Well, when old time Dems say they don't want a floor fight at the convention, this is the convention they are remembering.

And the whole fiasco over unseating right wing Mayor Daley's delegation (which was all white) in favor of the left wing Singer delegation (which was integrated, and led by an African American alderman), was very much about race.

So, this whole primary season has echoes of the extremely recent past of a very racist Democratic party.

Besides McGovern running that year, George Wallace ran (and got a shit load of votes), and Humphrey.

And so the party hacks and bosses have been dragging the party further and further back into that awful past, not to mention to the far right, ever since then.

The party reformers of the time were directly confronting and challenging the authority of the racist, conservative Blue Dog Democratic party--it's power, privlege, status, wealth, and more than anything else, the party's cultural authority in US politics.

Of course, the reformers were immediately slapped down after that election, and the left has been wandering in the wilderness ever since, rudderless, leaderless and without a party to call home. Most I know haven't bothered to vote since they cast their votes for McGovern.