About last night in Philadelphia: Part I, The Last Rigged Convention was in 1968

Senator Abe Ribicoff squaring off against Mayor Richard Daley at the "rigged" Democratic Convention in 1968

The last "rigged" Democratic Convention was nearly a half century ago, in 1968.  

In 1968, only 14 states had primary elections.  Anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy won pluralities or majorities in six; Senator Robert Kennedy in four (including California); President Lyndon Johnson (or his surrogates) in four.  

In the wake of the assassination of Senator Kennedy on June 4, the night of the last primaries, the Party Establishment rallied around Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson having dropped out of the race the end of March. In the primary states, 70% voted for either McCarthy or Kennedy.

George McGovern, who had not been running, was the inheritor of the delegates won by Kennedy in the primary states; those delegates did not approach a majority. Nor did the Kennedy/McGovern delegates combined with the Eugene McCarthy delegates add up to a majority of delegates, even though, together, 70% of the primary voters chose either Kennedy or McCarthy. Why?  Because the vast majority of delegates back then were chosen in closed processes that often were effectively decided long before the campaign began. Humphrey got the nomination because the Establishment closed ranks around him. Now that was a rigged convention.
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Source:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1968

In the wake of the 1968 debacle, the Democratic Party radically changed its delegate selection rules, requiring that the processes be timely (they could not begin until the calendar year of the election) and open -- either primary elections or well-publicized caucuses.  See 1972 discussion in the D.C. Circuit decision in Brown v. O'Brien  While the Establishment took one last try at subverting the new rules in 1972, that attempt failed, although the chaos caused by the attempt doomed the Democratic ticket that year. See discussion in my earlier blog post.  Since that time, there has been no serious dispute as to the validity of the results as presented at the Convention.  2016 is no different.  While there might have been a problem if Hillary Clinton failed to win a majority of the pledged delegates, that did not happen. 

So the story line of a "rigged" convention is bogus.

What is significant for 2016 is an understanding of what Eugene McCarthy, who received 39% of the popular vote in the primaries, did after the 1968 convention.  That will be the subject of my next blog post.