There are some states that COULD have gone Humphrey's way. IL, MI, and MD are 3 in mind, but MI and MD had major issue with School Busing to achieve integration. 1972 was a year where this was a National issue and those were two (2) normally Democratic states that would not have been pleased with HHH taking a position to the Left of Nixon on that issue.
From the anti-war dove point of view, Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War unnecessarily, even expanding it to Laos and Cambodia. From the point of view of most of Middle America, Nixon was ending the war, however slowly. HHH would have been in a tough spot; caught between the antiwar liberals and the mainstream Democrats who, quite honestly, were not too far from Nixon on Foreign Policy.
