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After the marathon credentials session, the convention took on an air of inexorability. At noon on Tuesday, "because I can count," Humphrey withdrew his name from the race. Fighting back tears, comforting his wife Muriel, Humphrey told reporters: "This has been a good fight." At 61, it was Humphrey's final farewell. As the 37-year-old mayor of Minneapolis, he had galvanized the 1948 convention with his pleas for civil rights; he had been thought too radical all through the '50s, lost out to John Kennedy in 1960 and to Richard Nixon in 1968, and lived to find himself rejected as L.B.J.'s contaminated lieutenant in 1972. It was a bitter denouement, and in private Humphrey was uncharacteristically vitriolic about it. Two days later he said: "They said if I won, I'd never get the convention to make it unanimous. Well, they didn't make McGovern's nomination unanimous either. Notice that?"
Edmund Muskie also withdrew. "Let us recognize," he said, "that George McGovern's candidacy gives a hope for the long-term health and vigor of the Democratic Party and its processes far more significant than temporary difficulties and irritations from sometimes brash new blood." His leaving was ironic; he had begun 1972 as the front runner in the mind of almost every Democratic politician and political analyst. Although he had been on the point of endorsing McGovern several weeks before, Muskie clung to a stubborn hope. On Monday he tried to call a conference of all the candidates to reach a compromise on the California credentials, but McGovern brushed the idea aside.
With Humphrey and Muskie gone, Washington's Scoop Jackson doggedly remained in the battle, even though he had not won a primary. Predicting disaster if McGovern got the nomination, Jackson said: "I'm a former chairman of my party, and I don't recall that we've ever been in this situation."
George Wallace also remained, an unpredictable presence with the new and curious respectability of his near martyrdom. That night as the delegates convened again, Florida's Governor, Reubin Askew, 43, delivered a feeling keynote address. "It is impossible," he said, "to look upon this group without feeling that one has seen the face of America. Let us remember that this nation was founded on diversity, that our differences can be a source of strength as well as weakness."
Flat. In something more than ritual confirmation of that theme, George Wallace was hoisted in his wheelchair onto the stage to present his defiantly divergent opinions on the party platform. He attempted a joke about having attended one too many political rallies this year; when it fell flat, he knew he was not among his "folks," but the McGovern delegates treated Wallace courteously, as they had been instructed to do and as their leader had promised the Alabaman they would. Only when Wal lace began damning welfare and busing were the few cheers from Florida and other delegations answered with boos. The convention subsided again, greeting even Wallace's malaprop about "intellectual pseudosnobs" with a bemused silence. Then the convention efficiently voted down every one of Wallace's