Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion

"Branded the candidate of 'acid, amnesty and abortion' (the Democrats' platform, adopted six months before the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade legislated a liberal abortion policy, did not mention abortion), McGovern became the first candidate since the New Deal to lose the Catholic and labor union vote. So 1972, more than 1968, was the hinge of the party's history. In 1972, Miroff writes, 'college-educated issue activists' supplanted the 'labor/urban machine coalition.'
"George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO, had dropped out of high school at age 14. Speaking about McGovern's 1972 convention, where 39 percent of the delegates had advanced degrees, he said: 'We heard from people who look like Jacks, acted like Jills and had the odor of Johns about them.' The Reagan Democrats of 1980 were incubated eight years earlier.
"McGovern won only 14 percent of Southern white Protestants. This, Miroff notes, made Democrats susceptible four years later to the appeal of a pious Southerner. Thus did a disaster compound itself."

In Newsweek, George Will checks in with George McGovern.