Should Democrats turn back clock to winner-take-all days?

By Dan K. Thomasson
Scripps Howard News Service
Published: Monday, May 12, 2008 8:34 p.m. MDT
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In 1972 just following the California Democratic primary, I walked down to the President's Room off the U.S. Senate chambers where reporters met members and asked the chief attendant to speak to Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

McGovern and I, for that matter, had just returned from California where he had squeaked out a narrow victory over former Vice President Hubert Humphrey to become the leader in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The senator, always affable and gracious, appeared promptly and said I must be as exhausted as he after weeks of a nonstop race from San Diego to San Francisco and beyond.

I apologized for bothering him but said that he should know that Humphrey had just filed a petition with the Democratic National Committee to be allotted a portion of California's convention delegates based on his percentage of the total primary vote. That would be nearly half of the delegates and make the nominating contest much closer. McGovern looked stunned and off balance for a few seconds and then exploded in anger at what he clearly regarded as an effort to steal his hard-won victory in the winner-take-all primary.

Rarely had I seen McGovern, a soft-spoken, friendly prairie liberal war hero and avowed opponent of Vietnam, who ran on a campaign of peace, so furious. His agitation grew as more than a dozen other reporters crowded into the room only a few minutes after I had given him the news. He pledged to fight the "theft" with everything he had. I was so startled by the change in his demeanor my lead for the next day read, "Peaceable George McGovern yesterday decided to beat his plowshare into a sword" over Humphrey's brazen attempt to blunt McGovern's victory.

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Ironically only four years earlier, Humphrey had won the 1968 Democratic nomination at a tumultuous convention after never having entered a primary, succeeding to the honor following the assassination of front-running Sen. Robert F. Kennedy during the campaign for the California delegation. The dreariness of the whole affair prompted the late Peter Lisagor of Knight Newspapers to write that Humphrey "could have done better in bankruptcy court." McGovern, as we all know, went on to the '72 nomination despite Humphrey's efforts and to an overwhelming defeat by incumbent Richard M. Nixon.

So what is the significance of all this — particularly Humphrey's move in California?

It was the first real attempt to change the winner-take-all contests still used by Republicans today into a more "democratic" process of proportional representation — one that has brought the selection to where it is now: an overly long nightmare that threatens to leave a large segment of its members alienated, costs millions upon millions more than it should, and has created a split that could result in defeat for the eventual nominee in the fall election. To address the chaos, the DNC is considering whether to turn back the clock to the one-winner days.

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Recent comments

"Should Democrats turn back clock to winner-take-all days?"...

Sam | May 13, 2008 at 11:29 p.m.

Right on, Why Not?

Republicans have now replaced their mainstay...

we the people | May 13, 2008 at 1:32 p.m.

Republicans have been trying hard to turn back the clock to the McCarthy...

Why Not? | May 13, 2008 at 11:23 a.m.