Was there anyone who could have beaten Nixon in 1972?

[darklordoftech]

If not, who would have done the best against Nixon?

[Sir Mohamed]

NOTA.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

People say that Muskie could have done well.  Wallace certainly would have won more states than McGovern.

[Arson Plus]

Humphrey, or Muskie.

[bagelman]

Nixon

[Fuzzy Bear]

Probably not. 

No matter how I look at it, Nixon had the country on the issues.  Nixon was who he was, but he was good at having his finger on the pulse of the voters.  It was a time where the Southern states were, truly, in the process of leaving for good, but the liberal New England states weren't coming in to replace them, and California, the big prize, was just out of reach.

[538Electoral]

Yeah no.

[MIKESOWELL]

Maybe Wallace would have weakened his strength in the South had he not been shot, but no one would have beaten Nixon that year.

[brucejoel99]

Humphrey, or perhaps Scoop Jackson.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

Scoop Jackson would have a chance I guess, but no other D would have really had a shot IMO.

[dw93]

Nope. Humphrey, Muskie, or Jackson would've made it closer, but Nixon still wins. The economy recovered (or in reality was rigged up nicely) by 1972, Nixon had gone to China, and the Democrats were still divided and damaged fro 1968. Nixon was Reagan 1984 levels of unbeatable, if not more so.

[mianfei]

Probably not. 

No matter how I look at it, Nixon had the country on the issues.  Nixon was who he was, but he was good at having his finger on the pulse of the voters. It was a time where the Southern states were, truly, in the process of leaving for good, but the liberal New England states weren't coming in to replace them, and California, the big prize, was just out of reach.

Actually, excluding McGovern’s only wins in Massachusetts and D.C. the liberal New England states were scarcely less hostile to McGovern than to Goldwater. The other Northeastern states were even more anti-McGovern, notably New Jersey.

Ever since reading The Emerging Republican Majority, I have viewed the McGovern candidacy as a fatally flawed attempt to recapture the progressive coalition La Follette gained in 1924, and to combine that with the Northeast. The insurmountable barrier was that the Plains and Interior Plateau – Kevin Phillips’ “old Progressive West” – had completely deserted the Democratic Party over civil rights before the white South did. As Phillips pointed out, the interior West’s interests are utterly opposite to those of black and other nonwhite Americans, and McGovern could do nothing to alter that fact.

Whilst I do not think any Democratic candidate could have beaten Nixon with a good economy and progress on ending the Vietnam War, a more moderate candidate (which Phillips expected) might have held the Northeast but not doing better elsewhere. For subsequent elections, that latter phrase constitutes big trouble. If the Democrats became a regional party limited to the Northeast and Hawaii – which is actually highly consistent with America’s natural resource base as those resource-poor states would be expected to differ politically from the resource-rich remainder of the nation – they would lose the ability to exploit discontent with or splits within a majority Republican Party controlling the Heartland, South and continental West. That policy could have left the Democrats out of national power for decades and losing state and federal legislative power in the middle 1970s rather than middle to late 1990s.

[NewYorkExpress]

No.

Eagleton might have done okay, had his depression (which really shouldn't have been a campaign issue- we've had Presidents both before and since with worse mental health problems) not come out.

[Annihilation]

Maybe if Bobby Kennedy had lived or Chappaquidick never happened

[Snazzrazz Mazzlejazz]

Nixon

[Alcibiades]

Muskie would have done the best (as evidenced by the fact that the Nixon campaign felt the need to ratf#ck him with the Canuck letter) and kept it reasonably close, but still would have lost.

[Alben Barkley]

No.

And I don’t know why people are saying Humphrey when he couldn’t even beat Nixon in 1968 when he was much more vulnerable.

The fact that Nixon could not have lost that year just adds to the irony of how unnecessary Watergate and all the other ratf—king was. Guy was so paranoid and pessimistic he couldn’t even see when he was clearly ahead. I guess in a way you could say he was the original doomer.

[Fuzzy Bear]

President Richard M. Nixon (CA)/Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew (ME) - Republican  52%
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (MN)/Sen. John Tunney (CA) - Democrat  46%

There would have been no "Democrats for Nixon" campaign on the level they had in 1972.  HHH would have had the support of all of the non-Southern wings of the party, and the Southern conservatives of the Democratic Party wouldn't have been scared to death.

There would have been no labor walkout of the Democratic Party.  George Meany and the unions would have supported HHH.  This would have allowed the Democrats to hold NY, CT. RI and PA.

The conventional wisdom of the time was that California was going to be the battleground in 1972.  Tunney was a young Californian whose 1970 win was the inspiration for the move The Candidate.  Tunney was a guy who was popular whose loss in 1976 to S. I. Hayakawa was rather baffling.  He was antiwar, balancing HHH.  

At the time I thought Muskie was the strongest candidate.  He was hyped back then as much as Hillary Clinton was hyped in 2014.  I remember a news show on New Years Eve in 1970 where CBS News correspondent Eric Severeid predicted that Muskie would be the next President.  Many people were baffled when Muskie's campaign sputtered, but in retrospect, Muskie peaked in 1968 and was over-hyped.  Yes, Nixon pulled a dirty trick on him, but it was the kind of thing people come back from.  If Muskie had magically been given the Democratic nomination he'd have been one of the biggest disappointment ever, given the expectations that would have surrounded his candidacy.

[Adjective-Statement]

Not after the collapse of the New Deal Coalition. The differences between the Northern liberals and the Southern segregationists were irreconcilable. You could no longer count on the vote of one if you appeased the other, nor would balancing the ticket work as it barely did after 1948.

An earlier corruption scandal on the scale of Watergate and a moralistic "outsider" opponent from an EV-rich region might do the trick, but that's changing history.

[mianfei]

Scoop Jackson would have a chance I guess, but no other D would have really had a shot IMO.

Jackson actually is an interesting thought.

Given his hawkish tendencies,  could Jackson have run on a platform to do what Phillip Jennings says should have been done in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War:

take the war to the North Vietnamese

If such a platform was not too late due to the public’s frustration, Jackson might have done better than any proposed alternative 1972 Democratic nominee. If it was too late, he might only have done better in Hawaii and the Northeast, where McGovern was certainly viewed as excessively anti-establishment.

Nevertheless, if the Democratic Party had simply lost 5.20 percent (McGovern’s national loss vis-à-vis Humphrey) in every state, they would still have carried HI, RI, and possibly MN (due to Schmitz). The long-term dangers down-ballot of such a policy I have noted before