George McGovern

George McGovern (b. 1922) is a former university professor who became a liberal Congressman and Senator from South Dakota. As a populist, anti-war candidate who won the Democratic nomination for president in 1972, McGovern lost in a landslide against the incumbent Richard Nixon.

The Democratic Party subsequently changed its procedures for nominating presidential candidates in order to give about one-third of the nominating (delegate) power to existing office-holders, in order to make it more difficult for a populist but unelectable candidate like McGovern to win the Democratic presidential nomination.