Best Democratic Almost-President: George McGovern or Hubert Humphrey?
Based on these results:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=196728.0I think Humphrey was too anti-communist, he even thought of bringing back camps for "subversives."
So I vote for McGovern.
George Stanley McGovern (1922-2012)*WWII U.S. Air Force pilot in Europe, won a medal for saving his crew during a hazardous crash landing
*earned PhD and became a History professor before running for office
*inspiration from FDR and Adlai Stevenson converted him from a Republican to a Democrat
*Congressman ('57-'61) and Senator ('63-'81), of South Dakota
*cared a lot about ending world hunger, was the U.S. ambassador to the UN on hunger issues, and chairman of a select senate committee on food issues
*ran against the Vietnam War in 1968 as a presidential candidate
*helped created the modern primary system, taking power away from political insiders
*was nominated for the 1972 presidential election, had issues with his running mate having had been treated for depression in the past (though Ted Kennedy was his first choice as running mate but turned McGovern down)
*lost in landslide to Nixon (who was subsequently resigned over his people spying on the McGovern campaign at Watergate), many usual Democratic allies refused to support him (like Southern Democrats and the AFL-CIO)
*his campaign was on ending the Vietnam War, amnesty for draft dodgers, a 37% reduction in military spending over 3 years, and a negative income tax to replace the welfare bureaucracy
*he ran again in 1984, and was praised as the "liberal conscience" but wasn't treated seriously
*considered another run in 1992 but decided against it
*called for Bush and Cheney to be impeached over the Iraq War, called them worse than Nixon
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (1911-1978)*pharmacist, became a local supervisor of the WPA when FDR was President, became state director of the war service program and assistant director for the War Manpower Commission, then became a professor of political science and founded the DFL in Minnesota and the anticommunist Americans for Democratic Action group
*Mayor of Minneapolis, U.S. Senator of Minnesota, Vice President under Lyndon Johnson
*Ran for President after LBJ refused to run in 1968, lost to Nixon after major protests disrupted the Democratic convention due to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
*was the lead author for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, encouraged the Democratic Party to adopt desegregation years before that, helped initiate the Peace Corps
*sponsored a clause in the McCarran Internal Security Act for the creation of concentration camps for "subversives"
Poll
