Best possible scenario for a successful (or better if not successful) McGovern run?

what would be the absolute best case scenario for a McGovern victory? If not a victory, then at least a close race?

I'm not looking for a better 1972, I'm looking for any year where he could've plausibly won the nomination and then what would be the best ticket for him to make, what would be the easiest ticket for him to beat?

Bonus points if you can provide a map
 
Assuming McGovern won the 1960 Senate race, he could be in contention for the VP nod under either JFK or LBJ in 1964. Either way, it puts him in a good spot for 1968.

1972 could be winnable, but it's difficult. To start Nixon off on a bad note, in 1968 he loses the PV and only wins because he gets a deal with Wallace in the EC. First, you'd need Wallace to run as a third party in the general election, McGovern picks a another running mate or the Eagleton story doesn't come out, and Agnew's shady scandals are leaked to the press. If it was master campaigner HHH, it would be a comfortable win, but with the anti-McGovern views you'd need one more heave. For example, something like the proposed firebombing of the Brookings Institute happens.

If HHH or Wallace beat him in the primaries and lost the general election (which HHH actually would have somewhat of a chance of winning), McGovern would be the natural frontrunner for 1976. Have him win the primaries, and he'll likely win unless Watergate isn't butterflied.

Also in 1976, HHH considered making a "buyers remorse" ticket with McGovern but the plan fell through as a result of HHH's cancer. If we have the cancer delayed, and HHH/McGovern wins the general election, HHH will likely resign or die in office (the cancer sadly couldn't be avoided). McGovern may have a chance in 1980 if he avoids the same mistakes as Carter, plus he gets the sympathy vote.

If a Republican wins in 1976 and McGovern doesn't get the nomination in 1972/1976, 1980 would probably be his moment to shine. Assuming the bad times of 1977-1981 happen under this Republican, McGovern could easily become a left-wing Reagan.

@Sabot Cat did a very good wikibox about a McGovern win in 1984 after a recesssion as a result of Volker not being Fed chair. A brief bubble means Mondale, Hart, and Glenn stay out leaving only McGovern and Jesse Jackson. The general election is a blowout, with Reagan only winning Utah.

1992 could also be a chance for a McGovern win. McGovern considered running that year after almost everyone else declined. Say Clinton, Harkin, and Wilder stay out as a result of a Bush surge. McGovern beats a field of unknowns, and wins the GE after Perot decides to endorse him instead of reenter the race.
 
@Yes is working on a McGovern 1972 timeline, you may want to check out some of the planning in his test thread.
 
Well just to drop by and clarify ;)....

I am doing exactly that, and it's intended as sort of the first chapter for opening up a longer cycle of world-building that runs roughly the course of McGovern's OTL lifetime (that is, through 2012 if it's fully-fleshed form ever takes shape, "book one" which is the McGovern part is very much book-length unto itself the way the drafts are shaping up.) But yes, it starts there. And it is intended throughout, even if there are definitely dramatically interesting points and places, as "hard AH" (in the same sense as "hard sci-fi" or "hard fantasy"), in other words Handwavium kept to an absolute minimum. There's a POD that's basically an... amplification of events from OTL from the end of May through June of 1972, rolling together somewhat different versions of things that did happen with what you'd probably call the real, motive POD which of course did not happen but easily could have given some of the giddy heights gamed out at the peak of Nixonian dirty tricks in 1971-72. Even then, with a series of events that follow and for the most part break favorable to McGovern, he gets the big job by his eye teeth with a plurality of the vote not much larger than Nixon's in 1968. The '72 cycle can be cracked, like most can (although '84 is damned near impregnable without significant PODs at least a year or more before, and with staying power), within the rough bounds of that "hard AH" concept but it's a tough one. Very tough. Indeed I puzzled over it and a few other variations on the theme for actual years (not loads, but a few) before our own distinguished @Gorrister showed me the key in a list he wrote -- it was the cosmic epiphany for what I'd been mulling over and launched about 65k words of backstory and planning and universe-building, I owe him a hell of a lot.

