kennedy fled the scene. By the winter of 1978, he was 46 and like his party, he was adrift.

Speaking from Memphis, a city far removed from the halls of power in which Kennedy had lived his entire life, he lamented the rightward shift of his party. He advocated for a national health insurance plan, “the great unfinished business on the agenda of the Democratic Party.” He then told the crowd that his fight was personal—that he had endured tragedies both very public, and very private. He recalled seeing his 12-year-old son, Teddy Jr., run for a football the day before he had to bring him to Boston Children’s Hospital for a cancer operation that would remove more than half of his right leg. He recalled the pain he felt knowing it would be the last time his son would ever run free. He recalled roaming the halls of the hospital and speaking with parents whose sons and daughters faced similar fates, but whose lives hadn’t been as lucky, whose family members hadn’t been Ambassadors, Senators, and Presidents. His own son’s plight, he said, “would have bankrupted any average family in this nation.”

Then, as he looked over the crowd made up of Democrats, all of whom had basked in the leadership of his brothers, and many of whom who now winced as President Carter turned away toward a new agenda, Senator Kennedy tacked. “Sometimes a party must sail against the wind,” he warned. “We cannot afford to drift or lie at anchor. We cannot heel the call of those who say it is time to furl the sail.”

In an instant, the “Draft Kennedy” movement was born. Aides warned the President that “there is a greater chance we will lose the nomination than there is we will lose the general election.” During the summer of 1979, Carter’s approval rating had hit a historic low of 25%, the lowest in presidential history, as national polls indicated Kennedy would not only beat Carter in a primary by a 2:1 margin, but also beat Reagan 64% to 34%. As New York Magazine remarked, “Kennedy could become President without really trying.” The issue was, he didn’t really try. After officially announcing his candidacy in November 1979, things began to go off course.

In a CBS interview with Roger Mudd, Mudd asked Kennedy a simple question: why are you running for president? Remarkably, after a long pause, Kennedy couldn’t answer. The usually engaging Kennedy rambled, not even mentioning Carter or Reagan for that matter. Kennedy it seemed had retreated on campaign trail too, where 59% of interviewees found him distant. At the same time, Carter recovered. Just days prior to Kennedy’s announcement, American hostages were taken at the US embassy in Tehran—a month and half later, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Suddenly, Americans were looking to their President. By the end of January 1980, Carter’s approval rating had more than doubled to 58%.

As the primaries started, Kennedy’s campaign became a disaster. He lost Iowa and nearby New Hampshire and Maine, then Florida by a 2:1 margin, and Illinois, where he had been favored. But suddenly—as the crises abroad continued away from the headlines and inflation crept back up—the Kennedy many saw in Memphis began to reappear. He won the New York primary in a landslide, then Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Mexico, New Jersey, and the delegate rich state of California. He was putting together the same coalition the Democratic Party had depended on for decades, which his brother Robert sought in 1968: liberals, minorities and blue-collar conservatives. By the end of the primary season in June, he had collected 1,239 delegates to Carter’s 1,964—the majority of which he gained late in the game.

Kennedy’s team tried for an open convention, but Carter controlled the Democratic National Committee and his aides knew the math: the president’s numbers were tanking again and if given the chance, his delegates may well dump him. They offered Kennedy the chance to help draft the party platform and a primetime speaking role at the convention. He accepted.

That night—August 12, 1980—inside Madison Square Garden, the lights of Camelot glowed one last time. The lights of liberalism—of the New Deal, of the New Frontier, of the Great Society—glowed one last time. Senator Kennedy pressed for his cause, and that “the demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government.” But still, he mourned the “closed factories and the stalled assembly lines” across the nation, he mourned for those who yearned for a hope that, as he expressed, “I have felt it in their handshakes, [and] I saw it in their faces.”

But still—Kennedy could do the math too. He knew that he was never going be the nominee in 1980, or ever. He knew that Carter would lose, that Reagan would win, and worst of all, he knew that the wave of conservatism, both in his party and across the country, had defeated the prior half century’s wisdom.

Still, he hoped for a new day—that “someday, long after this convention, long after the signs come down and the crowds stop cheering, and the bands stop playing, may it be said of our campaign that we kept the faith.”

He continued, “For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

In 2024, that dream is back on the ballot and with it, the chance to solidify four years of work that has sought to restore the promise the Democratic Party made so many decades ago. Though the process has been unconventional, and though the seas ahead may be rough…Well, sometimes a party has to sail against the wind.

Sources:

Stanley, Timothy Randolph. “Sailing Against the Wind: A Reappraisal of Edward Kennedy’s Campaign for the 1980 Democratic Party Presidential Nomination.” Journal of American Studies. August, 2009.

Ward, Jon. Camelot’s End. 2009.