2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: To Sanders supporters FROM a Sanders supporter: please stop saying Bernie should've got the nom. [View all]former9thward
(33,424 posts)By June 3, 1980, when the last Democratic primary was held in West Virginia, Carter had an insurmountable lead. He had pulled 51 percent of the primary votes with Kennedy at 37 percent. Before the convention even opened, Carter had 315 votes more than he needed for the nomination. But Kennedy refused to withdraw. Not until he lost trying to break the rule that bound the delegates to vote on the first ballot for their candidate did Kennedy give in.
Kennedy did finally arrive at Madison Square Garden. He gave Carter a perfunctory handshake and then seemed to turn his back on the President, skirting around the edges of the podium as party officials tried to arrange a victory photograph. Jules Witcover and Jack Germond, in Blue Smoke and Mirrors, quote a Carter intimate as saying the President looked like a puppy dog trotting after Kennedy. They also quote party chairman, Robert Strauss, after a reporter told him the scene looked like hell, as saying it looked worse than hell.
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_snub_circa_1980.php