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Suppose that George McGovern, a very different kind of liberal than his predecessors, failed to gain the momentum needed to win his party's nomination in 1972. How that happens isn't particularly important. That means the nomination likely goes to Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, Ed Muskie or Henry Jackson. Any one of those men is likely to be more friendly with labor unions and the traditional Democratic base than the social justice-oriented McGovern. While Nixon will probably still win re-election that Fall, I'm interested in the knock-on effects on the Democratic Party later down the road. Would social justice become as central to modern liberalism without their man winning the nomination? Without the labor movement's feud with their party's nominee, would Democrats shift as far to the right economically as they did OTL in the '80s and '90s? Without that activist takeover, how are various reform movements like LGBT rights and feminism affected? Do they try to do more outside the Democratic Party apparatus, or do they continue to affect change from the inside?
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