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Inventory. In most sections of the country, a bleak and occasionally despairing mood has settled over party regulars contemplating a McGovern nomination. Their disconsolate argument is that McGovern, besides losing the presidency to Richard Nixon in November, may drag other Democrats down to defeat with him, possibly costing the party control of state legislatures, courthouses, the U.S. Senate and even the House.
Most Democrats agree that McGovern will have to write off the South, so bitter is the sentiment against him there. But nowhere are the party's regulars sanguine about the prospects for November if McGovern runs. A prominent Jewish fund-raiser predicts that "most of my friends would vote for Nixon and give their money to Nixon." Although McGovern was at pains in New York to proclaim himself a firm supporter of Israel, some Jews still mistrust him; some also feel that McGovern's political aura is too radical. San Francisco's Mayor Joseph Alioto, a Humphrey supporter, fears that the Italian community, finding McGovern "too permissive," would drift into the Republican column. Says an Illinois delegate: "McGovern has to get in tune with the realities of the middle class. If he doesn't, he's headed for disaster."
A leading Democrat took this unhappy inventory last week: No one can block McGovern's nomination, and if McGovern is nominated, he cannot win in November. His only chance would be to abandon the South and Border states, shift his positions to regain the moderate, middle-ground Democrats and hope somehow for a sweep through the Eastern industrial states—Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania—plus Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and California.
One of the unhappiest Democrats these days is Lyndon Johnson, who sits on his Texas ranch recovering from his heart attack, seething in frustration at the turn his party has taken, and perhaps feeling a bit like King Lear. He would love to attend the convention, but refused Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence O'Brien's personal invitation. Johnson knows that his presence there would only open the old party wounds, reminding everyone that he represented what McGovern wants to repudiate. "Lyndon just doesn't carry any weight in the party," says a longtime political associate, "and he knows it. It's a miserable fate for a man who only four years ago was President of the U.S., but it is a fact nevertheless."