The Democratic Party nominated Robert Kennedy and Gene McCarthy as its peace candidates for the 1968 election.
McCarthy was supported by university students, men of upper middle class and opponents of the war. Kennedy represented the ethnic voter (mainly African-Americans and non-evangelical whites), but he was killed before the Democratic National Convention of that year.
The decision was particularly difficult for the Democrats that year, due to the division of the party by the Vietnam War, and for the murder of the popular candidate Robert Kennedy. On the one hand, Eugene McCarthy proposed a determined anti-war campaign, calling for the immediate withdrawal of the region. On the other, Hubert H. Humphrey made a call for a policy closer to that of President Lyndon Johnson.
The Democrats finally stayed with Hubert H. Humphrey, who would lose the election in favor of Richard Nixon.