Hello again, I'm Norman Alney, and this is To the Point.

We're recording this before another two days of televised cattle calls for 20 Democrats

who want to be president of the United States, and we're looking for commentary.

It will still be useful even after CNN cuts to the final commercial.

Charlie Sykes is a never-Trump conservative with a warning about bold ideas he describes as politically risky.

Stephen Kinsner is a liberal-leaning columnist focused on the lack of bold ideas, not just on the part of candidates, but by the moderators as well.

We'll start with Charlie. He's a podcaster and editor of the bulwark, an online political

magazine. Good to have you with us. Good to be back. You have a warning about 1972 in a recent

column. Tell us what you're talking about. Well, I mean, I understand the difficulty of making historical comparisons, but I stumbled

across a U.S. Times editorial from July 13th, 1971. So basically the same time period that

we're in right now before the 2020 election. And I was trying to get an

idea of what did the media, what did Democrats think about their prospects in 1972? And this

is the first paragraph of the New York Times article. It's headlined, the Democratic outlook.

The growing number of would-be Democratic presidential candidates is a testament to the party's confidence that it can defeat President Nixon for re-election.

The unusual variety of these candidates in experienced style and convictions is a testimony to the party's traditional diversity.

Well, of course, as we all know, a year and a half later, Richard Nixon won 520 electoral votes,

about 62% of the popular vote, a massive landslide. So I'm just sort of raising, you know,

the possibility that candidates matter and that if the Democratic Party moves too far from the center,

moves too far away from the electorate, that they could have a repeat of a 1972.

Now, obviously, there's a lot of flaws in that analogy, but candidates matter, and there is a vital center in American politics,

and I think either party runs a risk of electoral disaster if they ignore that fact.

Let's not turn away yet from 1972.

...