Remember Hubert Humphrey? He was supposedly the safe choice against the despised Richard Nixon.

[Buzz cook]

48. Johnson/Humphrey was unpopular.

Both men were screwed over by the pentagon and conservative democrats into supporting the Vietnam war. It was seen as a democratic party war by the public and by 68 a majority were opposed to that war.

Nixon ran as an anti-war candidate. He had a "secret plan to end the war". Nixon also worked through back channels to fuck the Paris peace talks. That failure reflected on the Johnson/Humphrey administration. Nixon's involvement was not reveled till years later.

The police riots at the democratic convention in Chicago were blamed on the democrats. So the party was at the same time the pro-war party and the dirty hippie anti-war protester party.

The Civil Rights and Voting Rights act had been passed just a few years earlier and now African Americans were protesting violently. The protests were blamed on the democratic party.

Bobby Kennedy was dead. If he had lived I think he would have won.

So the representative of the left was Eugene McCarty.
I was 13 and a McCarthy supporter, but hindsight gives me a more jaundiced take on Clean Gene. He failed to capitalize on his base before Johnson left the race and Kennedy and Humphrey joined it. His political style was abrasive and absolutist.
When he lost the nomination he refused to endorse Humphrey and made demands that Humphrey would and could not meet.

If McCarty had run in the general as he had in the primaries, I really don't think he would have won.