1972: McCarthy as Dem nominee instead of McGovern

[OSR stands with Israel]

How many states would he win:


I can only think of 3: MA , MN and maybe RI

[Fuzzy Bear]

McCarthy would have never been nominated; the way he went about business after HHH's nomination was off-putting to all Democrats.

If that had, indeed, happened, he may have lost in a 50 state landslide.  This is a guy that ran a 4th party candidacy that almost caused Jimmy Carter to lose New York.  This is a guy that endorsed Reagan in 1980.  He was an erratic politician who had little interest in the nitty gritty of politics.

McCarthy had been a professor of poetry at a college I attended.  He had left there a year before I entered college, but many of the faculty know him.  One professor, a world-renowned scholar on Africa, stated that McCarthy seemed to equate poetry to politics all the time.  She considered him an unrealistic dreamer with a limited attention span.  I have always believed that assessment of McCarthy; the anti-war movement needed mature political leadership, but he responded to this by taking a powder form politics; he opted to not run for re-election, did poorly running in 1972, and left the Democratic Party after the 1972 election.  This isn't the stuff of a guy who's going to take on the 1972 Democratic Party establishment and win.