I think this is one of the first pieces, blog or otherwise, coming from a political commentator (historians may have a different take) that I think accurately reflects on the 1972 election — and not just because he echoes something I’ve written before.
Basically, George McGovern was going to lose to Richard Nixon — nearly any Democrat would have. But McGovern faced, as Matt Yglesias points out, a concerted effort on the part of his own party to undermine his campaign. McGovern was “the only Democratic Party presidential nominee to not secure the AFL-CIO’s endorsement,” a snub that came not “because of any failure to support the labor movement on key labor issues.”
He had a solid pro-labor record, and a very solid record of support for the concerns of working people. But the AFL-CIO leadership, including its disastrous president George Meany, was dominated by cultural conservatives and Cold War hawks who decided to screw McGovern over.
He calls this “an aspect of American political history that’s not well-understood.”
McGovern would have lost the election no matter what. Frankly, nobody was going to beat an incumbent President amidst the strong economy of 1972. And you certainly weren’t going to do it by nominating an unusually left-wing candidate. But a big reason McGovern did so extremely poorly was that huge swathes of the progressive establishment — including organized labor — just flat-out refused to support him, often for very bad reasons. Under those circumstances, it’s just impossible to put up a respectable showing.
This 1972 story from Time outlines the kind of things that were at stake during the Democratic primary that year and the convention and just how angry and scared the party’s old guard was of the new McGovern voter. I think there is some evidence, as well, that McGovern was surprised by how he was adopted by younger voters and that he never expected to find himself on the wrong side of this dispute. But he was, with
a stop-McGovern coalition led by Arkansas’ Wilbur Mills continued its last-minute efforts. A small Washington group of strategists bent on heading off the South Dakotan included Humphrey Aide Stan Bregman, Muskie’s Berl Bernhard, Wallace’s Billy Joe Camp and the AFL-CIO’s Al Barkan.
Acrimony. At his summer house in Maryland, McGovern tended his swimming pool and delegate arithmetic. At one point he paid a second courtesy call on George Wallace, presumably to feel out the Alabaman’s intentions. Occasionally McGovern spoke apocalyptically of the consequences if his nomination were “literally stolen in a naked power play.” He did not discount running as a third-party candidate. Said McGovern: “I don’t think people have fully assessed how the party could destroy itself if the reform process is denied after all that has happened in American politics these past few years.”
Many regulars, humbled by the McGovern young and suddenly astonished by their own impotence, already see ruination for the party. St. Louis Dentist Martin Greenberg, for four years the Democratic chairman of St. Louis County, found himself outnumbered by McGovernites in the spring caucuses and defeated for delegate. Last week he contemplated the prospect of a McGovern nomination and said dolefully: “Unless the party comes to its senses, it will destroy all of us. The acrimony and dissension will be suicidal. The disaster this fall will not only be felt on the national ticket but on statewide Democratic tickets as well.”
The party was badly damaged, though I would argue that it may have been inevitable, growing out of the divisiveness of the preceding decade and the recalcitrance of the old guard. Not that a public reconciliation between McGovern and the anti-McGovern forces would have changed the results of the November election. At best, it may have narrowed Nixon’s victory margin.
Hank Kalet 