But, that's a significant POD within the 1972 cycle which is not quite what the OP asks for. I'd say the other best option is on these lines: McGovern runs, gathers a head of steam, but Humphrey gets in much earlier and has the wit to mobilize unions every single place he can in the caucus process -- experienced shop stewards and executives of union locals understand parliamentary processes like caucuses very well and would be the best placed to parry McGovern's grassroots organizing. Then McG sticks to his guns but loses California very narrowly, or even better loses the adjudication on the winner-takes-all award of delegates and is displaced by parliamentary delegate challenges in Miami that very narrowly squeak things out for HHH. But he's had to do deals with Wallace and other things that make him look, well, desperate, as he was in 1972, it was the low point of a great man's (Humphrey's) career as he stared at what he saw -- rightly, it turned out -- as death staring him in the face by way of the family history with bladder cancer and lunged wildly at the White House one last time. So in this case, Humphrey gets in earlier, more effectively, and actually succeeds in blocking McGovern. It infuriates the new left, a new generation of grassroots union organizers separate from Meany and company, a lot of minority political leaders, and others who came to rally round McGovern's banner in the primaries. Now add to that, after Johnson's death, that somebody gets in close enough to Walt Rostow that they're able to leak "the X File" (Johnson's bound manila folder containing all the gory details of surveillance and bugging to do with the Chennault Affair, when Nixon broke the Logan Act to put the kibosh on the Paris Talks in the autumn of 1968) during the window where Watergate is going down in all its sordid glory. So by 1975 or so after Nixon's resignation, and possible prosecution under the Logan Act (which could end up going nowhere, the Logan Act tries to do the right thing but it's dreadfully vague and it's quite possible that even a SCOTUS that thought Nixon was a crook would kick out the verdict because Logan is bad law), it looks very much like (1) HHH was a schnook to an honorable man in 1972 from sheer lust for the big chair and (2) like McGovern was right about damned near everything, and ITTL was spared all the disasters from Eagleton on that are what really made two generations of observers write off his campaign as a wreck, so his rightness and not his campaign's screw-ups in the autumn is what sticks in the memory. (Of course that just makes the right hate him more but thanks to Tricky Dick the Great Polarization of modern American politics is already well underway and the hard right are never going to vote for McGovern anyway.)

So he re-launches in 1976, having secured reelection to the Senate much as he did IOTL riding the '74 anti-Watergate wave. Carter almost certainly runs too because Carter was determined to run. But in McGovern, untainted by OTL's autumn of '72 and seen as the wronged man from the last cycle, this time the liberals of 1976 have their champion. And a dying Humphrey, afflicted by a guilty conscience (he eventually made peace with McGovern for striking one of the first flurries of blows during the California primary, trying to paint his fellow South Dakota native and old Senate friend as a wild-eyed hippie lover who would tax the middle-class til they bled out and hand the launch codes to Moscow), backs his play once Birch Bayh and a couple of other players stumble because they were just not very good at understanding how to run a presidential bid in the modern-primaries era. The second person in either major party to really understand how it was done was Jimmy Carter -- but the first was George McGovern. He's in Iowa and New Hampshire blow for blow and as other candidates drop both the liberals and many of the unions rally around McGovern. McGovern probably ends up picking either Carter or Florida's Reubin Askew (Dale Bumpers made no secret of not wanting an elected job in the executive branch and didn't bring the electoral votes of Carter or Askew) to be his running mate to mend fences with the South, and after a campaign like that probably goes ahead and chooses Carter although Askew is arguably the better pick (much less arch and more personable, and at that point in their respective careers Askew is what Carter is still in part just playing at in 1976 -- few men in the 20th Century have been so changed for the better by the Presidency as Jimmy Carter, it was just at terrible cost to the Democratic Party.) And the two of them -- smiling transformative moralists from different versions of middle America -- lay in to Ford or whoever Nixon's picked as VP. That's probably the best possible scenario for McGovern: a heroic "almost" in '72 and a McGovern/Carter ticket in '76 riding Watergate remorse to victory.

Anyway, that's what I got :)
 
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. . . The '72 cycle can be cracked, . . .
What if George emphasizes economics and is matter-of-fact about foreign policy?

Of course, every candidate tries to keep the focus on the big issues, and is almost inevitably drawn off by a flurry of little issues.
 
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