Senator George McGovern Announces Antiwar Run for President

On January 18, 1971 George McGovern announced his candidacy for president.  His campaign was probably the most left-leaning campaign under the flag of one of the two main parties ever (until Bernie Sanders's 2016 campaign, anyhow.)  McGovern promised to withdraw all US forces from Vietnam within sixty days of his inauguration and give amnesty to all draft resisters. He ultimately won the Democratic nomination, despite the best efforts of the centrist/conservative wing of the party.
Here is the text of his announcement:
http://www.4president.org/speeches/mcgovern1972announcement.htm

Unfortunately, he would lose the election to Richard Nixon in November 1972.

Remembering Another Shitty Election Night--November 7, 1972

After Trump won the election, I was asked if the 2016 results were the most distressing I had ever seen.  I told them that it was actually the 1972 election that held that honor.....with the 1980 Reagan victory over Carter the next.  I may have to rearrange those rankings, with the 2016 results somewhere in that top three....
Here's a remembrance of George McGovern and that horrible night...

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/mcgovern-anti-war-candidacy-us-cultural-landmark

Norman Mailer and the 1972 Political Conventions

Two people come to my mind when the subject of writing about US major party political conventions--Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer.  As the 2016 convention season closes down (thankfully), I thought I would post this 1972 piece from the New York Review of Books (when it was a radical liberal broadsheet instead of the neoliberal rag it has become) on Nixon at the 1972 GOP convention in Miami.  It is excerpted from his book on that year's conventions titled St. George and the Godfather.  
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1972/11/02/the-genius/

McGovern and the 1972 Democratic Campaign

Draw your own conclusions....

From Britannica.com :
"In the primaries that followed, McGovern continued to build up a lead in convention delegates. He was even more successful in the nonprimary states, where his devoted followers made certain that delegate-selection caucuses voted his way. But that success overrode the much more basic process that was taking place: the Democratic Party was tearing itself apart. One reason lay in the work of the commission that carried McGovern’s name. Founded in the wake of the disastrous and violent Democratic National Convention in 1968, the McGovern Commission put forth guidelines for the selection of delegates. They were designed to open the party’s deliberations to more young people, toAfrican Americans, and to women. The guidelines worked, but they also functioned to diminish the participation of many longtime Democratic Party workers. Prominent national Democrats found themselves in some cases unable to find a spot on their own states’ delegations.

McGovern’s rise made many Democrats nervous. Some were worried about his antiwar views, while others thought that he went against traditional Democratic principles. For many, unfairly or not, McGovern came to symbolize a candidacy of radical children, rioters, marijuana smokers, draft dodgers, and hippies. With the California primary approaching, Humphrey tried to bring all the objections to McGovern together in a last attempt to save the nomination for himself. He excoriated his old Senatefriend for his expensive ideas on welfare and his desire to cut the defense budget. It almost worked. Humphrey closed fast in May and early June, but the McGovern organization held on. McGovern won all of California’s giant delegation, and he beat Humphrey 44.3 to 39.1 percent in the popular vote. The margin was not as large as McGovern had hoped for, and the bitterness of the fight, together with the effectiveness of the Humphrey charges, had not been lost on the silent watchers at the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP).

here's the link to the page

http://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1972