It depends on what you mean by that.
(Note: I was not even born, but I've read and McCarthy is quite the fascinating figure)
Eugene McCarthy was the John McCain 2000 of his day, the original Democratic maverick. McCarthy basically ran in 1968 solely because nobody else would run against LBJ. He tried to get any number of Democrats to run - most notably Bobby Kennedy. He was a historian and scholar, Catholic, aloof, and he didn't light the world on fire with his rhetoric.
But he considered the Vietnam War to be immoral and somebody MUST stop it. He ran as a martyr, a man who said he was "willing, not wanting" to be President. He was told there was a popular grass roots movement on college campuses opposed to the draft that was anyone's for the taking. When nobody else stepped up, McCarthy did.
It is usually forgotten that he actually LOST the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Well, sort of. He ran against LBJ and lost, 49-42. The problem was that he was expected to get creamed (his early polls showed him getting no more than 11 percent of the vote - only 60 days before the primary). When you added the Republican write-ins (Nixon vs Rockefeller on that side), McCarthy got the most votes.
And literally HOURS after McCarthy wounded LBJ, here came Bobby Kennedy, opportunistic and entitled schmuck, to suddenly grab the nomination he said nobody could be LBJ for. McCarthy's supporters were the long-hairs, the hippies, the students opposed to the draft, but he didn't really have much in common with them. McCarthy had no "real" organization, it was a cluster of loosely affiliated folks with a common goal to end the war with McCarthy as the horse. McCarthy - and George Wallace - were the prime beneficiaries of RFK's assassination. (Note to history: the myth that RFK would have won the nomination had he lived needs to be retired; under the 1968 rules, Humphrey wins anyway). McCarthy was the principal alternative to Humphrey, Johnson's Veep who was viewed as a guy who would continue LBJ's path.
But McCarthy was not the kind of guy who was even a minimally "good" politician, he was a history professor. And he undid himself pre-Convention with some dazzling displays of incompetence. He actually said out loud he was contemplating going to the Paris peace talks over Vietnam, something you just don't do (e.g. let the enemy play the current admin against the future one) or even say. Then Russia invaded Czechoslovakia and he dismissed it as "hardly a major crisis." The Southern delegations were ready to reverse the old Northern Democratic demand for "a loyalty oath" fo "whoever the nominee was," and McCarthy threatened to hold his own Convention.
In his favor, however, let me note that McCarthy tried to STOP any contributing to the Convention riots that happened in the streets of Chicago that year. He openly vetoed any plans to bring the mobs of students to Chicago (Allard Lowenstein was behind this "genius" idea). But McCarthy (along with Richard Goodwin - Doris Kearns's husband btw) proposed a plank to the Convention demanding the "unconditional withdrawal" and "unconditional end to all bombings" in Vietnam.
Can you imagine the carnage or problems if McCarthy had actually won the nomination or - worse - the Presidency? Even RFK pointed out that you couldn't take a position of unilateral surrender BEFORE you even took office because at that point you had no leverage.
Finally, McCarthy was undone by the fact the old school pols felt he had violated one of the inviolable rules of politics and made Nixon's potential victory that much easier, so they wouldn't forgive him or nominate him. Meanwhile, his own supporters bolted when the name of Ted Kennedy was floated as a nominee. (Remember - this was the last time Conventions and NOT primaries selected the nominees).
McCarthy did something else you don't see nowadays - he refused to endorse Humphrey until way late in the election. His reason? It was McCarthy's supporters who got beaten by the Chicago police (at the order of Mayor Daley) and not one word of condemnation towards the police by Humphrey or anyone else. I'm not gonna argue McCarthy was right or wrong but the man was an enigma to put it mildly.
Incidentally, in later life McCarthy would actually vote FOR Ronald Reagan and take some positions favorable to Pat Buchanan - most notably "protecting the border."
Bernie Sanders is pretty much what the Democratic Party has been since 1972. The ones willing to be honest about it - McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis - all got smoked. Carter won because the Bernie Sanders Socialist vote was divided among 11 other candidates (is this sounding familiar?). Clinton won because: a) he was a helluva candidate; b) the big guns (Cuomo most notably) stayed out of the race because Bush 1991 was unbeatable; c) 12 years out of power in the White House gave some Democrats a streak of pragmatism (Clinton's positions on environment, the death penalty, and even 'a middle class tax cut' would never have survived nominations prior to 1992).
And Obama had no record to speak of. It is indeed ironic that after nearly eight years of the most progressive President since LBJ, the progressives view Obama as too conservative on some things - a truly laughable notion. But then again this is how it is with TRUE BELIEVERS, whether left or right (it always amuses me that it's only the right who gets mocked for this - apparently, some of them forgot the Lincon Arkansas Senate election of 2010, which exposed left-wing correctness as well).
Sanders as a nominee would be a disaster once his positions get known. The problem for Hillary is that those positions are more representative of the Democrats who vote in primaries than they are of the mainstream populace. It's why Hillary is drifting to radically to the Left. Plus, even though he's old, he's a "new face" to the rest of the country.
The one thing a Trump-Sanders election would do - it would be ENDLESS comedy here on TideFans. Seriously.
(I don't care who the Democratic nominee is, I just don't want Hillary as my President; I'll even take Bernie over her).
