Paul V McNutt
Banned
You can make it even more interesting, have it a total round two. h Have Wallace avoid getting shot. Id say Humphrey 41 percent Nixon 51 percent Wallace 7 percent.
You would need a POD at Chicago where HHH doesn't allow his delegates to vote for the motion creating what became McGovern-Fraser. It was done as a sop to McCarthyites, had anyone known what would eventually happen... insta-veto. Even during the process no one realized what was happening until it was too late. That said how does HHH create an effective contrast on the war since for most of '68 their positions weren't terribly dissimilar?
Agreed. But it couldn't be a real New Lefterif they waned to win and were assuming they did.So if the Democratic machine had just been able to put up Humphrey as a candidate in 1972 with no ground campaigning, they would have outraged a small but significant part of their base and lost a few percentage points to a "Peace Party" or something. This could cost them the election, if it was close.
In this scenario, Humphrey would need someone with impressive anti-war credentials as the VP candidate - not sure who, though. McCarthy and McGovern probably wouldn't agree as they'd been too antagonized by the party establishment. Mike Gravel, maybe? He was a political newcomer but had gained some notoriety for reading the entire transcript of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record.
Agreed. But it couldn't be a real New Lefterif they waned to win and were assuming they did.
The big question is who does he pick for the No.2 slot?Blocking a McGovern nomination on the first-ballot is obviously a pre-condition of a brokered convention at which Humphrey could emerge as the consensus nominee.
To stop McGovern on the first-ballot would require (1) the McGovern challenge to the Mayor Daley-controlled Illinois delegation fails, and either (2)(a) the anti-McGovern challenge to the California winner-take-all rule actually succeeds (McGovern won the California primary, beating Humphrey 44%-39%) so that Humphrey gets a proportional share of the delegates, or (2)(b) ITTL Humphrey won the California winner-take-all primary and beats back a McGovern challenge to the winner-take-all rule.
Nixon vs. Humphrey 2 in 1972 would obviously be a much closer contest than the Nixon landslide over McGovern in OTL.
Humphrey picked a liberal New England Senator (Ed Muskie) in 1968 and lost. My guess is that, if he won the nomination in 1972, Humphrey would take a serious look at a New South governor such as Jimmy Carter of Georgia or Askew of Florida or perhaps Senator Lloyd Bentson of Texas.
Humphrey picked a liberal New England Senator (Ed Muskie) in 1968 and lost. My guess is that, if he won the nomination in 1972, Humphrey would take a serious look at a New South governor such as Jimmy Carter of Georgia or Askew of Florida or perhaps Senator Lloyd Bentson of Texas.
I'm not sure you could make the argument that Humphrey lost because of Muskie, or that Muskie was in any respect the crucial factor behind Humphrey's defeat in 1968, certainly Muskie's status as the front runner for the nomination before Nixon's dirty tricks took him out of contention suggests that the party did not blame him for that defeat and did not consider his nomination to have been a mistake.
That said, there might be a chance that Humphrey nominates a Southerner, on the other hand, something tells me that Humphrey is going to want a kind of consensus choice. That might be a southerner, it might not be, but I think Humphrey is going to want someone everyone can support. I think Humphrey is going to be cautious on the issue of the Vice Presidency. Now I don't know who the possible "consensus candidate" would be, so I can't say who would be a likely nominee here