Presidency of Jimmy Carter a party platform calling for the establishment of a national health insurance program, Kennedy refused to concede. He instead called for an "open convention", in which delegates would be free to vote for the candidate of their choice regardless of the result in the primaries. Carter's allies defeated Kennedy's maneuverings at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, and Carter and Vice President Mondale won re-nomination. Despite Kennedy's defeat, he had mobilized the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which would give Carter only weak support in the general election. The 1980 Republican presidential primaries quickly developed into a two-man contest between
Alignment (Israel) Sabbath on an Israeli Air Force base. Rabin resigned over the former incident, and Peres took over as Prime Minister just a short time before the next elections. Shortly before the election, the Alignment party suffered another major blow when Rabin announced that US President Jimmy Carter supported the Israeli idea of defensive borders. Peres led the party into the 1977 elections, which proved to be a historical turning point in Israeli political history: For the first time the left-wing were defeated. The Alignment won only 24.6% of the vote, a decrease of over a third, and picked up just