Gore would likely have become president if not for naked political interference from the Supreme Court.)

Only Michael Dukakis, who defeated centrists Al Gore and Gary Hart and went on to lose to George H. W. Bush in 1988, was anywhere close to the party's left flank. Even then he still defeated Jesse Jackson in the primary, who was briefly tied with Dukakis on the strength of his "Rainbow Coalition" messaging about building up a cross-racial working class movement — which as Ryan Grim writes in his book We've Got People, inspired wild panic among the Democratic party elite, who professed absolute certainty that a left-wing black man could not possibly win.

The political function of "electability" is well demonstrated by the response to the consecutive losses in 1980, 1984,and 1988. Rather than discuss the possibility that perhaps the party should have gambled on Jackson — maybe his Rainbow Coalition could have paid dividends, and after all he couldn't have done worse than Dukakis — the party put up yet another moderate in the form of Bill Clinton, who finally won. And just as the McGovern loss was taken as proof positive that the left cannot win, the Clinton victories were taken as proof positive that only moderates can win — conveniently memory-holing the previous three consecutive losses.

Rahm Emanuel was pushing this line after 2006 as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and claimed triumphant victory when his handpicked pro-Iraq War moderates won multiple close elections in the wave election that year. But as Grim