# Hubert Humphrey Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) was a Minneapolis mayor, four-term U.S. Senator from Minnesota, [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]'s Vice President (1965-1969), and the 1968 Democratic presidential nominee who narrowly lost the [[1968 Presidential Election]] to [[Richard Nixon]] and [[George Wallace]]. He was known as the "**Happy Warrior**" — a Roosevelt-era nickname that had been transferred to him for his combative optimism in political combat — and was one of the most important figures in the postwar Democratic civil-rights tradition. Humphrey's most consequential single moment was his **July 14, 1948 speech to the Democratic National Convention** in Philadelphia in support of the convention's civil-rights plank. "The time has arrived for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights" — the speech that triggered the Mississippi and Alabama delegations' walkout, set up the Dixiecrat revolt under [[Strom Thurmond]], and operationally began the long Democratic-Party realignment away from its Solid-South coalitional base. The 1948 Dixiecrat revolt produced under-the-radar but consequential losses for Truman in the Deep South while the broader Truman coalition held; the long-term consequences of the Humphrey 1948 speech — the [[Party Realignment]] that ran through 1964 and 1968 — are the central political-historical sequence of the postwar period. As LBJ's Vice President 1965-1969, Humphrey was constrained in his [[Vietnam War]] positions by his loyalty obligation to Johnson; the war-period Humphrey was painfully aware of the political damage his administration's Vietnam policy was causing and was operationally unable to break with it publicly. He won the 1968 Democratic nomination after the Chicago convention chaos and the post-Bobby-Kennedy-assassination party fracture; he lost to Nixon by 0.7% in the popular vote in one of the closest American presidential races. He returned to the Senate in 1971 and died of bladder cancer in 1978. ## Right-wing relevance Humphrey is one of the most operationally important figures in the post-WWII civil-rights political alignment. His 1948 speech is the canonical primary-source documentation of the Democratic Party's explicit civil-rights commitment that triggered the [[Southern Strategy]]. The contemporary right's narrative of the post-1964 partisan realignment (when it engages the question at all) typically treats Humphrey as the Northern-Democratic-liberal foil against whom Southern-Democratic-Dixiecrat resistance was justified. The 1968 election is also the structural moment at which the post-1968 Republican coalition became operationally majoritarian; Humphrey is the figure who lost. ## Connections - [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] — President under whom Humphrey served as VP. - [[Richard Nixon]] — 1968 opponent; victor. - [[George Wallace]] — 1968 third-party candidate whose Deep South sweep cost Humphrey several states. - [[Strom Thurmond]] — Dixiecrat opponent (1948); later Republican who would help complete the realignment Humphrey's 1948 speech triggered. ## See also - [[1968 Presidential Election]] — Humphrey's loss. ---